Government admits fault without widespread U.S. press coverage

The news media has produced little on the status of the United States occupation of Iraq lately. Aside from stipulations that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, head of al Qaeda in Iraq, might be captured and the traditional grim statistics of dead soldiers and civilians, the media doesn’t seem to be digging deep in to the country’s largest foreign human and fiscal expenditure.

Robert Baer, a former CIA officer assigned to the Middle East and current journalist for TIME magazine brought the first piece of investigative journalism on Iraq that I have seen in quite sometime. In his May 9^th story, “Playing the Oil Card,” Baer comments on the U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker’s appearance before Congress. According to Baer’s account, Crocker agreed that U.S. occupation of the Gulf was necessary to obtain stabilize oil prices.

In testifying to Congress, Crocker stated that progress was made in the region earlier in the week after the U.S. took control of the port of Basra. He assured Congress that U.S. presence in the region would stabilize oil prices. However, as Baer points out, is the occupation about oil? As he states: “And $10 a gallon is his [Bush’s] equivalent of an economic WMD.”

Crocker’s consent that U.S. involvement in the region would be necessary for stabilized oil indeed goes against the statements of the Bush administration. I personally wonder why other news outlets did not highly publicize his comments and the danger they pose. After all, U.S. involvement in Iraq might blaze on if the American press does not continuously alert the public about the damage and deception the war has created.

Here's the article:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1738883,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-world