JUST outside Um al-Qasar, a port in south east Iraq, a crowd had gathered around a British armored car with a crew of four. An argument seemed to be heating up through an interpreter.
The interpreter told the Brits that the crowd was angry and wanted U.K. forces out of Iraq. But then a Kuwaiti representative of Amnesty International, accompanied by a journalist friend, approached - and found the crowd to be concerned about something quite different.
The real dispute? The day before, a British armored vehicle had an accident with a local taxi; now the cab's owner, backed by a few friends, was asking the Brits to speed up compensating him. Did these Iraqis want the Brits to leave, as the interpreter pretended? No, they shouted, a thousand times no!
So why did the interpreter inject that idea into the dialogue? Shaken, he tried a number of evasions: Well, had the Brits not been in Iraq, there wouldn't have been an accident in the first place. And, in any case, he knows that most Iraqis don't want foreign troops . . .
I've mentioned my frustration that so many of our reporters are led about by former Baathists. Since the Baathists ran things, only trusted Sunni Arabs were educated. And American reporters need somebody to tell them what those gesturing and angry young Shias are saying.
The Baathists and other Sunni enemies in Iraq saw an opportunity to fill this need.
So the Sunni translators tell the Westerners a story.
I've resigned myself to the fact that we had to go to war with the press we have and not the press we'd like to have.
Sadly for us, our enemies are perfectly happy with the current arrangement.
Pressed Up Beyond All Recognition, no doubt.
