Mark Finkelstein (right) with Iraqi recruits on the Euphrates River

by Elizabeth Bauchner

In November, Mark Finkelstein, the local talk show host of Republican-produced Right Angle and blogger on NewsBusters.org, took a two week trip to Iraq on a Pentagon-funded tour that included Fallujah, other places in the Anbar Province, and a couple of days in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Finkelstein sat down with ICN for coffee at Gimme! Coffee earlier this month. He says he went to Iraq, in part, because he never served in the military and wanted to show support for the troops in some small way, both by bringing the troops messages of support from home, and by reporting on what our troops are facing in Iraq.

Since the trip was sponsored by the military, one of the first questions ICN asked was about communication. Was he allowed to speak to anyone he wanted, or were there daily briefings with hand-picked service members to speak to the press?

Finkelstein assured me that he could speak to anyone he wished, or take photos or video of anything he wanted, with exceptions for national security for both the US and Iraq. For example, he wasn't allowed to video the flight line on the bases, nor was he allowed to video Iraqi civilians working with US troops for their own safety.

"I also visited some military hospitals and was asked not to film the individuals there out of respect for them," he explains.

Finkelstein says he learned quite a few new things in Iraq. For one, he saw the primary focus of the ground troops now is to train Iraqi police. He also says there is more work being done on reconstruction than we hear about.

"We often hear that Baghdad has less electricity now than it did under Saddam Hussein, which is true, but the rest of the country has more now," he says.  

Finkelstein has been a vocal supporter of the war since before it began. And when asked if his views on the Iraq war are different now that he's been to Iraq, he shrugged and said he had been following the Rumsfeld Memo, in which outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admits mistakes made in Iraq and calls for some troop withdrawal in the most hostile areas.

"I still support the war in the sense that I agree with what the Iraqi leaders I spoke to had to say about the war," Finkelstein says. He's referring to Dep. Prime Minister Barham Salih, who told Finkelstein that a quick withdrawal would be "utterly disastrous," and to Dr. Ali Aldabbagh, chief spokesman to Prime Minister Maliki, who said that a hasty withdrawal would be "a great gift to the terrorists."

On the topic of sectarian violence in Iraq, Finkelstein doesn't put much blame on the US invasion, and says that Aldabbagh blames both Sunni and Shiite politicians in Iraq, who, he says, stir the pot by giving emotional speeches and essentially inciting the violence. Now that the Sunnis hold less power in Iraqi government than they did with Hussein, Finkelstein believes that the violence could be curbed if "all politicians are brought into the fold" and if the Sunnis are guaranteed revenue from oil.

Since Finkelstein spoke with ICN, a new report shows that the US is now trying to force Iraq to privatize all of its oil, which likely would not lead to the sort of shared oil wealth amongst various Iraqi sects. 

Ultimately, Finkelstein says he came away with a lot of respect for our military people, and realizes that even those opposed to the war support the troops, too. "Before I left, I spoke informally in many situations to many different people in Ithaca," he says. "And all agreed that they support the troops personally and respect them." He says he tried to bring those messages to the men and women serving in Iraq.

For more info, read Mark's Iraq blog at: http://newsbusters.org/taxonomy/term/580