insights from the digital future
The violence doesn’t seem to be weaning at all in Iraq…
AFP: Three suicide bombers, two of them disguised as women, killed at least 69 people and wounded 130 as worshippers left a popular Baghdad Shiite mosque after weekly prayers, in the second major attack on Iraq’s majority community in as many days…
In other unsurprising news, no disputes from the White House after allegations that President Bush approved the Plame leak bubbled to the surface.
For what could be any of a plethora of good reasons, Andrew Card, President Bush’s White House adviser for over five years has officially resigned.
His replacement, Joshua Bolten – currently Director of the president’s Office of Management and Budget – is described as the fourth wheel in the Rove and co. policy machine in this 2001 Slate article. Card has wanted out for about a month — apparently it took some time to find a new monkey to replace. The Washington Post:
…Card approached Bush earlier this month about the possibility of stepping down and then two had several discussions about the idea. Card then went with Bush to Camp David last weekend, where they settled on a decision and timing. (via firedoglake)
Andy Card will forever be remembered as the man who first notified the president of the 9/11 attacks without adding a qualifier to the effect of “no shit, seriously” — allowing the commander in chief to finish reading a book about (donkeys?) to an elementary school class in Florida (see video).
Dismissing Card is a good place to begin retooling, suggests Liberal Avenger, alongside an insanely hilarious photo. But is a legitimate shake-up in the White House truly under way, or are they just passing the time? Mark Halperin writes: “keep waiting….” Steve Clemons reveals that if Ma Baba Bush still calls the shots, she’s “ready to roast a few of her son’s staff members alive on a pig spit.”
Remember the made-for-Saturday-Night-Live Iraqi Information Minister? Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf became the most laughed-about character in the early days of the 2003 Iraqi invasion, when he declared — with bombs dropping in the background — “I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad.”
Iraqis were already accustomed to misinformation and government propaganda, but the rest of the world quickly shrugged al-Sahaf off as a fool and a joker.
But, today, not only is the U.S. government lying straight to the faces of the “liberated” Iraqis, the public messages being sent home are point-blank untruths that don’t match up to accounts (see the pictures below) on the ground.
The U.S. government doesn’t need a funny-face guy like the Iraqi Information Minister — they already tried that with the Don Rumsfeld show — it just grinds out misinformation like an anarchic machine.
The NYT Week in Review has a barometerical graphic of rhetorical devices used by the administration to term what is by-definition “civil war” as anything but. And a hideous number of politicians and supposedly non-partisan journos have bought into the notion that the media isn’t reporting any of the good news (documented here by Peter Daou w/ additional commentary here, here, and here).
But, as Lara Logan made clear on CNN’s Late Edition this morning, the media goes out of its way to try and report the good news, but is precluded from doing so by the government for security reasons (transcript):
“Who says things aren’t falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn’t see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.”
Indeed, this was best exemplified in today’s nothing but the truth accounts of a Baghdad attack Sunday killing around 20 “bystanders” (or “insurgents” as the Army reports) at a “mosque” (say Iraqi’s and observers on the ground, including the video evidence below) or a “community meeting hall” (U.S. military).
Read the first few grafs of the original AP report (since updated) and join me in my frustration. It is every bit as difficult to believe the U.S. version of the story as it is to believe al-Sadr’s.
Rep. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb) effectively disclosed last week that reports from U.S. generals in Iraq tend to be significantly altered as they pass through our “ministry” of information.
“I think we have had a low-grade civil war going on in Iraq, certainly the last six months, maybe the last year. Our own generals have told me that privately.”
I want to know how U.S. troops are efficiently providing security considering daily reports of sectarian beheadings and executions on public streets. Isn’t that what we went there to stop?
The screenshots from the AP video taken at what the cameraman described as an imam’s living quarters attached to a mosque in Baghdad, where the aforementioned attack occured, depict the slaying of apparently unarmed civilians. I just knew the story would change as the day progressed — I can no longer believe Pentagon press releases proclaiming a “secured objective” netting 16 dead “insurgents” and 15 additional captures.
UPDATE: The British press continues to dig for truth in Bush’s War, as pointed out by Editor and Publisher. BBCNews reports today that “Iraqi police say U.S. troops killed up to 20 people… in Baghdad mosque raid.” The Sunday Times reported the following in “Iraqis killed by U.S. Troops ‘on Rampage’“:
the evidence from Haditha and Abu Sifa last week suggested that the Pentagon is finding it increasingly difficult to dismiss allegations of violent excesses as propaganda by terrorist sympathisers.?
Since this cannot possibly get enough ink, allow me to repeat what this moron actually printed in a signed column in Sunday’s Washington Post:
Leaving Iraq now “would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis.”
This from a living American leader who once canceled a trip to Germany out of fear of arrest following the 2005 release of the Abu Ghraib photos. As the Center for Constitutional Rights has it:
German law allows German courts to prosecute for killing, torture, cruel and inhumane treatment, forcible transfers and sexual coercion such as occurred at Abu Ghraib.
Rumsfeld’s implication that leaving Iraq would LEAD to Holocaust-like conditions is even more wickedly ironic in light of this March 20 Knight Ridder headline:
Iraqi Troops Say U.S. Executed 11, Including Baby
Daily War News covers the above accusation in depth, including a scan and translation of the official Iraqi documents condemning the U.S. troops involved.
Rumsfeld’s statement is more than just a little delusional, considering his Pentagon is pawning off their superfluous small arms to the like of Taiwan. This list of bloggers calling for Rumsfeld’s indictment or worse, continues growing.Or is he just playing the fall guy — finally to take one for the team, as The Guardian UK suggests (h/t Bubblejam). Three more reasons Rummy is just dead wrong are here. The asshole stamps his signature on letters of condolence to relatives still left wondering why.
President Bush, for his part continues pontificating in a way that presents freedom as an us-vs-them scenario that appears to exist nowhere outside of his big head. (Read Russ’ radicalized version of the speech). When will the media stop playing make-believe with him? Mr. President… your nose is growing…
UPDATE: Sen. Feinstein is onboard for the Rummy upheaval.
