A shop owner, Hassan Jassim, said that his sister-in-law had been wounded in the fighting and that he had seen three bodies lying in the street near his house.
"American helicopters fired on our houses," he said.
The above is from Solomon Moore's "U.S. Troops Kill 11 Shiite Militiamen" in this morning's New York Times providing eye witness reaction to the US military action in Al Kut yesterday and it's doubtful too many other outlets will provide anything on it or explore it because everyone's attempting to enshrine a corrupt leader. The innocents killed in the action aren't accused of stealing millions of the people's monies, there's no indication that any killed their own family members to maintain national power and there weren't trials pending against them in multiple countries so their deaths aren't going to be judged 'important'. Just like the 3900 deaths benchmark that was reached this week didn't really matter to most outlets. That's just US service members and they can't test out photos for magazine covers or enshrine them or canonize them. They died in an illegal war. Better, the media thinks, to focus on a celebrity death and you have to wonder if Imelda Marcos' biggest p.r. problem was not dying before her husband lost power?
Salem-News does note the 3900 mark as well as the 1.2 million Iraqis killed in the illegal war in their article entitled "Grannies Return to Recruiting Office to Protest War" and we'll note this section on an action taking place today:
On December 28th, the Friday after Christmas, members of the Surge Protection Brigade, also known as the "Seriously Pissed Off Grannies", will return to demonstrate in front of the Army and Marine Recruiting Center at 1317 NE Broadway.
The symbols used in this Friday's demonstration will include red handprints and peace doves as a statement that "Peace on Earth" means "No War."
On December 13th five members of the group who placed red handprints on the recruiting office windows during a Good Friday demonstration on April 6th were found not guilty of a third degree misdemeanor by a Multnomah County jury.
Remember, the outlets that couldn't be bothered with noting the 3,000 mark on New Year's Eve, couldn't break into their pre-recorded program to just make a brief announcement, demonstrated yesterday that they could break in, they could scrap planned programming -- not to note the 3900 mark but to offer state propaganda on a 'leader' who betrayed a people. Which is why 2007 was even worse than 2006 when it came to covering Iraq.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
solomon moorethe new york times
salem-news
