That whorish press of ours, always eager to sell war and glorify violence. Always quick to run the minute they've gotten their way. In the news cycle right now? USA TODAY, VOX, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, CBS NEWS, POLITICO, AP, REUTERS, FORBES, BLOOMBERG NEWS, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, NEWSWEEK, THE HILL, THE NEW YORK TIMES, YAHOO NEWS, THE DAILY BEAST, NBC NEWS, US NEWS AND WORLD REPORTS, .. . .
What's missing from the news cycle? Any real emphasis on Iraq.
It's not just that US troops remain in Iraq. and that the war continues, it's that this is that rare time of the year when the corporate press pretends for a news cycle or two to actually sive a damn about Iraq.
Why? PRESS TV explains:
Nineteen years ago today, then-US President George W. Bush announced the beginning of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” from the Oval Office, invading a sovereign nation to destroy its non-existent weapons of mass destruction, in a senseless war that has brought the Iraqi people anything but freedom.
At the time, Bush and Tony Blair, Britain’s then-prime minister, declared that their war coalition aimed to “disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people,” even though UN inspectors had found no evidence of programs of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
“None of those pretexts will really help us explain the overall project that the US had in this region,” Tim Anderson, director of Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, told Press TV.
Since the invasion, more than one million Iraqis have been killed and millions more have been displaced. Sectarian violence, widespread displacement, poverty, and diseases such as birth defects and cancer have also sharply increased. But the leaders and commanders of the war have never been charged for any of their crimes.
“The war on Iraq was one of hate wars in West Asia/North Africa, which the US was carrying out in service of its plans to create a so-called New Middle East, where the entire region would be under the tutelage of the US and its key allies – Israelis and the Saudis,” Anderson said.
Depending upon where in the world you were, the Iraq War started March 19 or March 20th of 2003. It's the 19th year anniversary. And the whorish press that sold that illegal war can't even make time for it.
Fiona Harrigan (REASON) points out:
Horrific scenes from the conflict in Ukraine have fetched headlines much like those published during the Iraq War. But there is a difference between journalistic reporting on a conflict and coverage that trends more toward activism. Reporters operating under the guise of objectivity repeatedly trended toward the latter approach during the Iraq War. Now, as establishment journalists not-so-subtly agitate for a more interventionist U.S. policy in Ukraine, it's worth keeping an eye on these tried-and-trued hawkish tendencies.
In a press conference on March 15, reporters pelted White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki with questions regarding the Biden administration's opposition to certain military support for Ukraine. There were over one dozen questions mentioning military assistance—including five distinct mentions of a no-fly zone—and only one question about the potential American role in facilitating negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Neither were the numerous questions about military assistance purely fact-based. "Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have made so clear that what they believe they need the most is more warplanes and fighter jets. So why is the U.S. assessing something different?" asked a reporter. "Why does the U.S. believe they know better what Ukraine needs than what Ukrainian officials are saying they need the most?"
Indeed, in old-guard media outlets and press conferences alike, journalists have taken a hawkish turn. Substack columnist Adam Johnson put out an article this week titled "Attacking Democrats From the Right: The Faux Adversarial Sweet Spot for U.S. Journalists," having compiled numerous recent examples of the conflict-hungry press. Among them: Richard Engel of NBC News calling the Afghanistan withdrawal the "worst capitulation of Western values in our lifetimes"; CNN's Jim Sciutto asking a State Department spokesperson why the U.S. wouldn't "shoot down the [Russian] planes that are bombing hospitals"; The New York Times' Peter Baker including a comment from a Raytheon board member as an example of someone opposing the Afghanistan withdrawal and later lamenting that "Biden saw no middle ground in Afghanistan between ending the war or endless escalation."
These instincts inevitably tinge mainstream coverage of conflicts, the public sentiment it provokes, and the questions lobbed toward press officials in the highest political settings, as this week's Ukraine briefing shows. "It's a time for tough questions, Peabody-baiting TV coverage, mugging about innocent life, and the need to 'act' 'now' to 'protect civilians,'" writes Johnson, "all of which just so happens to track with the forces of increased militarism."
It's amazing, they lied and whored to sell the Iraq War and now can't even find time for it. They will invent 'horrors' to moan about if it will get them out of covering Iraq. The US government destroyed Iraq and it continues to destroy the country. The Iraqi people continue to suffer but the western press rushes off any and every where that they can to avoid covering Iraq. They refuse to own their crime, they refuse to make amends for it. They think they can just look away, stay silent and everyone will forget. No one will ever forget. It was the biggest blow to the press crediblity in the US. Whores like Meryl Streep try to drive idiots into the arms of the press with no luck because the people that lived through it know what happened.
People are dead -- Iraqis, Americans, British, etc -- and it's not big deal to the western press or the whores like Meryl who promote them. Iraq is an ongoing tragedy and the people responsible -- the politicians and the press -- have all agreed to just ignore it. (Beggar media's RAW STORY is even citing Iraq War whore Fred Kagan as a trusted source today. Surprisingly only if you never grasped how awful RAW STORY truly is. When they were ignoring Stephanie Tubbs Johnson regarding the 2004 election results, they showed who they really were. Today, they do the same -- actually, every day they do the same. They have no ethics and they have no view point. They're just whores who pimp whatever the centrist Democratic Party line is.)
ERBIL, THE capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, has long been the country’s safest haven—and its friendliest to the West. But just after midnight on March 13th Iran hammered the city with 12 cruise missiles. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s most punchy force, claimed responsibility. No one was reported to have been killed, but several buildings (pictured) were clobbered. Iraq’s government in Baghdad was shaken. The Kurds’ Western friends were shocked.
Iran’s generals say the target was a “strategic centre” of Israel’s spy agency, Mossad. Iraq’s Kurds have long had discreet links to Israel. In his younger days, Masoud Barzani, the ruling Kurdish family’s patriarch, once guided Jews escaping from Saddam Hussein’s clutches through Kurdistan’s mountain passes. More worrying for Iran, Kurdistan’s high ridges nowadays offer Israel listening posts into Iran. The ayatollahs say the region is a launchpad for covert Israeli operations.
They're describing last week's attack. There was another attack on Thursday. CGTN reports:
Four Katyusha rockets on Thursday struck the Balad Air Base, Iraq's largest military air base north of the capital Baghdad, a local security source has said.
The rockets landed at the Balad Air Base in Salahudin Province, some 90 kilometers north of Baghdad, causing no casualties, Xinhua reported citing the provincial police Colonel Mohammed al-Bazi.
Three of the rockets hit a building inside the base, causing minor damage, while the fourth landed in an empty area, al-Bazi said, adding that the rockets were fired from the neighboring province of Diyala.
In other news, Iraq held elections on October 10th and a political stalemate has followed. All this time later, still no president, still no prime minister. RUDAW reports:
Negotiations between the two main Kurdish ruling parties to unite on a candidate for the Iraqi presidency post have not yielded much progress, representatives of the two sides told Rudaw on Friday as the date assigned to elect a president nears.
“There has not been a considerable initiative that we can build hope around,” Karwan Yarwais from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) told Rudaw’s Nwenar Fatih, addressing the negotiations between his party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
The Iraqi parliament is set to elect a president on March 26, over six weeks after it postponed its session to vote in a candidate for the post in February.
Yarwais stated that he finds it unlikely for the parliament to elect a president next week.
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