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Wed Jan 10 -


HAIFA ST REVISITED:

Wha' hoppend ? -

Amer Mohsen at Iraqslogger reports to the English-speaking readership how the Arabphonic Press has been covering the Battle for Haifa Street in Baghdad.

First, buried midway through the Mohsen report is the disclosure that: *the electric grid in and around Baghdad was sabotaged yesterday, plunging large parts of the city into darkness.* We're sorry to learn that. Baghdad's electricity situation is an issue which has been blogged about sometimes here.

Mohsen starts with Al Jazeera (Ar) Satellite TV, which originates outside Iraq, on which *the coverage of the clashes was dominated by the images of American f-15s strafing positions in Western Baghdad.* Their "angle" seemed to contradict the domestic al-Maliki administration efforts to depict the operation as Iraqi.

The Iraqis themselves, long exposed to heavy propaganda and tight filtering of incoming info, have become much more critical News Media consumers.

Thus, Mohsen goes on to relate to us: *Iraqi newspapers have published contradictory versions as to what has happened in Haifa Street and 'allawi on Tuesday.* Surely, at least some of the differences could be reasonably attributed to The Fog of War. No?

But for many Iraqi who are used to a centralized top-down totalitarian command and control, they may tend to construe the differences simply as evidence of some puppet-master pulling that newspaper's strings, making the organization dance to a certain agenda.

I found this article to be a worthwhile Media case study and expect to read it again later on.

Some day someone at the Army War College may do his thesis on this Haifa Street Battle. And it will be part of his task to collate all the differing reports. And then the result will become Military History.

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