The Progressive

NewsWire

A project of Common Dreams

For Immediate Release
Contact: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

After Seven Years: Iraq War 'Forgotten'

WASHINGTON

DAHLIA WASFI
Born in New York to an American Jewish mother (daughter of Holocaust survivors) and an Iraqi Muslim father, Wasfi has a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She spent three months in Iraq with her family in 2006. She has been speaking against the occupation since 2004. She is currently working on a book on her experiences. Webpage: LiberateThis.com

DAHR JAMAIL

Jamail's most recent piece is "The New 'Forgotten' War," which states: "While U.S. forces have begun to slowly pull back in Iraq, approximately 96,000 American troops and 114,000 private contractors still remain in the country -- along with an embassy the size of Vatican City. Upwards of 400 Iraqi civilians still die in a typical month (Iraq Body Count, 12/31/09), and fallout from the occupation that is now responsible, by some estimates, for 1 million Iraqi deaths (Extra!, 1/2/08) continues to severely impact Iraqis in ways that go uncovered by the U.S. press. ...

"Corporate media coverage of the ongoing Iraqi refugee crisis -- the U.N. estimates that more than 4.5 million Iraqis in all have been displaced from their homes (UNHCR.org, 1/09) -- continues to be scant. The stories that do appear tend to be local stories about Iraqi refugees in the newspaper's home city (e.g., Chicago Tribune, 10/25/09). ...

Jamail is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq and The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. He recently wrote the pieces "U.S. Using Iraqi Political Discord to Justify Continuance of Occupation" and "Women Miss Saddam."

A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.