Embedded with the CNN Road show: “GWII – Baghdad or Bust”
What's-her-face, who had been reporting financial news from London until this edition of the War in Iraq began, was droning on in her adenoidal I'm-oh-so-superior-to-you-Yanks drawl when she finally let CNN's secret slip. Confiding a preciously current battlefield up-date sourced from a commander in the field who (get this!)is embedded with the CNN reporter near Basra, she tipped her hand.
Who is leading this war? Coalition military command or CNN?
We know who wants to. And we know who wants to lead public opinion along with it to ever higher and higher ratings until there is no 'Al Jezeera', no ITN, no Sky News, no competition in the cable news programming game at all but CNN. Ha-hah! Lords of Cable News. Love us and despair. Be the first to know what we think you'll be satisfied with. Stay in a partnership hotel.
Or is it some cryptically named committee in a badly lit subterranean bunker a la 'Wag the dog' with a live-in heart specialist for V-P Dick?
It's safe to assume that somebody in the White House spinning room suckered somebody somewhere into assuming this installment of the war with the Evil, Dark Lord S'damn Who'sane was going to be a waltz across the Iraqi desert path with spring flowers thrown by joyous, adoring crowds and reporters riding along on running-boards, satellite phones beaming bright, herky-jerky mosaic images of history in the making back to Atlanta. Who told these poor naifs that the Iraqi forces would roll-over like a tick-ridden hound-dog? Who mislead the media (and the public which they serve) into thinking this was going to be Grenada in a sand-box? If it was the hunkered-in-the-bunker spin-masters they broke a cardinal rule: Don't disappoint the Fourth Estate.
Flustered by dead-lines and Neilson ratings, contract negotiations in a contracting economy and weighty personal grooming concerns, journalists began a whining chorus of "When're we gonna get there?" like kids in the back seat with dead batteries for their Game-Boys. And like frustrated parents on the cusp of estrangement, G. Dub and his administration snap back "We'll get there when we get there. Now, hush-up or we won't stop for ice cream." (You can almost see Don 'Call me MIS-ter Rumps-felt' sneer a slim, chilling smile from the podium, can't you?)
I was flabbergasted. Why didn't they simply say "When Saddam is gone."? I'm certain that's how I heard it from none other than Colin Powell, the only one who was in the know the first time Americans fought and bled fighting the Saddam/Ba'ath bunch and the only one anyone seems to trust in Bush the Younger's administration.
Latest Articles