Thursday, August 10, 2006

Shame in their game

"They gathered over cards and booze to come up with a plan to rape and murder that little girl. She was young and attractive. They knew where she was because they had seen her on a previous patrol. She was close. She was vulnerable." -- Captain Alex Pickands

CNN reports Alex Pickands (military prosecutor) making his closing argument with the following: "Murder, not war. Rape, not war. That's what we're here talking about today. Not all that business about cold food, checkpoints, personnel assignments. Cold food didn't kill that family. Personnel assignments didn't rape and murder that 14-year-old little girl."

We're pulling that from yesterday because it didn't get reported in the New York Times. It won't be. And there's no pressure on the Times to report it because independent media decided that they can't cover two stories so they'll just ignore Iraq. That's too bad for Abeer Qasim Hamza who is dead and has no one in the press to defend her or her family. She was rendered invisible. You could say that happened in life, under the illegal occupation of Iraq and it happened in death. I think independent media has a lot of shame in their game right now.

I think Bully Boy's having a fun vacation as he doesn't have his feet held to the fire.

Damien Cave who just happened to turn in a front page story this week in the Times that just happens to be a story Centcom was desparately trying all last week to interest reporters on (cell phone usage in Iraq up!) is back today with "On Patrol, Iraqis Prove Eager, Erratic and Green."
If it reads like it was written by a fool, well there's a reason for that.

It takes a real fool to assume that with US forces present an Iraqi woman whose home is being searched will feel free to offer her real opinions of the continued (illegal) war. But Cave's a fool and the military's got him. Meanwhile, in the real world today, the Associated Press reports this:

A suicide bomber detonated a belt of explosives on his body near a highly revered Shiite shrine in southern Iraq Thursday, killing at least 33 people and injuring 108, an official said.

Fortunately for the 'reporters,' it's not Baghdad. So they'll probably be able to ignore it the way they've ignored most of the violence this week.

Rebecca's "amy goodman and democracy now forget that a war rages in iraq," Mike's "Is NYT's Paul von Zielbauer's a pervert?" and Kat's "KPFA leaves me numb" are must read media critiques of the coverage (or what passes for it) of Iraq these days (media big and small).

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.





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