Antiwar.com Blog

Journalists in Iraq are learning that having their columns online is a lifesaver – especially if they’re not pro-war or pro-occupation. Australian journalist John Martinkus was googled and released:

Iraqi militants who kidnapped a reporter in Baghdad and threatened to kill him Googled his name to investigate his work before releasing him unharmed.

Australian John Martinkus was seized early on Saturday and held for nearly 24 hours before being freed.

His executive producer at an Australian news network, Mike Carey, said that the Internet – often used by Iraqi militants to air grisly images of hostages being beheaded – probably saved Martinkus.

“They Googled him and then went onto a website and saw that he was who he was, and that was instrumental in letting him go, I think, or swinging their decision.”

Carey said the company only heard of Martinkus’s abduction after his release.

“I got a call from John saying, ‘Mate, I’m at my fixer’s house, they’ve dropped us at the fixer’s house. I’ve been kidnapped but I’m free’,” he said.

Fixers are local people employed to help journalists.

Martinkus said his kidnappers initially threatened to kill him, before checking on his background.

He said he was treated well once he had told his kidnappers he was an independent reporter not linked to the United States-led coalition in Iraq.

Canadian journalist Scott Taylor , in this interview with AntiWar.com’s Chris Deliso relates a similar story:

After torturing me, the mujahedin gave me a pen and paper and told me to write down all the Web sites that might help prove my case. Even though they told me I had “failed the test” afterwards, I’m pretty sure from their behavior that they found enough articles there to vindicate me.

A later interrogator who questioned me at length was especially interested in why I hadn’t denounced the “imperialist occupation” of Iraq. He was very clear about this word. Come on – of course I have criticized the occupation on numerous occasions.

Thinking fast, I specifically referred them to one of our earlier interviews, “The Empire Strikes Out,” as well as the other interviews on Antiwar.com and on your site, besides other articles I’ve published.

CD: So, do you think that these interviews helped persuade the mujahedin to release you?

ST: I can’t prove that, but I’ve got to think it was probably a big help. … At very least I think it kept me alive at various points when they easily could have killed me, and would have.

And technically, it was this last group with the “anti-imperialist” leader that released me. So the specific articles I gave them, plus what you get when doing a search for my name and Iraq, yeah, I got to think that it helped swing things in my favor. So … thanks.

Chris Albritton is bailing out of Baghdad, at least. Considering the circumstances surrounding the kidnap and release of Australian journalist John Martinkus, that seems to be a wise move.

Saturday around 2 p.m or so, John was picked up about 500m from our hotel compound. He turned out of the front gate, took the first right — as most of us do — and a car stopped in front of him and a tailing car pulled in behind him. Four men with pistols jumped out and three of them managed to force their way into the car, putting guns to the heads of John, his driver and his translator. They then took him to western Baghdad, held him overnight and interrogated him.

We’re not sure what all happened during his captivity, but he was able to persuade his captors that he was an Australian and a friend to the resistance and not to the Americans. It appears, by the kidnappers’ statements and questions, that they were nationalists and not jihadis, lucky for John. Also, he was lucky for not being American, because the kidnappers said if he had been, they’d have killed him quickly. They had tracked him for three days, they said, and proved it by asking him why he had gone to the Green Zone and to the Palestine on two separate days. This was how they were able to pick him up so easily.
[…]
As frightening as John’s experience was for him, it shows that journalists’ plans for “security through obscurity” has been blown out the window. John’s captors said they received a phone call that he was on the move and that the time for taking him was now. This fits in with our intelligence that there are kidnap teams up and down Jadirya Street looking for us. His captors said they had penetrated the staff at the Hamra Hotel, where many of us live. They have people in the compound watching us. They know who we are and they’re looking for “soft targets” — reporters moving around with little security or few precautions.

Oh, and on the subject of John Martinkus, Alexander Downer is an idiot. Wait…a lying idiot.

If you have paid any attention to the ballot access battles that non-Demopublican candidates have to go through, you know one reason that candidates like Ralph Nader and Libertarian Michael Badnarik have such a hard time getting their campaigns off the ground. Third party candidates must get as much as tens or even hundreds of thousands of signatures per state just to qualify for the ballot. For some candidates, this requires most of their campaign budgets to be spent just to attempt to get on the ballot. And in spite of such massive attempts, Nader, Badnarik, and others fail to achieve ballot status in many states.

Now Putin is learning from the US! The Kremlin has announced a new crackdown on small parties. Currently, parties must get 100 people to sign up as members in each of half of Russia’s 89 regions. Under the new proposal, parties will be required to sign up 250 members in every single region, and 500 members in each of half the regions. In addition, they will be required to sign up 50,000 members nationwide.

This is another of Putin’s new anti-democratic moves, following his moves to make governors and judges appointed instead of elected.

The world has always learned from America’s example. These days we are not setting a very good one.

Er, Chechnya:

Sergei Abramov, who heads Chechnya’s pro-Moscow government, said on Friday that the park would be built next year along with a range of cultural and entertainment facilities, including a new football stadium. …

“[N]ext year, we will launch not only a multifunctional sports centre for the Terek football club, but a Disneyland and a swimming/leisure complex,” he said in remarks broadcast by the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Mr Abramov did not make clear whether he was referring to an official Disneyland, or a generic theme park. …

“I think if we do succeed in achieving this objective next year, the people will, I hope, be pleased with the results,” he said.

But wait: won’t a Disneyland just further inflame all them craaaaazy Muslims? And hey, what are they so pissed about in the first place if Chechnya lacks such Western trappings? I mean, I know they hate us because of our modernity, but what gives with Russia? I really need some coherent explanation from the neocons – who seem to think Moscow is part of the auxiliary axis of evil.

Seems such a short time ago that we had reached 1000 soldiers dead in Iraq. Now it’s 100 more unnecessary deaths.

Casualties in Iraq

Rahul Mahajan puts his finger on the central issue of the Iraq occupation which makes the mutiny over the “suicide mission” an important story.

Apparently, an Army Reserve platoon, part of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, South Carolina, is under arrest for refusing to obey orders to go on what they considered a suicide mission.

Stationed at Tallil Air Base south of Nasiriyah, they were ordered to do a fuel resupply run up to Taji, north of Baghdad. Fuel convoys in the “Sunni Triangle” nearly always come under fire; one soldier reportedly claimed that the chance of being attacked was “99 percent.”

The platoon considered their trucks to be extremely unsafe; some were not able to go more than 40 mph, and would be sitting ducks. They ordinarily get an escort of armed Humvees and helicopters, but an escort was not available for the mission.

This actually points to the difficulty the United States would face if it tried to put in significantly larger numbers of troops, as John Kerry seems to want (he doesn’t say he’ll send more troops to Iraq; he says more troops are needed to do the job, that he intends to do the job, and that he’ll increase the combat forces by 40,000 — you do the math). It’s already difficult to find enough escorts for resupply operations; that difficulty will be compounded the more combat troops are put in (because the need for fuel will increase along with the number of troops in the field).

You could increase the number of logistical and supply troops proportionately, maybe, but then you have more and more people to be easily killed by the resistance.

To put what happened in some perspective, consider that one very successful strategy of the resistance has been to target the American logistic structure, which relied heavily on Jordanian and Turkish truckers for resupply. Those who have kept up with the news out of Iraq know that the victims of the Iraqi guerillas have overwhelmingly been collaborators, with an emphasis on truckers. Kidnapped Jordanians and Turks don’t make for big news stories in the American press, but these are the people who were trucking in supplies to the US military, and their ranks have been decimated by the guerillas. With the near elimination of any trucking firms either willing or able to resupply the US, the job has only recently fallen to the US military to drive their own convoys.

As Rajul points out above, more troops means more supplies that must be trucked in to Iraq. Even without an increase in troops, more of the US military is on the road in Iraq. The fact that the US now has few to no outside contractors driving the convoys means further overstretch and exposure to attack as soldiers take up the positions abandoned by contractors. Now, instead of military escorts of convoys driven by contractors, the military must drive and escort its own convoys, as well as use its own vehicles. It seems reasonable to assume that this is provoking a crisis in US military operations, partially evidenced by the request for British troops. This is precisely the goal of the Iraqi guerillas, as I pointed out here and as Zarqawi has allegedly announced today.

Today, 5 more US soldiers were killed in car bomb attacks. Yesterday’s attacks killed 6 in two separate bombings. Are the US troops more exposed due to the lack of contractors willing to brave insurgent attacks to resupply the US military? Undoubtedly, they are. Look for more troops, increasingly demoralized by their realization that their presence in Iraq is pointless, to refuse more suicide missions.