Letter From Baghdad

I got an e-mail forwarded to me by my friend R. which purports to be an e-mail from Farnaz Fassihi, the Wall Street Journal's correspondent in Baghdad. Campaign Confidential has printed the full text. Some excerpts:

It’s hard to pinpoint when the ‘turning point’ exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a ‘potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to ‘imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come. ...

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq. ...

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it—baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda—are cooperating and coordinating. ...

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they’d take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.

All of it is depressing stuff. Of course, it could be made up. (I have emailed Fassihi for confirmation). The darkly comic punch line? The e-mail also purportedly was forwarded originally by Andrew Rosenthal, the deputy editorial page editor of the New York Times, and a famous apologist for the Times's pro-war coverage by Judith Miller.

Update: Fassihi confirms that it is her email, but it was not intended for publication. That sucks, but it's too late now.

Update 9/29/04: Rosenthal confirms, although he's a bit testy about the "darkly comic" remark. I can understand why.

Yet another update: Rosenthal absolutely doesn't confirm anything, and he's very testy.

Last: An amused Rosenthal now asks that he be described as "extremely testy." Done.

Comments

[eRobin]

"cooperating and coordinating" was the scariest line in the email.

[Mithras]

Never let it be said that George W. Bush is not a uniter.

[iocaste]

Did you see this? http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=72140

[Mithras]

Wow, scooped Romenesko by a full day. And they didn't get the Rosenthal angle. Oddly, my phone is not ringing for interviews. When will the MSM learn to bow before the power of the almighty Blog Triumphant?!