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The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq

The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq

By Robert Scheer, Christopher Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry
$9.95

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Ear to the Ground

News Coverage of Iraq War Plummets

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Posted on May 31, 2008
Bush and troops
AP photo / Gerald Herbert

The man behind the plan: President Bush gestures while posing for photos with troops during his visit to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., last April.

If ever there was required reading, this article by Sherry Ricchiardi in the American Journalism Review would be it. News coverage about the Iraq war, whether measured in column inches or broadcast minutes, by American news outlets is becoming a mere blip on the proverbial radar, even as lives and resources are still lost every day.


American Journalism Review:

Armando Acuna, public editor of the Sacramento Bee, turned a Sunday column into a public flogging for both his editors and the nation’s news media. They had allowed the third-longest war in American history to slip off the radar screen, and he had the numbers to prove it.

The public also got a scolding for its meager interest in a controversial conflict that is costing taxpayers about $12.5 billion a month, or nearly $5,000 a second, according to some calculations. In his March 30 commentary, Acuna noted: “There’s enough shame..for everyone to share.”

He had watched stories about Iraq move from 1A to the inside pages of his newspaper, if they ran at all. He understood the editors’ frustration over how to handle the mind-numbing cycles of violence and complex issues surrounding Operation Iraqi Freedom. “People feel powerless about this war,” he said in an interview in April.

Acuna knew the Sacramento Bee was not alone.

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By jackpine savage, June 2, 2008 at 7:42 am #

Amen and thanks for the FZ quote…one of his better ones.

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By Purple Girl, June 1, 2008 at 7:59 am #

Day late Ruppy and Billions will be lost!
Can You hear that ‘Sucking sound’ It’s Your empire going down the Drain. When Your ratings & circulation Drops, your Corp Advertisers will not just walk they will Run away and your Almighty bottom line will crumble beneath YOU- GoodBye Media Whores,‘Ministry of Truth’- You are THEIR Archilles Heel,By ‘Starving You’ we will destroy the other Three BEASTS (Corrupt Gov’t, Profiteering Incs and heretical Religious Fanatics). You have helpe dOver satiate US and now we ar eno longer interested in you psuedo reward system.Hear those Foot Steps Walking Away?We will find our Info on the Net, and We Will Not be distracted, nor Forget no matter How hard You try. It’s time Media decides which side of ‘vs’ they want to be on.Treason, WArcrimes and Crimes against Humantiy…We have a Litany of charges and counts to hand Out!

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By cyrena, June 1, 2008 at 3:29 am #

Good idea Thomas, but you know what happened when we tried this before? (suggesting a draft). The middle class was ready to hurl IED’s at the ones who suggested it..including former military. (If memory serves me, it was Carl Levin and Emmauel Rham who proposed it, though I won’t swear to it…it’s been a while). Long enough ago that it would have prevented this war from happening, if anyone had been willing to follow through with it. (Not THEIR kids!) But, they didn’t of course. (They still wanted the oil, they just wanted other folks’ to die getting it).

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By Marc Schlee, June 1, 2008 at 1:15 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

“The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” 

Frank Zappa

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By Thomas Billis, May 31, 2008 at 9:44 pm #

The media in a hurry to try and make people forget how lame they were in the run up to war is more than happy to turn the page so they can turn their lameness to other topics.I guess if Bush wants to keep using WW2 analogies this war should be covered like ww2.From what I am led to beleive their were not many days when ww2 was off the front pages.Want to see it on the front pages again institute a draft and all of sudden when some middle class’s kid has to leave college to go fight for oil it will move this story to the front page above the fold.PS To the New York Times why did you bother hiring Kristol when you had a propagandist for the administration already in your employ Judith Miller.

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By cyrena, May 31, 2008 at 8:29 pm #

And then there’s this, which isn’t news that has EVER been covered in the MSM on Iraq. Even when the war ON Iraq was part of the news, there was never any mention of the view from those who are being ‘warred upon’, as if they were totally silent in this whole adventure.

That doesn’t mean that they HAVE been, which is why Dick Bush still hasn’t been able to get his oil theft laws in place. But of course we never hear any of this from our own news.

Iraqis Protest Against US Military Deal
Friday 30 May 2008

by: Agence France-Presse

A woman in Sadr City shows support for cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Tens of thousands of Shiites took to the streets Friday in Baghdad and other cities to protest plans for a long-term security agreement with the United States.

  Thousands of supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq after Friday prayers to denounce a government deal with Washington on US troop levels. Followers of the anti-US cleric brandished placards outside mosques in their Sadr City Shiite stronghold in the capital as security forces stepped up their presence there.

  A key member of the Sadrist movement, Sheikh Mohannad Al-Gazawi, denounced the proposed deal that will extend the US troop presence in Iraq beyond 2008.

  “This agreement binds Iraq and gives 99 percent of the country to America,” he said.
  The faithful carried placards slamming “the disastrous agreement that tears Iraq apart and gives in to the occupying power.” Another said: “This agreement surrenders the sovereignty of Iraq.”

  Protesters burned an effigy of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as well as a US flag before dispersing peacefully after about an hour.

  In Kut, 175 kilometres (109 miles) south of Baghdad, hundreds of Sadrists staged similar demonstrations.

  In the southern city of Basra, the spokesman for the Sadr bloc in the Baghdad parliament, Nassar al-Rubaie, joined a protest there, correspondents said.
  Friday’s demonstrations followed a call by Sadr to protest and force Baghdad to abandon its proposed deal with Washington.

  Sadr said the proposed Status of Forces Agreement aimed to give a legal basis to US troops after the December 31 expiry of a UN mandate defining their current status, and was “against Iraqi national interests.”

  “After every Friday prayers, everyone must protest and demonstrate until the agreement is cancelled,” he said in a statement sent to AFP on Wednesday.

  Last November US President George W. Bush and Maliki signed a non-binding statement of principles for negotiations which began in March with the aim of concluding a pact by the end of July.

  There are currently about 152,500 American servicemen and women deployed in Iraq, which was invaded by US-led forces in March 2003.

  The proposed military pact has come under fire from other religious and political leaders, both in Iraq and in neighbouring Iran.

  Fighters from Sadr’s Mahdi army militia fought deadly street battles with US forces in the Shiite slum bastion of Sadr City in Baghdad for seven weeks until a May 10 truce took effect.
  Iraq’s national security council on Monday asked Maliki to ensure that the pact will not go against the national interest.


http://www.truthout.org/article/iraqis-protest-against -us-military-deal

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By jackpine savage, May 31, 2008 at 7:50 pm #

War?  I didn’t know there was a war!  Are we winning?  Should i start a victory garden?  Do i have to ration gasoline?

Remember, loose lips sink ships…

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By george S Semsel, May 31, 2008 at 7:26 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Bush has spoken. There will be no negative reporting about Iraq until McCain has been sworn into office, as he will be. By then, we will be grousing about the war in Iran.

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