The above is from Edward Wong's "U.S. Envoy Says He Met With Iraq Rebels" in this morning's New York Times and covers 2006 meetings Zalmay acknowledges that took place in Jordan and elsewhere. Are you shocked?
If so you didn't pay attention when Tom Hayden was reporting this (many times) before. We'll note the conclusion of a piece that he wrote at the end of last November, "U.S. Retreat from Iraq? The Secret Story" (The Huffington Post):
It must be emphasized that there is no reason to believe that these US gestures are anything more than probes, in the historic spirit of divide-and-conquer, before escalating the Iraq war in a Baghdad offensive. Denial plausibility -- aka Machiavellian secrecy -- remains American security policy, for understandable if undemocratic reasons.
Yet Americans who voted in the November election because of a deep belief that a change of government in Washington might end the war have a right to know that their votes counted. The US has not abandoned its entire strategy in Iraq, but is offering significant concessions without its own citizens knowing.
It's in the Times today. So it's "news." Of course to make it into the Times means they need an official to tell them about it (on the record or off) . The source has to be a US source because they're a mouthpiece or a megaphone. Now they've developed their own sources in Iraq, solid sources (and they've certainly paid enough money for them) but it does them no good at all because until they get that official, they stay silent.
Kyle notes this:
March, 2007 - Dahr Jamail on Free Speech TV Show "SourceCode"
In this 10 minute piece, Dahr Jamail gives an Iraq update with exclusive video from Iraq. He describes some of the origins of the "sectarianism" that the US corporate media is so apt to point to when discussing the violence in Iraq, and shows how the US has been involved in fueling the sectarian tensions.
See the streaming WMV file (30 megs)
Download the high-res file (100 megs mpeg)
View the Streaming Flash file (30 megs)
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
edward wong
tom haydendarh jamail