The Common Ills: Despite the press' best propaganda efforts, IS is not on the ropes

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Despite the press' best propaganda efforts, IS is not on the ropes

It's now a week since the press began proclaiming Iraqi forces had 'secured' Iraq by reclaiming an oil refinery. Of course it was Tuesday this week that they were still proclaiming it had finally happened and, by then, people had lost interest in the propaganda.

Oil refineries weren't on the rescue list of most Iraqis or, for that matter, the global community.

And the propaganda of the western press just demonstrated (a) how out of touch they were, (b) how easily they bent to the will of the US government and (c) how they weren't embarrassed to whore. There was no, "Woops! We were wrong." Not last Friday. Not last Saturday. Not last Sunday. . . . They just kept repeating the lie that the refinery was out of the hands of the Islamic State and it really didn't matter too much to them that what they were repeating hadn't happened, what they were repeating was a lie.

As they did a chorus of lies, a new one emerged, first floated on CNN (Barbara Starr really knows how to disgrace herself) that the Islamic State was on the run.

اعلام الربيع العراقي @IraqiSpringMC ·

#الانبار:
اغتنام نحو (15) عجلة نوع همر تركتها القوات الحكومية بعد هروبها من معارك منطقة الدولاب في قضاء هيت
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32 retweets20 favorites

I'm sorry, who's on the run?

Because in that Tweet, from three hours ago, by the Iraqi Spring MC, that's the Islamic State taking over the vehicles of Iraqi forces -- after Iraqi forces fled Heet to avoid combat with the Islamic State. They fled, leaving behind 15 Hummers.

But let's all ignore that so we can go along with the US government's propaganda efforts to label Barack Obama's 'plan' a success.

We'll need to ignore more than just what took place in Heet this morning.

Johnlee Varghese (IBT) reports:

The US-led coalition against the ISIS seems to be crumbling as there have been reports on social media that several "Saudi pilots" have allegedly refused to fly missions to bomb ISIS targets.
The report, which was confirmed by an Iraqi journalist and political analyst, is bound to have severe repercussions not only on the coalition, but it may also spread the seeds of rebellion among other branches of the Saudi armed forces.

IBT is the only western outlet noting that. Maybe the others think if they ignore it, the facts will just go away?

Meanwhile Rudaw reports Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has a lackey going around to the press insisting that al-Abadi is working on creating a national guard. Really? Because the Sunni tribe leaders aren't seeing any efforts and no one's speaking to them. So it appears this is more spin from al-Abadi.

The new prime minister is probably most infamous for announcing, September 13th, that he had ended the bombings of Falluja's residential neighborhoods when, in fact, the Iraqi military continues to bomb these neighborhoods daily.

The following community sites -- plus Black Agenda Report, Z on TV, the Guardian and Foreign Policy In Focus -- updated: