Where were you when the war started four years ago? I remember where I was. I was in my living room, watching TV and using that tool of media analysis, the remote control, to scour the channels and report on how TV News was selling this whole misadventure to us.
I sensed that that this war had major media component--and would later write two books and make a film (WMD) about it. Remember how it started before its started with an attempted assassination by cruise missile of Saddam, then the most demonized man in the world. 50 Cruise missiles costing over $50 million were dispatched to off him. It didn’t work although many civilians were killed. That was the first big bust of a war that has turned into a much bigger one.
The above, noted by Eddie, is from Danny Schechter's "As The Iraq War Turns 5: No End In Sight" (News Dissector). WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception is the documentary (as I'm sure every member knows) and we'll open with a voice who called it right from the beginning.
In the New York Times this morning, Damien Cave's "For Many Iraqis, Hunt for Missing Is Never-Ending" stands as one of their better pieces filed since the illegal war began:
He comes to her in dreams, dressed in the blue police uniform he wore the day he disappeared.
"I'm alive," he tells Intisar Rashid, his wife and the mother of their five children. "I'm alive."
And so she restlessly keeps searching. Ever since the Thursday two months ago when her husband failed to come home, Ms. Rashid has tried to find the man she loves.
In the Green Zone last week, where she waited to scour a database of Iraqis detained by American troops, she said she had already visited the Baghdad morgue a dozen times, every hospital in the city and a handful of Iraqi government ministries.
"I feel like I'm going to collapse," she said, carrying her husband's police identification card in one hand and a crumpled tissue in the other. "It's taken over my days, my nights."
The past year of dizzying violence here has produced thousands of Iraqis like Ms. Rashid -- sad-eyed seekers caught in an endless loop of inquiry and disappointment. Burdened by grief without end or answers, they face a set of horrors as varied and fractured as Iraq itself.
And Vic notes a new poll of Iraqis, from AP's "Four years after invasion, Iraqis increasingly pessimistic:"
Fewer than one in five Iraqis has confidence in U.S.-led coalition troops and they are evenly split on whether they have confidence in Iraq's government, according to a poll published Monday.
Iraqis are growing increasingly pessimistic according to the survey gauging public opinion four years after the U.S.-led invasion of their country. The British Broadcasting Corp., ABC News, USA Today and Germany's ARD television commissioned the poll.
Only 18 per cent of Iraqis have confidence in U.S. and coalition troops, and 86 per cent are concerned that someone in their household will be a victim of violence.
Iraqis do not want to see their country divided along sectarian lines, according to the poll. However, the country is becoming increasingly polarized between Sunnis and Shiites -- with Sunnis appearing more pessimistic, it found.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
damien cave
danny schechter
