MediaBite Interview with Lara Marlowe

The Irish Time's foreign correspondent Lara Marlowe who is based in Paris has been to Iraq more than 20 times almost always as an unembedded journalist. In this interview she gives her views on the situaiton in Iraq and discusses media coverage of the war. The concluding analysis by MediaBite argues that even for an independent reporter Like Marlowe it is still clearly very difficult working within the mainstream media to resist or avoid the dominant thinking around this issue - and so she can describe the war as a 'criminal blunder' or 'criminal mistake', for example - surely oxymorons? It's a good read:

http://www.mediabite.org/article_Route-Irish-Times---Part-1_197035261.html

Marlowe on Iran:

MediaBite: Iran is obviously coming up a lot these days, have you come across any evidence that Iran is supplying weapons or training to Iraqi resistance fighters?

LaraMarlowe: I lived in Lebanon for eight years and the Iranians helped create Hezbollah in Lebanon. When I interviewed the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad, he said 'we support all legitimate resistance movements'. And they believe that the occupation is illegal. So it follows that they may be supplying weapons and training. But you must also consider that the US lied about Saddam Hussein's inexistent Weapons of Mass Destruction. Their "intelligence" on Iraq cannot be considered credible, if for no other reason because of their past record.

Added to the fact that Iran is the other regional player, there is no doubt influence there. It was telling that when President Ahmadinejad visited Iraq on March 1st. He was greeted with kisses from almost every member of the Iraqi government. The Shia in Iran have strong ties to Iran, ties that the US will never have no matter what they do. But the Shia are also independent and nationalist. They too are concerned about overbearing Iranian influence.

US accusations that Iran is supplying arms to Iraqi insurgents are questionable. I remember when in the 1980s the US was supporting the Contra rebels against the elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua, they claimed that Cuba was supplying weapons to the Sandinistas, and thus fit that clandestine war in with the greater war against communism. There was a series of Doonesbury cartoons at the time poking fun at these claims, with a US officer using a pointer to explain grainy black and white satellite pictures that allegedy showed a "Cuban-style pizza". At the moment, everything in Iraq is "Iranian-backed", or "Iranian-trained" or "Iranian-financed".

It seems when 'we' are supplying the arms, for instance to the Contras in Nicaragua or to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Russians, its okay, but when anyone else does it, it becomes government-sponsored international terrorism.