Just Foreign Policy News
August 11, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
A Historic Opportunity to Cut Military Spending
The agreement in Washington to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for deficit reduction has made a lot of people very unhappy. But the agreement had one important positive aspect: it created a historic opportunity for significant cuts in projected military spending.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/20118711133701977.html
* Take Action: Urge Congress and the President to Put Military Cuts First in Line
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/cutpentagonfirst
Financial Times: Iran exile group should stay on terror list, say experts
A group of US-based Iran experts – including academics, former political prisoners and former officials – wrote to Secretary of State Clinton, urging her not to remove the MEK from the US list of foreign terrorist organizations. "Removing the MEK from the foreign terrorist organization list and misconstruing its lack of democratic bona fides and support inside Iran will have harmful consequences on the legitimate, indigenous Iranian opposition," the 37 experts said. The signatories include John Limbert, head of Iranian affairs in the State Department until recently and one of the diplomats held hostage in 1979 in the US embassy in Tehran; Paul Pillar, a former US intelligence agent now at Georgetown University; and Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c84c2faa-c375-11e0-b163-00144feabdc0.html
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Tea Party activists say the Pentagon should be targeted for cuts by the "supercommittee" created in the debt-ceiling deal, The Hill reports. The pressure from Tea Party groups could put pressure on establishment Republicans named to the supercommittee, who may wish to protect the Pentagon from cuts, The Hill says. Some Democrats had hoped the triggers might convince Republicans on the supercommittee to agree to tax hikes to avoid defense cuts, but Tea Party groups appear to be much more relaxed about the Pentagon cuts than tax increases. The Hill notes.
2) Implementation of the "doomsday mechanism" would return the base (non-war) Pentagon budget to what it was in 2007, writes Winslow Wheeler of the Center for Defense Information. That would still be 20% higher than it was in 2000. It would be 10% higher than the average for the Cold War.
3) Support for bringing home U.S. troops from Afghanistan is on the rise as few Americans think we have a clearly defined mission anymore, according to Rasmussen Reports. 59% of Likely Voters want the troops to come home either immediately or within a year. 28% oppose any firm timetable. 43% of Republicans now support bringing the troops home within a year while just 42% oppose a firm timetable. As recently as June, most Republicans opposed any firm timetable. 76% of Democrats and 58% of unaffiliated voters want the troops home within a year. Among those aligned with the Tea Party, 47% say it’s time to bring the troops home and 43% oppose any firm timetable.
Support for the U.S. military mission in Libya is down to 24%.
67% think the military budget should face cuts.
Libya
4) Amnesty International says NATO should investigate allegations that it killed 85 civilians during airstrikes in Libya, CNN reports.
Israel/Palestine
5) Israeli security forces are importing horses, water cannons, tear-gas launchers and a nauseating noise machine to control crowds at Palestinian protests planned next month to support their bid for U.N. endorsement of statehood, AP reports. Soldiers have used rubber-coated steel bullets in past confrontations that have killed Palestinians, AP notes.
Palestinians are planning mass demonstrations across the West Bank and abroad to coincide with the September U.N. General Assembly session, which the Palestinians hope will give official endorsement for their state. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. representative, said if hundreds of thousands of Palestinians rally peacefully in September under the slogan "The People Want the End of Occupation. The People Want Independence," it should affect "the dynamics of what will happen in the United Nations, whether in the Security Council or in the General Assembly." He said close to 130 nations have already recognized Palestine as an independent state, which is more than two-thirds of the membership of the U.N. General Assembly.
Even if U.N. membership is thwarted, Mansour said, the Palestinians have the votes in the General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, to be recognized as a state and to change their status at the United Nations from an observer to a nonmember state, like the Vatican.
7) Israel’s Interior Ministry gave final approval on Thursday to construction of a contentious 1,600-apartment complex in East Jerusalem and said it would soon approve an additional 2,700 housing units there, a move that infuriated the Palestinians and could undercut US efforts to salvage long-stalled Middle East peace talks, the New York Times reports. Peace Now condemned what it called the Interior Ministry’s "cynical use" of the Israeli housing crisis.
Afghanistan
8) NATO and Afghan forces are investigating a claim by Afghan police officers that US soldiers fired on them for no reason, killing four officers and wounding two others, the New York Times reports. Some area residents said they would stop helping the US if the soldiers responsible for the shooting were not brought to justice; others said people would stop helping the Americans in any event.
9) U.S. media coverage of the war in Afghanistan has reduced to a trickle, writes John Hanrahan for Nieman Watchdog. Time devoted to the war on network news broadcasts fell 25% from 2009 to 2010. There was more reporting from Vietnam after US soldiers withdrew than there is from Afghanistan when US deployment is at its height, Hanrahan’s account suggests.
Bahrain
10) Witnesses say security forces in Bahrain’s capital are blocking roads around Pearl Square after clashes with anti-government demonstrators, AP reports. The blockades came after protesters in a Manama neighborhood called for a march back to Pearl Square, which was stormed by security forces several weeks after pro-reform demonstrations began in February. Major protests have been crushed, but small-scale clashes have occurred nearly nightly for weeks.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Tea Party activists: Bring on defense cuts
Cristina Marcos, The Hill, 08/10/11 05:57 PM ET
http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/defense-homeland-security/176393-tea-party-activists-bring-on-defense-cuts
Tea Party activists say the Pentagon should be targeted for cuts by the "supercommittee" created in the debt-ceiling deal.
Groups affiliated with the conservative grassroots movement say defense cuts should be on the table as the supercommittee tries to compile at least $1.5 trillion in deficit cuts.
The pressure from Tea Party groups could put pressure on establishment Republicans named to the supercommittee, who may wish to protect the Pentagon from severe cuts.
"Nothing should be sacred, and everything needs to be evaluated and cut as much as it can be," said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.
Tea Party activists say defense programs should come under the same knife as any other taxpayer-funded programs, and that massive national security budgets were not exempt from their definition of "big government."
"The liberty movement is about the fundamental limitation of government, and that doesn’t have departmental boundaries with regards to this principle," said Chris Littleton, co-founder of the Ohio Liberty Council.
[…] The most notable defense hawk passed over for a spot on the panel is House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), who had called for a strong defense voice on the committee. Instead, the Republican picks have all vowed to oppose any tax increases, suggesting that the party leadership has placed higher priority on preventing tax increases than on avoiding defense cuts.
That’s not to say the defense industry doesn’t have friends on the panel.
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who was one of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) picks, has advocated for Boeing tanker contracts, which brought jobs to her state.
The Pentagon is likely to be hit by further budget cuts no matter what under the deal signed into law by President Obama.
That legislation would impose up to $350 billion in cuts over the next decade on the departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, among others.
The deal also includes "triggers" set off if the supercommittee fails to reach a deal on $1.2 trillion in cuts. The triggers would lead to $500 billion in more cuts over the next decade to agencies charged with defense and homeland security if the supercommittee fails to reach its target. By outlining automatic spending cuts split evenly between defense and domestic programs, the triggers are intended to motivate Republicans and Democrats into brokering a comprehensive agreement.
[…] Democrats had hoped the triggers might convince Republicans on the supercommittee to agree to tax hikes to avoid defense cuts, but Tea Party groups appear to be much more relaxed about the Pentagon cuts than tax increases.
[…]
2) On Defense Secretary Panetta and the Dreaded "Doomsday Mechanism"
Defense Budget Hysteria and Business as Usual – or Reform?
Winslow T. Wheeler, Center for Defense Information, August 9, 2011
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=4678
The rhetoric of people rushing to rescue Pentagon spending from "completely unacceptable" cuts is quite hysterical. Leading the chorus has been Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. He termed the possible defense budget cuts (about $850 billion over 10 years according to most) a "doomsday mechanism," if the automatic sequestration trigger of Obama’s debt deal with the Republicans in Congress is pulled. Some think tank types, opining in The Washington Post and The New York Times, have deemed these reductions "indiscriminately hacking away" at the Pentagon’s budget and something that could "imperil America’s national security." Their defense spending allies, including multiple generals and admirals sitting atop various Pentagon bureaucracies, confirm it all with descriptions like "very high risk" and "draconian."
It should be pointed out that these people are underestimating the size of the potential cuts the new debt deal could theoretically cause. The $850 billion supposition measures the reductions against an artificial "baseline" from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that does not include the actual budget growth the Pentagon had scheduled for itself. Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments tells us in a useful analysis ("Defense Funding in the Budget Control Act of 2011") that the debt deal’s automatic sequesters, if implemented, would mean $968 billion in cuts over ten years from the DOD budgets heretofore planned – over $100 billion more in cuts.
To react to this new scenario, the hyperventilators will need to upgrade their rhetoric, if that is possible.
Some factual perspective puts the brown paper bag around this hot air. As analyst Harrison also informs us, the "doomsday mechanism" would reduce the Pentagon’s "base" (non-war) budget to about $472 billion, the approximate level of the base DOD budget in 2007. I do not recall anyone declaring our national security being "imperiled" at that spending level in 2007. In fact, that level of spending for the "base" (non-war) Pentagon budget was a sixteen year high – calculated using "constant" Defense Department dollars intended to compensate for inflation. Not exactly the result of "hacking away."
If returned to the $472 billion 2007 level, the base DOD budget would be $73 billion higher than it was in 2000, the year before our various interventions started to occur. If spending were to be continued at the $472 billion level for the next 10 years, base Defense Department spending would be three quarters of a trillion dollars above the levels extant in 2000. And, not a penny of the additional monies to be spent on the wars would be eliminated.
It is also useful to compare the 2007 level of "base" DOD spending to the average amount we spent during the Cold War, when we faced a threatening and heavily armed super power, the Soviet Union, plus its Warsaw pact allies, and a hostile, dogmatically communist China. From 1948 to 1990 we spent, on average, $434 billion each year — $38 billion less than we would under the "completely unacceptable" "doomsday mechanism." Finally, at the 2007 – $472 billion – level, our defense budget would remain multiples of those of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba and any other potential adversary – combined.
[…]
3) 59% Want Troops Home from Afghanistan
Rasmussen Reports, Thursday, August 11, 2011
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/afghanistan/59_want_troops_home_from_afghanistan
Support for bringing home U.S. troops from Afghanistan is on the rise as few Americans think we have a clearly defined mission anymore in that troubled country.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 59% of Likely Voters nationwide want the troops to come home either immediately or within a year. Twenty-eight percent (28%) oppose any firm timetable and 13% are not sure.
[…] At 59%, support for bring the troops home is up from 51% in June, 52% in March, 43% last September, and 39% in September 2009.
Notably, 43% of Republicans now support bringing the troops home within a year while just 42% oppose a firm timetable. As recently as June, most Republicans opposed any firm timetable.
Just 22% now believe the U.S. has a clearly defined mission in Afghanistan.
[…] Seventy-six percent (76%) of Democrats and 58% of unaffiliated voters want the troops home within a year.
Among those aligned with the Tea Party, 47% say it’s time to bring the troops home and 43% oppose any firm timetable.
Support for the U.S. military mission in Libya is down to 24%.
Seventy-five percent (75%) of all voters agree that "the United States should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest."
Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Likely U.S. Voters think that thoughtful spending cuts should be considered in every program of the federal government as the nation searches for solutions to the budget crisis. Just 35% say the military should be exempt from such cuts.
Libya
4) Rights group: NATO must probe allegations it killed Libyan civilians
CNN, August 11, 2011
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/11/libya.war/
Tripoli, Libya — A leading human rights organization is calling on NATO to investigate allegations that it killed 85 civilians during airstrikes on forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi.
The demand by Amnesty International Wednesday followed government accusations days earlier that NATO killed civilians in the western part of the country to help clear the way for rebels advancing on the Gadhafi-controlled city of Zlitan.
"NATO continues to stress its commitment to protect civilians. To that effect, it should thoroughly investigate this and all other recent incidents in which civilians were reportedly killed in western Libya as a result of airstrikes," Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui of Amnesty International said in a statement.
Eighty-five civilians, including 33 children, were killed in airstrikes Monday near the village of Majer, Gadhafi’s government said.
[…] NATO has come under fire in recent months by some human rights groups and foreign countries for reportedly errant airstrikes that have resulted in civilians being killed.
Amnesty urged NATO to take necessary precautions to avoid civilian casualties.
On Monday, government officials escorted international journalists to a mass funeral in Majer, and to the site where the government alleges an airstrike killed civilians.
It was impossible for CNN to confirm the extent of the casualties, and whether they were all civilians.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
5) Israel Prepares for Palestinian Statehood Rallies
Associated Press, August 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/08/11/world/middleeast/AP-ML-Israel-Palestinians.html
Jerusalem – Israeli security forces are importing horses, water cannons, tear-gas launchers and a nauseating noise machine to control crowds if they become violent at Palestinian protests planned next month to support their bid for U.N. endorsement of statehood. Israel hopes the measures will avoid casualties among demonstrators.
Palestinian authorities have made plans that aim to keep the protests peaceful and avoid confrontations with Israelis. Israel fears that a single incident – a Palestinian killing an Israeli with a firebomb or gunshot, or an Israeli soldier killing a Palestinian during a riot – could trigger a flood of violence when large crowds are already out protesting.
Palestinians are planning mass demonstrations across the West Bank and abroad to coincide with the September U.N. General Assembly session, which the Palestinians hope will give official endorsement for their state. The statehood initiative reflects frustration with long stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Police have doubled the size of their riot control forces to more than 2,000, according to an internal police newsletter obtained by The Associated Press.
"The police hope to avoid casualties in the event of (U.N. endorsement of) Palestinian independence," Nissim Mor, commander of the police operations branch, wrote in the newsletter.
The police newsletter spelled out the equipment police are planning to use, including a machine that generates sound waves that cause nausea.
Police have ordered such a machine, called "the scream," the newsletter said, adding that they are also acquiring "the skunk" – a device that sprays a foul-smelling fluid to subdue unruly crowds.
Also, 15 horses arrived this week from Belgium and two additional water cannons are on order, it said.
Israel has supplies of tear-gas grenades and launchers and is ordering more, military officials said. Soldiers have used rubber-coated steel bullets in past confrontations that have killed Palestinians.
[…] Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. representative, said if hundreds of thousands of Palestinians rally peacefully in September under the slogan "The People Want the End of Occupation. The People Want Independence," it should affect "the dynamics of what will happen in the United Nations, whether in the Security Council or in the General Assembly."
He said close to 130 nations have already recognized Palestine as an independent state, which is more than two-thirds of the membership of the U.N. General Assembly. But he said the United States at "this moment" would veto U.N. membership for Palestine in the Security Council, even though it has aided the Palestinians in building their institutions.
With such strong support in the 193-member world body, Mansour asked in the interview on France 24 TV, "What would be the argument of any member state in the Security Council of depriving us of our natural, historic and legal right to join the community of nations as a new member state?"
[…] Even if U.N. membership is thwarted, Mansour said, the Palestinians have the votes in the General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, to be recognized as a state and to change their status at the United Nations from an observer to a nonmember state, like the Vatican. "That at least would resolve the issue of the existence of the state," he said.
7) Israel Approves New Housing in East Jerusalem
Rick Gladstone, New York Times, August 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/world/middleeast/12jerusalem.html
Israel’s Interior Ministry gave final approval on Thursday to construction of a contentious 1,600-apartment complex in East Jerusalem and said it would soon approve an additional 2,700 housing units there, a move that infuriated the Palestinians and could undercut American efforts to salvage long-stalled Middle East peace talks.
The announcement also provoked an angry reaction from Israeli groups opposed to housing construction in land conquered by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The opposition groups denounced it as an opportunistic way for the Israeli government to exploit a housing shortage that has led to unaffordable rents and mass protests in Israel. Peace Now, the leading anti-settlement group in Israel, condemned what it called the Interior Ministry’s "cynical use" of the housing crisis.
The Interior Ministry announcement came a month before the United Nations annual General Assembly in New York, where Palestinian Authority officials have said they may unilaterally declare statehood, a move that is opposed by both Israel and Israel’s strongest ally, the United States. They favor a resumption of peace talks, which remain stalled partly because of Palestinian objections to Israeli construction on disputed lands. The housing announcement could strengthen Palestinian resolve to proceed with the statehood declaration.
The issue of Israeli housing construction in disputed territory is particularly explosive in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 war. Israel’s government has said it regards all of Jerusalem as its capital. But the Palestinians have said they consider East Jerusalem part of a future Palestinian state.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, called the Israeli housing announcement "an assault on international legitimacy and the prospect of the two-state solution." He also said it was "further proof that this government is committed to investing in occupation rather than peace."
In Washington, the Obama administration reiterated its longstanding criticism of Israel over such housing construction.
[…] The Ramat Shlomo complex has a special significance because it was first announced during a March 2010 friendship visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. The announcement, which caught Washington off guard, embarrassed and angered Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama, who had been pressuring Israeli officials to freeze such construction as a way to restart peace talks with the Palestinians.
[…]
Afghanistan
8) U.S. Troops Fire on Afghan Police, Survivors Say
Ray Rivera and Taimoor Shah, New York Times, August 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/world/asia/12afghan.html
Kandahar, Afghanistan – NATO and Afghan forces are investigating a claim by Afghan police officers that American soldiers fired on them for no reason, killing four officers and wounding two others, and inflaming tensions in southern Afghanistan’s Arghandab Valley, where security gains brought by the surge of American troops remain brittle.
While there have been dozens of cases of Afghan soldiers firing on members of the NATO-led military coalition, reports of NATO soldiers firing on their Afghan counterparts are rare. American and NATO officials have yet to release any details of the shooting, which took place Tuesday evening at a police checkpoint outside Combat Outpost Tynes, a small base in the volatile Arghandab District of Kandahar Province.
By Thursday, word of the shooting was already stirring anger in the area, where some residents had vowed to stop helping the Americans if the soldiers responsible for the shooting were not brought to justice.
In bedside interviews at a military hospital in Kandahar on Thursday, the two wounded officers gave nearly identical accounts of the shooting. The officers, one of whom was the police commander, were interviewed separately in different rooms.
By their account, an American captain and his men were visiting the checkpoint on Tuesday evening to discuss a possible security lapse at the checkpoint.
The police commander, Abdullah, who like many Afghans goes by one name, were discussing the matter with the captain over tea in the courtyard, as about a dozen soldiers and an equal number of police officers stood against opposite walls of the courtyard.
Suddenly, gunfire sounded in the distance. Perhaps spooked by the gunfire, Mr. Abdullah said, an American soldier sitting next to the captain pulled his weapon and began firing. The others followed.
One by one, the police officers fell. Mr. Abdullah was hit in the right arm and both legs. Others tried to pull him to safety as blood poured onto the courtyard floor, the two officers said.
They said the Afghans never fired back.
"We don’t know why they started shooting," Mr. Abdullah said. "There was no argument or anything."
The other wounded officer, Muhammad Nain, 19, recounted virtually the same story, except he said one of the soldiers along the wall, not the one next to the captain, fired first. Nor did he recall hearing shots in the distance first.
The first shots prompted the other soldiers to open fire, he said. Even the captain stood, pulled his sidearm, and began shooting, he said.
Mr. Nain was shot in both legs.
Making it even more perplexing, both wounded officers said, is that they knew the American captain and the soldiers well.
"We had been patrolling together the last three or four months," Mr. Nain said. "We used to be good friends with the captain and his men. He was a nice person, very talkative. We went on patrols with them. We risked our lives with them. I don’t know why they did this."
The gunfire ended as the American soldiers cleared out of the compound and returned to their base, Mr. Nain said. As survivors began placing the dead and wounded in the back of police trucks to take to the hospital, other American soldiers and Afghan soldiers appeared to treat the wounded and take them to the hospital.
Among the dead were Mr. Nain’s nephew, Abdul Majeed, 23, and two of Mr. Nain’s cousins, Jumma Gull, 25, and Muhammed Gul, 21. The fourth officer killed was named Karimullah, 22. All were from Arghandab district, Mr. Nain said.
In a statement, NATO officials in Kabul said a joint Afghan-NATO investigation was "underway and more details will be released as appropriate."
[…] The morning after the shooting, about 150 area residents marched on the combat outpost demanding answers, witnesses said.
"Day and night the police are helping the Americans," said Hajji Muhammad, leaders of the Arghandab district council. "The police are really frustrated by this shooting. If the shooters are not brought to justice they won’t help the Americans anymore. The people from the area are saying the same thing."
Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Nain, meanwhile, lay groggy and dazed in their hospital rooms, blood soaking through their bandages. Both are expected to fully recover.
"I don’t think people will trust Americans anymore," said Mr. Abdullah’s cousin, Amanullah, as he sat by Mr. Abdullah’s bedside. "And I don’t think people will let their sons help the Americans."
[…]
9) The war without end is a war with hardly any news coverage
The American print press is almost totally absent from Afghanistan, leaving the reporting to a handful of news organizations. TV coverage averages 21 seconds per newscast for NBC and not much more for ABC and CBS. One critic says the lack of sustained American TV reporting of Afghanistan is ‘the most irresponsible behavior in all of the annals of war journalism.’
John Hanrahan, Nieman Watchdog, August 10, 2011
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00569
The United States is bogged down in a 10-year-old war in Afghanistan in which 100,000 American troops and 40,000 other NATO personnel are fighting at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $2 billion a week in a country beset by grinding poverty and ever-increasing civilian and military casualties. There is no shortage of news to be covered, all of it with serious ramifications for the Afghan people and for American foreign policy and military spending, decision-making and the ravages of war.
Yet, other than in its early stages in 2001-2002, the American press has greatly under-reported this war. Only handfuls of reporters are stationed there for more than brief periods. They often do remarkable reporting but face numerous problems that can affect coverage: roadside bombs; the threat of kidnapping if they stray too far from Kabul on their own; language barriers; strict constraints when they are embedded with the military; having to cope with the military’s spin on particular battle actions or policies; budget issues that can limit a reporter’s support personnel, etc. And when they overcome such problems the reporting is still sparse: There are just too few reporters to describe the war and life in Afghanistan.
Perhaps no story other than the nation’s continuing economic, jobs and housing crisis is as worthy of extensive reportage as this major and unpopular war in Afghanistan/Pakistan – but to say that the press overall is barely covering it is unfortunately all too true. The Pew Charitable Trust reported in January that for all of 2010 only 4 percent of the news hole in the nation’s newspapers was devoted to war news originating either in Afghanistan or the United States. (The ongoing war in Iraq fared even worse, with 1 percent coverage in 2010.)
More recently, in a July 18-24 survey, the Afghanistan war scored so low in coverage that it didn’t show up on the chart, meaning it was below 3 percent, after being at 5 percent the previous week.
As skimpy as newspaper coverage of the Afghanistan/Pakistan war has been, TV has been even stingier. The Tyndall Report, which monitors network TV news (but not Fox or CNN), reported that in 2010 the Afghan war received a total of 416 minutes of coverage out of some 15,000 minutes of news broadcast by ABC, CBS and NBC in their 30-minute weekday evening news programs. This represented a 25 percent drop from the 2009 figure of 556 minutes. CBS led with 174 minutes of coverage in 2010, followed by ABC at 150, with NBC lagging with 91 (7 minutes more than the Vancouver Winter Olympics, 23 minutes more than airline anti-terrorist security stories, and 26 minutes more than the Toyota jammed-accelerator story). The NBC coverage figures out to average 21 seconds per newscast – or less than 2 minutes per week. The Iraq war fared even worse – 94 total minutes from all three networks, with CBS the lowest at 24 minutes – one minute every two weeks.
This paucity of reporting – the almost total reliance on just a few reporters – has stark implications for how the war is perceived back home. The fewer the reporters, the fewer the first-hand accounts needed for citizens to form knowledgeable opinions of the war. It’s an issue that is hardly ever discussed in the press but one that is not lost on historians. University of Michigan professor Juan Cole told Nieman Watchdog that the lack of "sustained television reportage of Afghanistan is inexcusable" and represents "the most irresponsible behavior in all of the annals of war journalism." Other experts and experienced war correspondents of the Vietnam era also were highly critical.
One big reason why you don’t see much news about Afghanistan in your newspaper or on television: According to our count, it appears on the print side that only five U.S. newspaper organizations and two wire services – The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, McClatchy Newspapers, the Associated Press and Reuters – currently maintain bureaus in Afghanistan on a regular basis. GlobalPost, a two-year-old Internet news outlet with contract and freelance correspondents worldwide, also has a permanent Afghanistan presence. Time and the Christian Science Monitor have regular stringers in Kabul, while Newsweek has no one permanently in Afghanistan, but does have a stringer in Islamabad, Pakistan, who also covers Afghanistan.
On the broadcast side, there are apparently only 10 or fewer full-time correspondents in Afghanistan at any one time. Again according to our count, among the broadcast news outlets currently with full-time correspondents in Afghanistan are National Public Radio (NPR), ABC News and CBS News, while CNN has a stringer. NBC News and Fox News have not responded to our inquiries, but it appears from an Internet search and information from other news media personnel that neither of them currently has a full-time staff correspondent in Afghanistan.
[…] The tiny number of correspondents in Afghanistan contrasts sharply with the coverage during the Vietnam war. In 1964, there were only 40 foreign reporters of all nationalities in Vietnam, but as President Johnson escalated the war, that figure had jumped by January 1966 to 282, of whom 110 were Americans. This 282 figure shot up again by August of that year to 419. As the war continued, still more American reporters poured into Vietnam, apparently reaching more than 200 at one point. Even as U.S. troop withdrawals increased and the so-called "Vietnamization" segment of the war intensified, there were still almost 200 accredited American correspondents in Vietnam in 1971, far more than there are in Afghanistan today when the war there is in one of its most intense phases. Even by September 1973, six months after the United States had removed its last combat troops, there were still 59 American reporters in Vietnam.
[…]
Bahrain
10) Bahrain security forces blockade former protest hub after clashes
Associated Press, Thursday, August 11, 3:09 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/bahrain-security-forces-blockade-former-protest-hub-after-clashes/2011/08/11/gIQAAEKI9I_story.html
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – Witnesses say security forces in Bahrain’s capital are blocking roads around a former protest hub after clashes with anti-government demonstrators in the Gulf island kingdom.
Witnesses say tanks and police vehicles surrounded Pearl Square, which had been the centerpiece for Shiite-led protests calling for greater rights from Sunni rulers in the strategic nation, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. The witnesses spoke on a condition of anonymity because they fear reprisals.
The blockades Thursday came after protesters in a Manama neighborhood called for a march back to Pearl Square, which was stormed by security forces several weeks after pro-reform demonstrations began in February.
Major protests have been crushed, but small-scale clashes have occurred nearly nightly for weeks.
–
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