The Common Ills: Iraq: The cafeteria's serving left overs -- again

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Iraq: The cafeteria's serving left overs -- again

A number of readers are bothered by what they see in the Iraq coverage provided by the Guardian. One e-mail notes the British newspaper is supposed to be independent but it really seems to be attempting to re-sell the war with its "gung-ho" coverage.

I could be wrong but I'm guessing these readers are either young or were possibly not reading the Guardian online ten or more years ago.

The Guardian had no ethical stance against the Iraq War.

The Guardian is not an independent newspaper. It is a commercial -- never-ending advertising -- for the Labour Party.

In England, it was the Labour Party that sold the Iraq War, it was their leader Tony Blair that told lies about how England could be struck with chemical weapons if England did not strike first and blah, blah, blah.

Even after the war started, the Guardian embarrassed itself.

You may remember the Downing St. Memos documenting Bully Boy Bush and Blair's plan for war and how David Swanson and others launched a campaign about the US press ignoring the memos (and the useless Michael Kinsley -- fresh from another sex scandal that his peers were talking about -- sneered at the notion that the memos were important).

If you remember that, you may remember that the Guardian was more silent than the US press.

The memos didn't just reveal how many lies Bully Boy Bush was telling, they also indicted St. Tony. The Guardian chose to ignore the Downing Street Memos, they never reported on them.

Again, they're not independent. They are an arm of Labour -- of, if you prefer, New Labour.

Reporting for the Guardian, Luke Harding and Fazel Hawramy insist:

The United Nations said on Sunday it had evidence that fighters from Islamic State (Isis) had killed as many as 670 prisoners in Mosul and had carried out further abuses in Iraq that amounted to crimes against humanity.
Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said Islamic State and allied fighters were committing "grave, horrific human rights violations" on a daily basis. These included targeted killings, forced conversions, abductions, trafficking, slavery and sexual abuse, Pillay said.

Did it happen?

I have no reason to doubt that it did.

I also have no reason to be shocked if it did happen.

I'm sorry where has the Guardian been -- or the US press -- as Sunni prisoners were tortured and targeted? As Nouri rushed through executions?

The prison attacks did not start this week.

I'm glad Navi Pillay is leaving. What a lousy High Commissioner for Human Rights.

It was not UNHCR that documented Nouri's murder of children, it was UNICEF.

I'm talking about the April 23, 2013 massacre of a sit-in in Hawija which resulted from Nouri's federal forces storming in. Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk) announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault. AFP reported the death toll eventually (as some wounded died) rose to 53 dead. UNICEF noted that the dead included 8 children (twelve more were injured).

And Pillay -- like the White House -- couldn't be bothered.

That's just one incident.

The Islamic State did not spring to life out of the head of Zeus one day fully formed.

Nouri al-Maliki bred it.

He used hate to help it grow.

That doesn't make the violence of IS any less disgusting.

But it does note that when Sunnis were the victims of violence for the last four years, there was no international outcry and reporters regularly treated the topic as if it were normal and acceptable, traffic accidents and not ethnic cleansing.

Yet now they want to ignore all that led up to today and practice selective outrage.

Of course, providing context, noting that these 'fresh' events are actually part of a series of call-and-response moments would indict themselves for their failure to have covered the earlier events. So they dress the response up as something new, put it on a clean plate and insist it just popped out of the oven even though it's days old and looks and smells like it's days old.

They are the problem and they do serious and real harm.

The western press never knows what they're talking about.

For example, the tanker issue is now a dead issue. Next time the US press and the European press might try learning the damn law before they start creaming their panties and briefs over what they think is certain to happen.

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