Sam Hill
2008-02-22 23:31:46 UTC
How to Stay in Iraq for the Next Million Years
By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com. Posted February 22, 2008.
When did immediate military withdrawal from Iraq stop being an option?
Think of the top officials of the Bush administration as magicians when it
comes to Iraq. Their top hats and tails may be worn and their act fraying,
but it doesn't seem to matter. Their latest "abracadabra," the President's
"surge strategy" of 2007, has still worked like a charm. They waved their
magic wands, paid off and armed a bunch of former Sunni insurgents and
al-Qaeda terrorists (about 80,000 "concerned citizens," as the President
likes to call them), and magically lowered "violence" in Iraq. Even more
miraculously, they made a country that they had already turned into a
cesspool and a slagheap -- its capital now has a "lake" of sewage so large
that it can be viewed "as a big black spot on Google Earth" -- almost
entirely disappear from view in the U.S.
Of course, what they needed to be effective was that classic adjunct to any
magician's act, the perfect assistant. This has been a role long held, and
still played with mysterious willingness, by the mainstream media. There are
certainly many reporters in Iraq doing their jobs as best they can in
difficult circumstances. When it comes to those who make the media decisions
at home, however, they have practically clamored for the Bush administration
to put them in a coffin-like box and saw it in half. Thanks to their news
choices, Iraq has for months been whisked deep inside most papers and into
the softest sections of network and cable news programs. Only one Iraq
subject has gotten significant front-page attention: How much "success" has
the President's surge strategy had?
Before confirmatory polls even arrived, the media had waved its own magic
wand and declared that Americans had lost interest in Iraq. Certainly the
media people had. The economy -- with its subprime Hadithas and its market
Abu Ghraibs -- moved to center stage, yet links between the Bush
administration's two trillion dollar war and a swooning economy were seldom
considered. It mattered little that a recent Associated Press/Ipsos poll
revealed a majority of Americans to be convinced that the most reasonable
"stimulus" for the U.S. economy would be withdrawal from Iraq. A total of
68% of those polled believed such a move would help the economy.
Anyone tuning in to the nightly network news can now regularly go through a
typical half-hour focused on Obamania, the faltering of the Clinton
"machine," the Huckabee/McCain face-off on Republican Main Street, the
latest nose-diving market, and the latest campus shooting without running
across Iraq at all. Cable TV, radio news, newspapers -- it makes little
difference.
The News Coverage Index of the Project for Excellence in Journalism
illustrates that point clearly. For the week of February 4-10, the category
of "Iraq Homefront" barely squeaked into tenth place on its chart of the
top-ten most heavily covered stories with 1% of the "newshole." First place
went to "2008 Campaign" at 55%. "Events in Iraq" -- that is, actual coverage
of and from Iraq -- didn't make it onto the list. (The week before, "Events
in Iraq" managed to reach #6 with 2% of the newshole.)
True, you can go to Juan Cole's Informed Comment website, perhaps the best
daily round-up of Iraqi mayhem and disaster on the Web, and you'll feel as
if, like Alice, you had fallen down a rabbit hole into another universe.
("Two bombings shook Iraq Sunday morning. In the Misbah commercial center in
the upscale Shiite Karrada district, a female suicide bomber detonated a
belt bomb, killing 3 persons and wounding 10 ... About 100 members of the
Awakening Council of Hilla Province have gone on strike to protest the
killing of three of them by the U.S. military at Jurf al-Sakhr last Sunday,
in what the Pentagon says was an accident ... Al-Hayat reports in Arabic
that officials in Baqubah are warning that as families are returning to the
city, they could be forced right back out again, owing to sectarian tensions
... ") But how many Americans read Juan Cole every day ... or any day?
On that media homefront, the Bush administration has been Houdini-esque.
Left repeatedly locked in chains inside a booth full of water, George W.
Bush continues to emerge to declare that things are going swimmingly in
Iraq:
"... 80,000 local citizens stepped up and said, we want to help patrol our
own neighborhoods; we're sick and tired of violence and extremists. I'm not
surprised that that happens. I believe Iraqi moms want the same thing that
American moms want, and that is for their children to grow up in peace ...
The surge is working. I know some don't want to admit that, and I
understand. But the terrorists understand the surge is working. Al Qaeda
knows the surge is working ... "
Total of 5 pages on this here:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/77379/
By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com. Posted February 22, 2008.
When did immediate military withdrawal from Iraq stop being an option?
Think of the top officials of the Bush administration as magicians when it
comes to Iraq. Their top hats and tails may be worn and their act fraying,
but it doesn't seem to matter. Their latest "abracadabra," the President's
"surge strategy" of 2007, has still worked like a charm. They waved their
magic wands, paid off and armed a bunch of former Sunni insurgents and
al-Qaeda terrorists (about 80,000 "concerned citizens," as the President
likes to call them), and magically lowered "violence" in Iraq. Even more
miraculously, they made a country that they had already turned into a
cesspool and a slagheap -- its capital now has a "lake" of sewage so large
that it can be viewed "as a big black spot on Google Earth" -- almost
entirely disappear from view in the U.S.
Of course, what they needed to be effective was that classic adjunct to any
magician's act, the perfect assistant. This has been a role long held, and
still played with mysterious willingness, by the mainstream media. There are
certainly many reporters in Iraq doing their jobs as best they can in
difficult circumstances. When it comes to those who make the media decisions
at home, however, they have practically clamored for the Bush administration
to put them in a coffin-like box and saw it in half. Thanks to their news
choices, Iraq has for months been whisked deep inside most papers and into
the softest sections of network and cable news programs. Only one Iraq
subject has gotten significant front-page attention: How much "success" has
the President's surge strategy had?
Before confirmatory polls even arrived, the media had waved its own magic
wand and declared that Americans had lost interest in Iraq. Certainly the
media people had. The economy -- with its subprime Hadithas and its market
Abu Ghraibs -- moved to center stage, yet links between the Bush
administration's two trillion dollar war and a swooning economy were seldom
considered. It mattered little that a recent Associated Press/Ipsos poll
revealed a majority of Americans to be convinced that the most reasonable
"stimulus" for the U.S. economy would be withdrawal from Iraq. A total of
68% of those polled believed such a move would help the economy.
Anyone tuning in to the nightly network news can now regularly go through a
typical half-hour focused on Obamania, the faltering of the Clinton
"machine," the Huckabee/McCain face-off on Republican Main Street, the
latest nose-diving market, and the latest campus shooting without running
across Iraq at all. Cable TV, radio news, newspapers -- it makes little
difference.
The News Coverage Index of the Project for Excellence in Journalism
illustrates that point clearly. For the week of February 4-10, the category
of "Iraq Homefront" barely squeaked into tenth place on its chart of the
top-ten most heavily covered stories with 1% of the "newshole." First place
went to "2008 Campaign" at 55%. "Events in Iraq" -- that is, actual coverage
of and from Iraq -- didn't make it onto the list. (The week before, "Events
in Iraq" managed to reach #6 with 2% of the newshole.)
True, you can go to Juan Cole's Informed Comment website, perhaps the best
daily round-up of Iraqi mayhem and disaster on the Web, and you'll feel as
if, like Alice, you had fallen down a rabbit hole into another universe.
("Two bombings shook Iraq Sunday morning. In the Misbah commercial center in
the upscale Shiite Karrada district, a female suicide bomber detonated a
belt bomb, killing 3 persons and wounding 10 ... About 100 members of the
Awakening Council of Hilla Province have gone on strike to protest the
killing of three of them by the U.S. military at Jurf al-Sakhr last Sunday,
in what the Pentagon says was an accident ... Al-Hayat reports in Arabic
that officials in Baqubah are warning that as families are returning to the
city, they could be forced right back out again, owing to sectarian tensions
... ") But how many Americans read Juan Cole every day ... or any day?
On that media homefront, the Bush administration has been Houdini-esque.
Left repeatedly locked in chains inside a booth full of water, George W.
Bush continues to emerge to declare that things are going swimmingly in
Iraq:
"... 80,000 local citizens stepped up and said, we want to help patrol our
own neighborhoods; we're sick and tired of violence and extremists. I'm not
surprised that that happens. I believe Iraqi moms want the same thing that
American moms want, and that is for their children to grow up in peace ...
The surge is working. I know some don't want to admit that, and I
understand. But the terrorists understand the surge is working. Al Qaeda
knows the surge is working ... "
Total of 5 pages on this here:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/77379/