Elizabeth Palmer answers your questions on ISIS and Iraq
Elizabeth Palmer answers questions on Facebook from Baghdad. Facebook
BAGHDAD, Iraq - While covering the Iraqi response to ISIS militants, CBS Evening News foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer answered viewer's questions on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley Facebook page from Baghdad.
Question: Is there a way to measure how much the U.S. airstrikes are actually helping in the fight against ISIS?
Elizabeth Palmer reporting on the fight against ISIS west of Baghdad, Iraq
CBS News
Elizabeth Palmer: There is no direct way.We have seen a direct correlation in Kobani over the past week between the increase in airstrikes and ISIS retreat. We also visited an area south of Baghdad where the Iraqi forces say that two airstrikes flattened very important ISIS sniper positions...and that tipped the balance. Once the snipers had been killed, the Iraqi troops got the rest of the ISIS fighters on the run. But it's piecemeal evidence. And we know that US airstrikes use expensive high tech weapons against preemptive targets - either small groups of fighters, or for example, a few ISIS armed vehicles. It's a costly way to fight what is really an insurgent war.
Question: I teach media law to college journalism students with an emphasis on press freedoms. Can you spend a moment talking about the impact the turmoil in Iraq is having on press freedoms there?
Elizabeth Palmer: There was no media freedom in Iraq even before ISIS. It takes a long time to build a tradition of free media under dictatorship. Any reporting critical of the government is ruthlessly suppressed. That's certainly happening now in Iraq because the army has suffered so many humiliating defeats.
Question: Showing where your correspondent is at a battle zone exposes her to terrorists who will put a bounty on her and behead her publicly. I don't know why Americans are so so dumb.
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Elizabeth Palmer answers your questions on ISIS and Iraq