Saturday, March 25, 2023

Still selling the Iraq War

Hussein Maytham and his family were driving past the palm tree grove near their home after a quiet evening shopping for toys for his younger cousins when their car hit a bomb planted on the moon-lit road.

“I only remember the explosion,” Maytham, 16, said weakly from his hospital bed, his pale arms speckled brown by shrapnel. The attack took place earlier this month in the Shiite-majority village of Hazanieh. The force of the blast hurled the teenager out of the vehicle, but his family – his parents, an aunt and three cousins - perished in the fiery carnage. Residents say gunmen hidden nearby in irrigation canals opened fire, killing two others.

This is the latest in a series of attacks witnessed over the last month in the central Iraqi province of Diyala, located north and east of Baghdad. Security officials say at least 19 civilians have been killed by unidentified assailants, including in two targeted attacks. 

That's from Yasmine Mosimann's ASSOCIATED PRESS report and if you ignore that reality, and others like it, you too can  be Richard Engel speaking mindlessly on TV about how great things are going these days in Iraq.  I guess Richard saw the choices for the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War as either lying or taking accountability and, obviously, lying seemed the easier choice for him.

Thomas L. Knapp (NEWTON DAILY NEWS) observes:

In March of 2003, the United States launched an illegal war of aggression against Iraq.

The U.S. regime promoted that illegal war of aggression, starting well in advance, through the manufacture and repetition of falsehoods for the purpose of cultivating fear over non-existent threats, and loathing over non-existent connections between the Iraqi regime an the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

In the execution of that illegal war of aggression, thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died.

Twenty years later, none of the American culprits in that deadly deception operation have been brought to justice. 


There were isolated voices this go round speaking truth.  But wasn't that the way it was then too?  Only isolated voices spoke the truth.  They couldn't break through the war echo chamber the corporate media was creating.  20 years later and nothing's changed.  


That includes the circle jerk that CJR fostered in the '00s and which continues to this day.  A weak ass piece about the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War is bad enough from CJR but to do it with so many lies is even worse.  "To clarify my thoughts, I called Spencer Ackerman" -- Jon Allsop writes that.  


No, Whore, that's not why you called him.  You called him because he's your friend.  


If you're going to whore your own name and CJR's maybe be honest about it?


But I guess a truthful whore -- like an honest politician -- will always be something of a unicorn.


So Jon Allsop, pretending to care about how to make the press better, instead goes running to his cock-knocker Spency and we get more nonsense.  Spencer supported the Iraq War.  He used the pages of THE NEW REPUBLIC to do so.  20 years later, we're supposed to be able to learn something from him?  A whorish wreck of violence who lied in real time is being given space again?  As opposed to anyone who got it right?

What sort of quality information are we getting via Spencer?  Jon writes:


 Anniversary coverage alone is inadequate—the journalistic equivalent of “throwing a panhandler a quarter when your job was to investigate why there is such overwhelming wealth inequality and poverty all around you,” Ackerman told me. The way out of it, he added, would be more “consistent coverage” of a war that is “kind of over but kind of not,” with some US troops still stationed in Baghdad as “advisers” even after Iraq’s parliament voted to kick them out in 2020.

As Ackerman pointed out to me, budgets for overseas coverage have shrunk in the US; other stories—and other wars—have knocked Iraq down the US news agenda. The best way to mark the legacy of the Iraq War for the press isn’t to talk about it because it’s that time of year again. It would be better to deeply reexamine how we cover all wars, along the lines Ackerman describes.


Anybody else bothered by the term "panhandler"?  Just asking.  I would've used "homeless" but then I'm not stupid enough to have made that analogy to begin with because the media hasn't acted that way to begin with.  I'm not seeing, for example, CJR, NYT or anyone else tossing a quarter to THE NATION.  What they do is they just write the same story they wrote the year before.


How stupid does Richard Engel think his audience is?


Violence is again on the rise in Iraq.  Social media figures are targeted and arrested in the last months.  There is a crackdown on the free speech rights of Iraqi citizens and journalists.  The militias are now in charge of the government.  Christians are yet again under more persecution.  I could go on and on about the last six months in Iraq.


Richard can't. 


And that's the problem with this coverage from corporate media.  They stopped paying attention long ago and they don't feel compelled to even catch up.  They go on autopilot because they get away with it.


Spencer does note that budgets have "shrunk."  Hmm.  We noted that reality too.  In December of 2008 when it happened.  That would be nearly 15 years ago.  Give Spence time and maybe in 2038 when one of his friends does a reach around on Iraq, Spence can't comment about what was taking place in 2023?

Following the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the US press made their announcements.  They were reducing coverage of Iraq.  Desks were being closed.  VARIETY carried the news that ABC really thought the best way to continue to cover the Iraq War -- and there were over 100,000 US troops there at this point -- was just to pick up any BBC NEWS segment and re-air it.  They all did this.  They didn't wait for Barack even to be sworn in.  Iraq coverage cost US outlets money.  And they weren't going to spend money.  So the only real US withdrawal that's ever taken place was the US media withdrawal of December 2008.  

It's a case of the people not having the facts.  They don't care enough to have the facts.  They go on camera or sit down at their keyboard and the words are what they would have served up on any anniversary because they stopped following Iraq long ago.  But they rush to present themselves as experts.


And, let's be clear, Spencer Ackerman is serving bulls**t when he talks about stopping the anniversary coverage to instead offer coverage of how wars get covered.  That's garbage and it's garbage from a War Hawk which is what Spencer remains.  He wants that to take place because it dilutes Iraq -- the war he promoted.  And if you can dilate Iraq, you can fool people into more war.  Iraq is indisputable as an illegal war of choice that found no WMDs and that offered no "liberation" to the Iraqi people.  Of course, Spencer wants it watered down, folded into a conversation about wars plural.  It stands out less. 



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