Sunday, February 17, 2013

Editorial: The crimes against Iraq didn't end in 2008


The question could be asked: How does Barack get away with supporting thug Nouri al-Maliki?  But the answer's so obvious that the question may seem uneeded.  He gets away with supporting Nouri because American media really doesn't give a damn about Iraq.


"There just isn't a huge amount of reporting coming out of Iraq these days by western media because budgets are shrinking,"  photo journalist Kael Alfred declared Friday on Your Call (KALW).  "There are a lot of conflicts happening all over the world and our attention shifts elsewhere.  And, you know, we were just speaking about this before the show, how ten years on, the anniversary of this war, we really don't know what's happening in Iraq, we don't what it looks like."

Which is why we're not doing cartwheels over Rachel Maddow's 'special' on MSNBC tomorrow night.  It's not just that Hubris is based on a book from several years ago, it's also that Rachel been talking it up as "this really definitive statement about how Bush lied us into a war."

Wow.  Color us underwhelmed.

Exactly how is that new or novel?

More importantly, what does it have to do with today.

MSNBC prime time is heavy on jocular hosts and light on actual reporters.  Maddow herself is nothing but a dee jay.  She wouldn't know how to break a story if you slow-walked her through it.

Iraq is a tragedy.

Maybe if Rachel put down the axe she uses on Bully Boy Bush long enough to explore the realities for the Iraqi people, how they are protesting and even why they are protesting?

iraq protests

They are protesting, you know?

Even if American media doesn't give a damn, Iraqis are protesting.  Shafaq News pointed out Thursday, "Demonstrations and sit-ins still continue in Iraq in protest against Maliki's policies, as the sit-in in Ramadi had entered its 56 day.  Maliki's government is witnessing recently protests in several areas, including Anbar, Fallujah, Kirkuk, Samarra, Mosul and a number of neighborhoods in Baghdad to demand reforms and cancel laws that prohibit some from participating in the political process, as well as cancelling Article 4 of Anti-Terrorism Act and release detainees especially women detainees and achieve balance in the institutions of the state."

When Maddow's special airs, it will be day 60 of the sit-in.  

The birth defects, will they be covered?

What about the 2010 elections?  Will Maddow acknowledge how Barack backed thug Nouri and the US government brokered The Erbil Agreement to get around the Constitution and let Nouri have a second term after the voters refused to grant him one?

Will she note how talk of democracy became a bigger joke under Barack when he refused to back the will of the Iraqi people in order to keep the US puppet installed as prime minister?

Again, the talk of the special indicates to us that we'll be seeing something we've seen many times before.

Bully Boy Bush is a War Criminal.  We've said that for years now.  So is Barack Obama and we've also said that for years now.  MSNBC, however, struggles with that.  So we're expecting a nostalgia program that does nothing to illuminate Iraq today or what the Iraqi people are going through.