US embassy cable - 05AMMAN9384

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 AMMAN 009384 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA/ARN, NEA/PA, NEA/AIA, INR/NESA, R/MR, 
I/GNEA, B/BXN, B/BRN, NEA/PPD, NEA/IPA FOR ALTERMAN 
USAID/ANE/MEA 
LONDON FOR TSOU 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
 
TAGS: KMDR JO 
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION ON IRAQ 
 
                        Summary 
 
-- Lead story in all papers published today, December 
5, focuses on developments and continued violence in 
various parts of Iraq. 
 
                 Editorial Commentary 
 
-- "Towards a suitable climate for the Iraqi 
elections" 
 
Semi-official, influential Arabic daily Al-Rai (12/05) 
editorializes:  "There is no interest for any of the 
Iraqi people to escalate confrontations and violence 
prior to the most important event at this stage, an 
event that is supposed to be the qualitative step for 
establishing the new Iraq..  This is the situation: 
the Iraqis have no choice but to recognize the fact 
that they have no homeland other than Iraq and that 
everyone will lost if they place their sectarian, 
party or ethnic interests before Iraq's higher 
national interests and before the interests of the 
Iraqi people..  It is an opportunity that must be 
taken and all efforts must be exerted to provide the 
suitable climate for its success." 
 
-- "Beautifying the political ugliness!" 
 
Daily columnist Mohammad Kawash writes on the back- 
page of independent, mass-appeal Arabic daily Al-Arab 
Al-Yawm (12/04):  "I can understand that a performer 
like Haifa Wahbeh or Nancy Ajram [famous Arab singers] 
would resort to some cosmetic operations . but I do 
not understand that the administration of leading 
superpower like the United States would resort to 
suspicious schemes, to paying huge amounts of money 
and to employ public relations companies to beautify 
its image and improve its reputation that has reached 
rock bottom.  Washington allocated huge amounts of 
money to employ Iraqi and Arab writers and journalists 
in the 'beautification workshop' and has established 
radio and television stations and newspapers for the 
purpose of changing the mood of the Arab and Muslim 
people and to influence the Arab public opinion after 
the occupation of Iraq in order to change the 
occupation into 'liberation' and the destruction of 
the state into the 'reconstruction' of Iraq'..  Who 
can beautify the image of the United States and 
improve its image especially that the scandals 
continue to flow out on daily basis on the Iraqi and 
American fronts?  A beautician cannot fix what age has 
destroyed.  The thing that would beautify and improve 
America's image and restore its respect among the 
people and the nations is not war, destruction, terror 
and occupation and not the money paid to newspapers, 
satellite televisions and radios and the spread of 
lies and disinformation, but rather a little justice 
with which it deals with the issues of the nations, 
nothing more and nothing less." 
 
-- "Buying consciences or selling homelands" 
 
Chief Editor Taher Udwan writes on the back-page of 
independent, mass-appeal Arabic daily Al-Arab Al-Yawm 
(12/04):  "The latest scandal of 'Uncle Sam's 
democracy' is what the occupation army in Baghdad said 
about paying dollars to Iraqi newspapers within the 
context of a secret program designed to publish 
articles that hail the Americans..  There is no limit 
to the disinformation, the forgery and the creation of 
false stories and lies that has engulfed the invasion 
and then occupation of Iraq.  The strange thing is 
that the U.S. administration continues to insist on 
surrounding this shameful operation with a halo of 
morality called the spread of freedom and democracy in 
the Middle East..  Anyhow, the story is painful and 
ugly, not just on the American side but also on the 
Arab side, because there are writers and journalists 
in the Arab world who have contributed, and continue 
to do so, to the 'beautification' campaign of the 
American occupation, and who have gone as far as 
describing it as a 'liberation'.  This not just 
national and pan-Arab corruption, but also moral 
corruption and deviation that is more dangerous than 
AIDS and the Avian Flu on the conscience and culture 
of this nation.   The scandals of the U.S. 
administration in terms of violations of freedoms and 
human rights have been hung out like dirty laundry . 
and yet we are not seeing any serious move by funding 
organizations and offices that are mushrooming in the 
Arab world to condemn this heinous crime against the 
freedom of the media.  In reality, these are just 
another item of the American budget for 
'disinformation'.  In the 2006 draft budget, between 
80 and 120 million Dollars were allocated for American 
Corners that is libraries and media and cultural 
centers designed to 'reach out to the youth and to 
those who want to work with the United States'. 
Corners for homeland sellers in this age of buying 
consciences." 
 
-- "Locally made" 
 
Daily columnist Nahed Hattar writes on the back-page 
of independent, mass-appeal Arabic daily Al-Arab Al- 
Yawm (12/04):  "When the American occupation army 
suffers the loss of ten soldiers and the injury of 
another eleven in one day in Iraq, it is normal.  But 
when these losses occur in an area supposedly well 
combed by and wreaked with destruction and killing and 
bombed with chemicals by the occupiers, we would 
conclude that there is a flagrant operational 
malfunction in the performance of the American 
soldiers in Iraq..  The number of American soldiers in 
Iraq is less than the third of the number required to 
fight the resistance . but what is more important is 
that the American soldier misses one very significant 
thing, namely the feeling that he is fighting for a 
cause, add to it the feeling that he could die at any 
moment would make him a scared human rag and a lethal 
one at the same time..  The American defeat has 
happened and is happening now and it starts on the 
moral level.  The American aggression against Iraq 
began with a series of lies that were exposed soon 
after the war, while stories of mass killings and 
horrible detentions and scandalous tortures have seen 
to the destruction of the lie of 'democracy' that has 
since become synonymous with corruption, thievery and 
criminality..  The United States has sunk morally and 
this is what the American soldier feels to his bones 
while he waits for death." 
HALE