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Announcement :: Iraq |
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Aaron Glantz Gives First hand Accounts of Iraq this Thursday at Pages at 7 PM |
Current rating: 0 |
by Danielle Chynoweth
(No verified email address) |
21 Aug 2005
|
Pacifica reporter Aaron Glantz, an investigative journalist who as been an unembedded reporter in Iraq, will be in town this Thursday, August 25th. He just published a book - How American Lost Iraq - which recently made the best seller list for the San Francisco Chronicle.
BOOK TALK AND SIGNING
7pm, Thursday, August 25 at Pages for All Ages - S. Neil in Savoy
INTERVIEW ON Focus 580
10am, Thursday, August 25 on WILL-AM 580 |
Join Pacifica's Aaron Glantz on the tour of his new book, How America Lost Iraq.
This is not the happy story of liberating Iraq and replacing dictatorship
with democracy President Bush and the mainstream American media would have
us believe.
How American Lost Iraq (Tarcher/Penguin; isbn 1-58542-426-9; May 19, 2005,
$23.95) tells the story of how the U.S. government squandered, through a
series of blunders and brutalities, the goodwill with which most Iraqi's
greeted the American invasion and the elation they felt at the fall of
Saddam Hussein.
As President Bush pushed the country toward war with Iraq in the early
months of 2003, Pacifica Radio reporter Aaron Glantz warned of the tragic
consequences that would follow. But once he arrived in Iraq, the reality
he found stunned him. In dozens of interviews, Iraqi citizens spoke of
their deep gratitude to the Americans for ousting the dictator who had
oppressed them for thirty years. Even Iraqis whose homes had been
destroyed and who suffered from the lack of clean water, electricity, and
other basic services, felt these sacrifices were worth the freedom America
had promised them. Glantz interviewed one man who vowed to name his first
son George Bush.
But as the occupation dragged on, as more and more Iraqis were thrown in
Abu Ghraib without being charged; as the necessities of daily life, such
as drinking water and electricity, went lacking; and as the American army
failed to control lootings and rampant street violence, tensions began to
rise.
Then, with the spectacular killings and grisly display of four American
contractors, those tensions exploded. Instead of negotiating, the United
States made the fateful decision to attack Fallujah, a colossal mistake
that would enrage even moderate Muslims and turn simmering resentment into
armed resistance.
With gripping eyewitness accounts, Glantz takes readers inside Fallujah
and shows what embedded reporters failed to reveal, the deliberate killing
of Iraqi civilians by American Marines and the devastating effects of
American bombing in a densely populated city. Glantz shows that ordinary
Iraqi civilians - men, women, and children - were shot and killed simply for
leaving their houses, or for trying to rescue those who lay wounded in the
streets. Even humanitarian aid workers who tried to take the wounded to
the hospital in clearly marked ambulances were shot at by American
snipers. We learn of one brave couple that held their marriage ceremony
with bombs falling around them.
When the fighting in Fallujah was over, after the relentless aerial
assault and sniper fire had ceased, 600 Iraqi citizens were dead and
America's status as liberators had been completely destroyed.
It wasn't just Sunni's in Fallujah that America attacked. As the same
time, U.S. forces shut down Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's newspaper,
Al-Hawza al-Natiqa (The Spoken Islamic Universe) and accused Sadr himself
of murder, which triggered an armed uprising across the Shi'ite South.
Throughout the book, Glantz goes beyond the safety of the heavily
protected Green Zone where most reporters remain to get at the truth of
life in Iraq under the American occupation: the mass incarcerations, the
brutally high levels of civilian casualties, the bombings of mosques, the
repression of free speech, and the ongoing failure of contractors like
Halliburton and Bechtel to provide Iraqis with water, telephone service,
electricity and other basic needs. It is these acts, Glantz shows, that
are fueling the insurgency and generating lasting enmity to the American
presence in Iraq.
In How American Lost Iraq, we are given - for the first time- the voices of
Iraqis themselves, unmediated by Pentagon spokespersons or mainstream news
anchors. What they have to tell us, in Aaron Glantz's moving and
courageous book, is a truth that all Americans need to hear.
Aaron Glantz is a reporter for Pacifica Radio and lives in Los Angeles.
More info at www.aaaronglantz.com
"He does what the embedded media can't and takes a look at the US military
through the perspective of Iraqi people ... A fascinating piece of
intrepid reporting."
--Laura Flanders, host The Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio and author of Bushwomen
"Aaron Glantz learned first-hand the painful lessons that every American
had better understand to prevent future military escapades that undermine
real security and freedom. Shut off your TV, put down the paper, and read
the gripping truth of How America Lost Iraq."
-- John Stauber, co-author, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
"How America Lost Iraq, reflects courage and strong willingness to promote truth. "
---Jamal Tahat, collumnist, al-Rai'i newspaper, Amman, Jordan
"A no holds barred look at our Iraq quagmire an important first-person
document historians will look to in the future as they draw a more
complete picture of America's catastrophic victory in Iraq."
---Seattle Times
"Glantz's account is full of interviews with ordinary Iraqis, and from
their evolving thoughts and experiences he builds a critique of the many
American misconceptions about Iraq, one that castigates equally the left's
knee-jerk preconceptions, the occupation authorities' cluelessness and
heavy-handed misrule and the media's lack of interest in the suffering of
Iraqis. The result is a nuanced and hard-hitting indictment."
---Publisher's Weekly
"explains the reality of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq -
essential reading"
---Amy Goodman, Host Democracy Now! |
This work is in the public domain |
