?Pacified? Fallujah
Dahr Jamail

Iraq Dispatches
December 02, 2005


      Lies cost lives in Iraq

Remember the reasons given by the US military and puppet interim Iraqi government for Operation Phantom Fury against Fallujah? Just prior to the November, 2004 assault on that city, the primary reasons given for the massacre in Fallujah were: to provide ?security and stability? for the upcoming January 30 ?elections? and to rid Fallujah of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

Let us judge the success or failure of this massacre by their own yardstick. The ?security and stability? generated for the elections on January 30, 2005 by the siege of Fallujah looked like roughly 40 dead Iraqi bodies and 200 wounded, on that day alone. As for Zarqawi, since not one resident of Fallujah has seen or reported evidence of this individual in their city before, during or after said siege, his existence at all in Iraq remains in question?aside from living large in US military propaganda which is happily trumpeted by corporate media outlets in the US.

Yesterday morning on NPR (National Pentagon Radio) their reporter in Baghdad was asked if he felt what Mr. Bush said in a recent speech was true-was the US military strategy in Iraq working? He replied that he felt what Mr. Bush said was true in some cases, like in Fallujah. The NPR reporter referred to Fallujah as ?pacified.? ?Pacified? Fallujah looks like a dead six year-old child in that city, shot by a US sniper in the Al-Dubbat neighborhood on December 1st, according to Al-Sharqiyah. ?Pacified? Fallujah looks like ?two US soldiers were killed by sniper fire on Wednesday [30 November] in the city of Al-Fallujah, [60 kilometers] west of Baghdad, according to eyewitnesses.

A tense atmosphere prevailed in the city after the US forces besieged some of its quarters and blocked the main street, while National Guard forces closed shops and asked the residents to stay in their homes.? Again according to Al-Sharqiyah.

?Pacified? Fallujah looks like 10 Marines killed and 11 wounded by a roadside bomb while on a ?foot patrol near Fallujah? on Thursday December 1st, which was the deadliest attack on American troops in nearly four months. So if you want to keep thinking there is peace in Fallujah, you?d better ignore the facts on the ground and keep listening to NPR ?presstitutes? talking on the radio from their hotel rooms in Baghdad. Surprised to hear this about NPR?

Don?t be.

According to Robert McChesney, president of Free Press, a national, non-profit, media reform group in the US which works to support a diverse and independent media, our public broadcasting outlets are already infiltrated by Bush Administration ideologues.

?White House loyalists inside the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have launched a crusade to remake PBS, NPR and other public media into official mouthpieces. Kenneth Tomlinson?s tenure at the CPB was characterized by targeting journalists like Bill Moyers who dared to air dissenting voices or prepare investigative reports on the administration,? writes McChesney, ?Tomlinson?s goal was clearly to fire a shot across the bow of all public stations so managers would shy away from the sort of investigative journalism that might expose Bush administration malfeasance. Tomlinson resigned in disgrace but left behind a cast of cronies to carry out his partisan crusade. And we still don?t know the extent to which Karl Rove and others at the White House orchestrated his efforts.?

Free Press <http://www.freepress.net/> also accuses the Bush Administration of bribing journalists, lying about the Iraq War, eliminating dissent in the mainstream media, gutting the Freedom of Information Act, consolidating media control, and manufacturing fake news.

We?ve recently had a nice example <http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051201/ap_on_go_pr_wh/iraq_news_stories>
of a bright and shining lie with regards to manufacturing fake news in Iraq. A secret military campaign to plant paid propoganda in the Iraqi news media has been uncovered. Exposed is Washington-based Lincoln Group, which has contracts with the military to ?provide media and public relations services.?

Meanwhile, failed US propoganda campaigns are not hiding the fact that military planners in Iraq estimate that there are as many as 100 resistance groups now fighting against the Anglo-American occupiers of their country.

Nor have the propogandists managed to hide the fact that two more members of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, Bulgaria and Ukraine, have announced they will begin withdrawing their combined 1,250 troops by the middle of this month.

Most likely, Bulgaria and Ukraine want to get their folks out of Iraq before more of the country becomes ?pacified? like Fallujah.


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(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
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