'Route Irish Times'

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Tuesday June 17, 2008 11:21

by David Manning & Miriam Cotton - MediaBite

Interview with Lara Marlowe, war reporter

A two-part interview with concluding analysis of how even journalists who make a big effort to write independently can subconsciously adopt the dominant framing of the mainstream media.

Lara Marlowe talks about Iraq, Iran, media coverage and other matters.

On embedded journalists:

" The only embedded journalists I came across were in the accreditation service inside the Green Zone. There was a Newsweek journalist I met on the way home who said he had travelled embedded. But I probably wouldn't encounter journalists who are fully embedded, as they are usually flown into Kuwait and helicoptered directly into the Green Zone. They are hermetically sealed in; they are transferred in and out of the green zone in a 'Rhino', which is a large armoured bus, or they are helicoptered to a unit and they then spend their whole stay within the unit. The unit I went with that day were stationed in Baghdad. I had to go into the Green Zone to meet them, put on my flak jacket and helmet, as required by US regulations, and then drive out with them. They took me back to the Green Zone at the end of the day."

Full interview:
http://www.mediabite.org/article_Route-Irish-Times---Pa....html

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Marlowe on Iran

by Miriam

Tue Jun 17, 2008 13:37

Marlowe is the first mainstream Irish journalist to point to the hyporisy of the US claiming that Iran is 'interfering' in Iraq. Iraqi Shia government are friendly towards the Iranians. Also, the US has a long history itself of supplying weapons and other support to destabilise governments it wants to destroy.

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?

Lara Marlowe: 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.

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