Exclusive Look at New Book on Iraq By 'WSJ' Reporter Who Penned Shocking Email

It was the e-mail read 'round the world. Nearly four years ago in September 2004, Farnaz Fassihi -- an Iranian-American correspondent in Iraq for The Wall Street Journal -- sent a brutally frank, private e-mail to friends that somehow leaked out to fellow journalists and various bloggers, who posted much of its contents on numerous Web sites. "Iraq remains a disaster," she wrote, and that was just for starters. It was not widely known until the e-mail, for example, that, as Fassihi revealed, foreign correspondents in Baghdad were "under virtual house arrest."

She described the hardship of the forgotten Iraqi citizens caught in the middle of "a raging, barbaric guerilla war," and lamented countless abductions, including that of her friend Georges, "the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf."

It caused a sensation. Some readers charged the U.S. media with keeping the true nature of horrid conditions in Iraq from them -- was it suitable only for airing to friends? -- while others charged that Fassihi, based on the e-mail, must be providing the Journal with "biased" reporting.

Fassihi's editors stuck by her. She remained on assignment in Iraq for another full year -- and, coincidentally or not, the tone of a lot of reporting from Iraq by others did start to focus more on average people as conditions, for many months, went from bad to worse.

Now Fassihi has penned a memoir, Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq, to be published in September by Public Affairs. She is now deputy bureau chief of the Middle East and Africa for the Wall Street Journal and is currently based in Lebanon, she told me in a recent, non-controversial, e-mail. Growing up in Tehran, she experienced the Iran-Iraq war quite directly, when Saddam's war planes dropped bombs nearby. Her family soon moved to Portland, Ore. After working for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., and The Providence (R.I.) Journal, Fassihi joined the WSJ in 2003 and was soon sent to Iraq.

In the forthcoming book, Fassihi revisits that famous e-mail only briefly, in the foreword, recalling that after it was passed around the globe, it even showed up as the subject of a "Doonesbury" cartoon. Because she was writing friends, "I spoke freely, without the restraints of daily journalists that obliged me to be distant and objective," and this moved readers the way her newspaper pieces rarely did. "The reaction overwhelmed me," she writes. "From Australia to South Africa, the e-mail was published in local newspapers, and strangers wrote to me asking, 'Is it really that bad in Iraq? We had no idea.'

"I have written this book in the same spirit as I wrote that e-mail," she declares. The e-mail is printed in full at the book's end.

In the foreword, Fassihi promises that the book offers a look at what it was like to be a young, female reporter covering this war. It does all of that and more, chronicling her day-to-day life, friendships, dangerous assignments and disappointments, from her early arrival to her departure in December 2005. The title of one section says a lot: "If They See Me With You, They'll Kill Me."

Along the way we meet a large cast of Iraqis -- Jabbar, Haqqi, and others -- some of whom worked for the Journal or Newsweek in translating or transporting jobs. Fassihi later chronicles what happened to many of them, in this way exposing the mass disruptions in all of Iraq. Besides the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died, some four million (about 14% of the population) have had to flee their homes, with half leaving the country altogether. Some of Fassihi's former friends in Iraq have vanished, leaving no trace of their whereabouts.

In the afterword, written in May 2008, she says that violence has declined after 18 months of the "surge," but notes: "Five years have passed since the United States led a military invasion into Iraq and George Bush declared a mission accomplished. But America's proposed goals remain elusive: Iraq's fragile stability hinges on deals brokered with Sunnis and Shiites. Iraqis caught in the midst of open-ended war struggle to survive." Her final words: "I keep asking myself: What justifies the enormous costs of this war and the wounds it has inflicted? I am at a loss for an answer. This is the story of war."
*
Greg Mitchell's new book includes a chapter on the famous email. It is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. He is editor of Editor & Publisher.

Comments

[knowBuddhaU]

Here are some crucial sources of my thesis.

"Adam Smith on the Nature of Human Virtue"
"[W]e are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration."
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/06/hbc-90003090

The Colonel of our more perfect Union ("Mr. Twain Provides a Lesson in Patriotism")
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/07/hbc-90003176
"I believe that there are no private citizens in a republic. Every man is an official. Above all, he is a policeman. He does not need to wear a helmet and brass buttons, but his duty is to look after the enforcement of the laws....I would throw out the old maxim, ‘My country, right or wrong,’ etc., and instead I would say, ‘My country when she is right.’ Because patriotism is supporting your country all the time, but your government only when it deserves it."

A modern equivalent of the painting Prof. Horton posted http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment#hbc-90003163)
http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/heic9911a.html

Our 'holier-than-the-Other" mythos has birthed a mechanistic cosmos that supports our torturing psychos. For the APA to uphold torture is perfectly in character. Our torturers are not aberrant, they're exemplary of how we conceive of life itself.

[terramartom]

The Great American "free" press. No chance! How about the Government censored, media biased tv rags here only to sanitize the truth and deliver the radical far right wing religious blather of smoke and more smoke to confuss. Designed only to sell products and not to educate or enlighten the mind and spirit. Irac is a total failure, to spin it anyway other than that degrades human intelligence. Bush, Cheney, Rove and the rest should be prosecuted for war crimes against humanity!

[knowBuddhaU]

"What justifies the enormous costs of this war and the wounds it has inflicted?" she asks. I'll take that question, thank you.

It's the mythology! The power of a mythos is that it gives birth to the cosmos that then grows wee psychos who think of themselves as apart from and absolutely other than their very source. What's so surprising about war amongst people who conceive of life itself as a holy war between good and evil?

We have a feudalistic society, not democratic, a direct outgrowth of the mindset of our latter-day Crusaders. We inhabit an egocentric cosmos; we actually think of ourselves as points in empty space. Wrong!

We are _cisterna mytsica_,a seamless field of flowing energy which, of itself, forms vortices that self-fill and self-empty all the time.; I am one such vortex, you, dear reader, are another, but that doesn't imply we are absolutely Other.

The Walls of which Obama spoke in Berlin look like this:
[[[Absolute Supremacy / The Commons ///[[[{Absolute Subjugation}}]]]]

Cusanus's Human Microcosm
http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment#hbc-90003163

From left to right it reads: beloved/UNION/Beloved, the kernel of our more perfect Union.

[ed3541]

War Crimes, Torture, Genocide (these are genocidal numbers of killed and displaced) and a sprinkling of Depleted Uranium to insure Iraqis remain deformed for millenia, these are the American Values that Buush's value voters voted for. We Amerikans are all complicit in this.

[Daly]

Wonder If JSMc knew this book was hitting the racks; he really has a hate for WSJ and went out of his way to launch an attack . Seems WSJ is not jumping in line behind Faux with all lies all the time reporting.

[Rog49Thomas]

One of the very interesting things about the WSJ (to be precise I am speaking about the pre Murdoch days as I don't have enough data to make a generalization about the Murdoch era) was that by and large the reporters were not forced to toe the highly ideological bent of the editorial page.

Often stories on the news page would directly contradict the WSJ's delusional ideology.

[MeanGreenMachine]

My personal thanks to ALL who voted for Bush.

I hope you're proud of yourselves.

[Giordano Bruno]

Mean Green,
That comment actually is something I find myself thinking, but not saying. The reason of course, is that it is polarizing (albeit true). Most of the Americans who voted for him did so because they voted with their hearts and their emotions rather than their brains, which we have done for many elections. How else can you explain the victory of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter, or George Bush over Al Gore? I think it is pretty clear that the margin of victory was the garnered by the degree to which the Rovian machine was able to inject fear into the electorate. Recall how the terrorism meter kept getting redder every day. Recall how they successfully portrayed Kerry as weak and indecisive. Never mind that the decider was daft in addition to being decisive. I am hopeful this time, that the voters will not be swindled by corporate media concerned about bigger profits, and further consolidation which they will utilize to further diminish their tax burden and build their media conglomerates. But never under estimate them. And railing against an electorate that is misled by the corporate propogandists is actually blaming the victims rather than the culprits.
Giordy

[MeanGreenMachine]

So the American Electorate should not be held accountable and shamed for their self-destructive choices?

[fedupcitizen]

There is something overwhelmingly sad about the lack of remorse from our Pres. and VP that they have no grasp of the devastation they caused here and around the world.

May Bush & Cheney reap every bit of what they have sewn personally.

[peterg76]

While the extent of the oppresion in Iraq may not have been fully evident in September 2004, the revelations were hardly 'shocking' to anyone who had been paying attention, even back then.

[TXfemmom]

The world was filled with stories about how barbaric Saddam was, but the moral of what occurred after our disgusting war based upon lies happened, we saw that there were hundreds of thousands of individuals just as barbaric and just as willing to do horrible and grisly things to other human beings. I wonder how many of the Iraqis would rather go back to what they had and what Iraq was, and the quality of their life in Iraq before the war, if they were truthful?

[wadenelson1]

To the people of Iraq I apologize for my country's actions.

[kellygrrrl]

I co-sign!

[blueinannarbor]

Ditto, here. What I would like to add is that if Iraq were to convene a war crimes tribunal, it would be appropriate of us to give up members of the Bush administration so that they can face justice.

[esquire07]

"Besides the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died, some four million (about 14% of the population) have had to flee their homes, with half leaving the country altogether. Some of Fassihi's former friends in Iraq have vanished, leaving no trace of their whereabouts."

Simply the price of American "Democracy" in Iraq. At least now they are "free" thanks to "The Decider."

Hundreds of thousands of Dead Iraqis is a small price for the Profits realized by BushCo. and criminals.

Dead Iraqis = Halliburton Profits = Money in Dick Cheney's bloody War Criminal Pockets. And in the end, that was and is all that matters.

[andvoodoo2]

Am I surprised that we Americans have so little knowledge about what is going halfway around the world? Not hardly. Most Americans have had no idea what is going on in New Orleans since the levees failed and we are right here in the U.S..

[Budokan]

"This is the story of war."

It's also the story of a criminal president and the lazy American populace who refuses to hold him accountable for his war crimes.

[kellygrrrl]

Bingo!

[billysviez]

at 65 years old, i really don't understand what has happened to Our Country or Our People. We have Elected the worst of the worst and have not held them responsible for their actions and still don't. with all the criminals in the WH, the Anti-American rethugs and the demoRat sellouts, it seems to me WE have turned into a Nation of cowards. i didn't understand Vietnam but i served and as a Former U.S. Marine, i'm just sick of of the road these people have taken us down.

[lisakaz2]

What justifies? It's the Oil, Stupid!

[TheEmptinessOfTruthiness]

Google/Read "Clean Break"

The Oil guys got a big deal just recently, but prior to the war they were only lobbying for lifting sanctions.

The Price of Oil maybe...but not about the supply or access.

[nk007]

It is Oil. But it is also the desire for power and domination. The tragedy is that millions of Iraqis and thousands of American have paid a huge price.