Juan Cole tells of the reception in Iraq of Bush's State of the Union address. His source is a report from the U.S. government's Open Source Center on TV reporting on the 24th of January. The reporting is translated from Arabic.
As one of Cole's commenters points out, not too many Iraqis may have seen the coverage, considering their lack of electricity.
If this has already been diaried, please let me know. Thanks.
First, copyright concerns. I'm taking the U.S. government translations from Juan Cole's site; if he can quote them, I should think that I can, too. And Cole always appreciates being diaried on Daily Kos (private e-mail).
There are reports from five Iraqi TV channels, two of them located in Cairo, three in Baghdad.
The Al-Rafidayn Satellite Channel in Cairo is a pro-Sunni and anti-US Iraqi channel believed to be affiliated with the Association of Muslim Scholars. It reports:
Democrats in Congress have accused US President George Bush of demonstrating recklessness by involving the United States in the war in Iraq. In a harsh response to his State of the Union address, they called for withdrawing US troops from Iraq. In his address, Bush urged the Americans to give a chance for what he called his new strategy in Iraq. Bush deemed early withdrawal from Iraq a nightmare for the United States, as he put it, claiming that such a step would serve Washington's enemies. The US president affirmed his determination to continue with his strategy of promoting what he called democracy in the Middle East, considering it a critical element in the war on what he calls terror.
[Emphasis mine; I couldn't resist.]
The other Cairo station is the private Iraqi Al-Baghdadiyah Satellite Television.
US President George Bush has urged the American people and his adversaries in Congress to give his plan to dispatch 21,500 additional troops a chance for success... [snip]
Bush affirmed that Al-Maliki's government should honor the undertakings it has taken upon itself, warning it that the US commitment to Iraq is not open-ended.
The government-sponsored Al-Iraqiyah Television provides several quotes and comments. Their correspondent in Washington, Ali Shakkur, reports:
For its part, the Democratic Party expressed its view toward the US president's speech in a statement read by Senator James Webb, Congressman for the Democratic Party. In the statement, the party members expressed their concern over the president's new policy on Iraq, saying that this war hurt the reputation of the United States and squandered many opportunities to defeat world terror. [snip]
The latest opinion polls published in US newspapers indicated a decline in the approval ratings of the US president, as 64 percent of the American people do not support the way the Bush administration is managing the country's affairs.
The station has reported on the reactions of several Iraqi and American officials. One of them, Iraqi MP Jalal-al-Din al-Saghir, is shown saying:
What I would like to say is that victory against terror cannot be achieved by sloganeering; rather, certain mechanisms and policies that are indicative of a proper diagnosis of terror must be adopted. The war on terror must be waged based on this diagnosis and knowledge. Unfortunately, US policies have been driven by what it knows about terrorism, not by what is happening in Iraq.
Juan Cole asks us to note particularly what the former Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has to say, as Jaafari worked closely with the Americans in his time and his views should be considered. The TV channel shows him saying:
In my assessment, we do not necessarily need an increase in the strength (of US forces). We are not engaged in a conventional war against an invading army or something of the sort. We are facing terrorist actions which can be handled by precise security operations, by upgrading the security performance, and by getting the necessary information and intelligence data.
Al-Sharqiyah Television carried only news reports without reactions or commentaries.
Baghdad Satellite Television, a channel believed to be sponsored by the Iraqi Islamic Party, showed a video of Abbas al-Bayyati, representative of the Unified Iraqi Coalition in the Iraqi Council of Representatives, saying:
There is nothing much in Bush's speech; the US strategy was announced prior to this speech. Perhaps the speech was primarily meant to address the domestic audience, because it has the tone and marks of the democrats, whose voices have begun to grow louder.
Seems to me I've seen comments on Daily Kos suggesting that Iraqis don't or can't follow the U.S. domestic and media scene. At least one station has a Washington correspondent, and it appears that those with access to TV can follow us pretty closely.