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Media does Iraq War, Part 1

© Deborah Lagarde

Copyright 2003 Deborah Lagarde. Comments? E-mail: "mailto:dlagarde@suite101.com"

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Friday morning, before the shock and awe over Baghdad

Is it just me? Am I the only one who now thinks the anti-war crowd, with their cries of slaughter of the innocent at the hands of the bloodthirsty Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Perle neo-con chicken-hawk cabal, were overrated? Am I the only one, formerly staunchly opposed to the war but have now decided since late February (see my previous column) that, having come so far, better to do the war than let North Korea know we really are paper tigers, who thinks what was all the bluster about?

What "shock and awe", and just where is that Mother of All Bombs?

This month may be the first since Suite stopped paying its CE's that I'll be doing two columns--depending on how long this so-called war lasts--where maybe I can answer my own questions, and no doubt when the war reaches Baghdad it will really start to look like a war. In Part 2, whether it be in March or April, I will give a further assessment of how the media covered this war.

Here's what I've seen so far, having primarily watched it from ABC news (quite simply I can't tolerate the loudmouthed, bloodthirsty minions on FOX news):

1) I have absolutely NO IDEA what the truth is about this war so far, except that it doesn't look like a real war. Again, is it me, as I have come to believe that the US media will do anything to cover up the truth? Do I really have to wait for international news on the Internet, or worse, Al-Jazeera?

2) It's all "may or may not be" to me: Saddam "may or may not be" injured or dead, but it seems to me that, perhaps purely for psychological reasons, ABC and the rest would rather have us believe the critter is in that state, than find the truth. And others: Turkey "may or may not be" massing on the border to stave off Kurdish independency; the Shi'ites "may or may not" kiss the streets "allied" "liberators" walk, and they "may or may not" wipe out every last Sunni once the war ends (that they will try I have no doubt, for while the Sunnis are the moderates, the Shi'ites produced the likes of Ayatolla Khomeini and other Islamic terrorists--remember him, and his destruction of freedom in Iran when he overthrew the moderate Sunni Bani Sadr?); the Republican Guards "may or may not" surrender, etc. Just so long as they don't have to tell the truth.

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