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Interviews - Dahr Jamail's Weblog
'Dahr Jamail's Weblog' contains Dahr Jamail's published news reports regarding the Middle East.
May 08, 2008
'I wanted to report on where the silence was'
Texas-born Dahr Jamail was outraged that the US media were swallowing the Bush administration's line on Iraq and so, with just $2,000 and no previous journalistic experience, he set off to find out what was really happening in the country. He talks to Stephen Moss
The Guardian
Stephen Moss
Thursday May 8 2008
To read article at the original source, with photo, click here
In the spring of 2003 Dahr Jamail, a fourth-generation Lebanese-American with a taste for adventure, was up a mountain in Alaska, climbing and earning a living by working as a guide. He was, though, following news of the invasion of Iraq, and what he read and heard made him so furious that he decided to leave the mountains - "my church", as he calls them - and head for that newly subjugated land, armed only with a laptop and a digital recorder.
Continue reading "'I wanted to report on where the silence was'"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 04:49 PM
February 08, 2008
Jeremy Scahill interviews Dahr Jamail for The Nation
Dahr Jamail: Beyond the Green Zone
by JEREMY SCAHILL
[posted online on February 8, 2008]
EDITOR'S NOTE: Dahr Jamail has spent more time reporting from Iraq than almost any other US journalist. His new book, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, is a chronicle of his experiences there. He recently sat down with Nation correspondent Jeremy Scahill to talk about the supposed "success" of Bush's troop surge, what would happen if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton wins the White House and why he believes an immediate withdrawal from Iraq is the only way to peace. Here's an edited transcript of that interview.
Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have indicated that US troops are not going to be withdrawn in any significant manner in the first term of a presidency. What do you think would happen if the US did withdraw immediately from Iraq?
Continue reading "Jeremy Scahill interviews Dahr Jamail for The Nation"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 07:04 PM
January 03, 2008
The Patriot: Truthout Reviews Dahr Jamail's "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Reporter in Occupied Iraq," with author Interview
By Leslie Thatcher
t r u t h o u t | Book Review
Thursday 03 January 2008
We were a minority, but still, there were many of us to whom it was as plain as the nose on our own face, in the fall of 2002 when the great "marketing campaign" for the Iraq war was rolled out, that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and no connection whatsoever to 9/11, that the war was an illegal act of aggression that could only hearten enemies of the United States. Some of us turned out for the great global "focus group" of February 15, 2003; some of us wrote to the editor, argued with family members and neighbors, were horrified by the mainstream media's pornographic endorsement of "Shock and Awe," but Dahr Jamail came down from his job as a Park Service rescue ranger on Mt. Denali in Alaska, and, armed with $2,000, a laptop, digital camera, and some indie media listserve advice about how to get there, set off for Baghdad. What he has described as "an act of desperation" provoked by his sense of complicity as an American is also, in a very real sense, an ultimate act of patriotism, an assertion that Americans are better than what we have done in Iraq, a faith he still champions that:
"If the people of the United States had the real story about what their government has done in Iraq, the occupation would already have ended ... If people in my country could hear the stories of life under occupation and put themselves in Iraqis' stories, they would understand. I hold that hope because the stories of Iraq are our story now."
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 07:15 PM
December 20, 2007
Drifting Into Dystopia: An Interview with Dahr Jamail
December 19, 2007
[by Scott Thill]
Dahr Jamail is that rarity in today's journalism: An intrepid truth-teller who enters the line of fire unprotected by the planet's greatest superpower. He may be unembedded, but his award-winning work, out now in the form of an amazing book called Beyond the Green Zone, is bulletproof with truth. And we need that more than ever nowadays, as the Iraqmire spirals into oblivion and the American empire falters. With an election on tap and no incentive for the Democrats to change course if they win in 2008, we could be looking at the last days of the United States as we know it. And we saw it coming the whole time.
Morphizm: Do you find it somewhat ironic that you are a journalist, wanting to get the truth out?
Continue reading "Drifting Into Dystopia: An Interview with Dahr Jamail"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 04:48 AM
April 20, 2007
Interview with Senior Ba'ath Party Member
On Sunday April 15th I interviewed a high ranking member of Iraq’s Ba’ath Party in Damascus, Syria. Like many senior party members, he lives in exile in Syria, and spoke on condition of anonymity by asking to be referred to as Abu Mohammed. The following is an exclusive interview:
Continue reading "Interview with Senior Ba'ath Party Member"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 08:41 AM
April 16, 2007
Interview of Badie Arief Izzat on 12 April 2007 in Damascus, Syria
Izzat is the lawyer of former deputy prime minister of Iraq Tariq Aziz, and currently is the chief attorney of the defense in the Anfal (gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988) trial. He was recently whisked from Iraq by the U.S. military after being threatened by the Iraqi judge in his trial since he is accusing the Iranians, instead of the regime of Saddam Hussein, for gassing the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
Izzat graduated from Baghdad University in 1963, was Iraq’s deputy minister of information, then after disputes with the regime of Iraq left in 1972 to set up his private practice. He “had the view that the Ministry of Information was expressing the views of the Ba’ath Party rather than the views of the people of Iraq, so that’s why I left. I must say that I was a member of the Baath Party, and I resigned from it in 1969 because we don’t have the same views on major issues in Iraq.”
Read the news story for Al-Jazeera English here
Below is the full interview, which is recommended in addition to the news piece.
Continue reading "Interview of Badie Arief Izzat on 12 April 2007 in Damascus, Syria "
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 09:17 PM
December 13, 2006
The Oil Factor in the Iraq Study Group (Interview)
Interview with Dori Smith on Talk Nation Radio, December 13, 2006
Journalist Dahr Jamail speaks about the reality of the Iraq Study Group Report and what is going on in Iraq today: US support for death squad militias, US air attacks, and the steady intensification of the violence. If US forces withdrew there may be a potential for the Iraqis to contain the worst perpetrators of violence, but without a major policy change the potential for worsening chaos and wider war persists.
Continue reading "The Oil Factor in the Iraq Study Group (Interview)"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 07:29 PM
August 24, 2006
"The World Just Sat By," An Interview with Dahr Jamail
By: Christopher Brown
Orginally published at Ohmy News
August 23, 2006
Dahr Jamail is an award-winning, independent journalist who reported live from Baghdad for eight months beginning in 2003. He is considered one of the best sources on the War in Iraq. Recently he returned to The Middle East where he filed stories from Lebanon and Syria. While he was in Damascus, the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah began. Jamail left immediately for Beirut and sent daily dispatches from his Iraq-dispatches website. I had the chance to speak to Jamail about what he saw during this 34-day conflict in the middle East.
Continue reading ""The World Just Sat By," An Interview with Dahr Jamail"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 09:42 PM
November 06, 2005
Dahr Jamail Interviewed by Don Nash
Interviewed by Don Nash, Unknown News
Nov. 4, 2005
Q. What does Iraq actually look like two and a half years after the U.S. invasion?
Most of Iraq is a disaster and in a state of complete chaos.
The security situation is more accurately described as a brutal, guerrilla war which spiraled out of control over a year ago. Attacks on US forces even now average over 70 per day, and are expected to increase in coming months.
Continue reading "Dahr Jamail Interviewed by Don Nash"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 04:03 PM
November 04, 2005
Unembedded Reporting From Iraq: An Interview with Dahr Jamail
Written by Benjamin Dangl
Monday, 31 October 2005
In 2003, tired of the US media’s inaccurate portrayal of the realities of the Iraq War, independent journalist Dahr Jamail headed to the conflict himself. Instead of following in the footsteps of mainstream media’s embedded, "Hotel Journalists," Jamail hit the Iraqi streets to uncover the stories most reporters were missing. His countless interviews with Iraqi citizens and from-the-ground reporting have offered a horrific look into the bowels of the US occupation. From covering the bloody siege of Falluja to breaking a story on Bechtel’s failure to reconstruct water treatment plants, his writing and photographs depict an Iraq that is much worse off now than it was before the US invasion. As one Abu Ghraib detainee explained to Jamail, "the Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house."
Continue reading "Unembedded Reporting From Iraq: An Interview with Dahr Jamail "
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 01:13 PM
April 01, 2005
Independent journalist Dahr Jamail:“Life in Falluja is a horror story”
Interview with ERIC RUDER, Socialist Worker Magazine
April 1, 2005 - DAHR JAMAIL spent eight months working as an independent journalist in Iraq. As one of the few journalists not “embedded” with U.S. forces, his reports earned a reputation for being an uncompromising look at life under occupation.
Currently, Jamail is back in the U.S. on a speaking tour that will take him to several West Coast cities. He spoke to Socialist Worker’s ERIC RUDER about the destruction unleashed on Iraq by the U.S. during two years of occupation.
Continue reading "Independent journalist Dahr Jamail:“Life in Falluja is a horror story”"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 10:17 PM
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