Recall what General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told our country the other day on Meet Timmeh in the Flesh? It was something along the lines of a civil war in Iraq is just a big fat hyped up media lie:
WASHINGTON, March 5, 2006 – The Iraqi people responded to terrorist outrages by pulling back from the abyss of a civil war, Marine Gen. Peter Pace said on NBC’s Meet the Press [Sunday]. […]
. . . “No matter where you look – at their military, their police, their society – things are much better this year, than last,” he said.
He said the military must work harder to get the good news in Iraq out to the American people. The only images the American people see from Iraq entail attacks and explosions. “People don’t get a chance to see or hear about the good things that are happening,” he said.
Ah, yes. All the good news we keep missing. I wonder why that is? Why does news like this keep getting in the way of all those heartwarming stories Pace keeps talking about?
More on the flip side . . .
Deadly violence in Iraq escalates with abductions, mass executions
By John Ward Anderson
Washington PostBAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen wearing what appeared to be the uniforms of Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos stormed a private security company in the capital Wednesday afternoon and kidnapped as many as 50 employees, a ministry official said. In an atmosphere of spiraling lawlessness, other violence killed at least 47 people across the country between Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
In the deadliest incident, the bodies of 18 men, all bound at the wrists and blindfolded, were found piled in an abandoned minibus late Tuesday by a U.S. military patrol in Al-Mansur, a mixed neighborhood of Shiite and Sunni Arabs in western Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement Wednesday.
Baghdad police said 15 of the victims, including the driver, had been strangled and that three had been shot in the back of the head.
The killings and mass kidnapping were new illustrations of deteriorating security in many parts of Iraq, particularly the capital. Multiple slayings, often of people from the same family or religious sect, have become commonplace, their bodies discovered bound and gagged.
I don’t know about you, General Pace, but if lawless gangs were roaming the streets of New York City, kidnapping and murdering people at will, with many of the perpetrators wearing the uniforms of police or government law enforcement agencies, and if we kept seeing reports that electrical power and safe water to drink were at a premium there, I might be inclined to think that there are more important things to deal with than making sure the “good news” about New York didn’t get obscured by all this violence. I know I sure wouldn’t be talking about how New Yorkers had stared into the abyss and backed away from the chaos of civil war.
You see, General Pace, when people wake up every day wondering if it will be their last, or wondering which one of their loved ones might be killed that day, it sort of puts a damper on all the happy talk about “free and fair elections” and how the politicians are all working together to maintain calm, and blah, blah, blah. All the good news in the world can’t compensate for destroyed homes, dead bodies, sick kids and a gut wrenching constant fear that infests every single waking moment and most of one’s dreams. You need real security, not platitudes and empty promises. You need to see real reconstruction of critical infrastructure, not money being pissed away on trying to keep the construction workers safe from “terrorists.”
So, General Pace, care to retract your remarks?
I thought as much.
Update [2006-3-9 9:14:6 by Steven D]: Per the Washington Post today, the “bad news” we’ve been getting is actually worse than we’ve been told:
BAGHDAD, March 8 — Days after the bombing of a Shiite shrine unleashed a wave of retaliatory killings of Sunnis, the leading Shiite party in Iraq’s governing coalition directed the Health Ministry to stop tabulating execution-style shootings, according to a ministry official familiar with the recording of deaths.
The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared for his safety, said a representative of the Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, ordered that government hospitals and morgues catalogue deaths caused by bombings or clashes with insurgents, but not by execution-style shootings.
Wonder if General Pace knows about this little bit of disinformation? Whattaya think?
The Interior Minister’s motorcade was bombed the other day, though he wasn’t using it at the time (there has to be a story behind that). When the man in charge of your death squads is almost killed by rebels, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that you are in fact at the beginning of a civil war. Actually, the government feeling that they need death squads to keep order is a pretty good indicator that a civil war is coming.
Attacks on the Interior Ministry are most likely done with U.S. support. The United States greatest enemy in Iraq is not the insurgents it is the interior ministry which is wholly allied with Iran.
http://www.bushplanet.blogspot.com/
They don’t count the people the government is killing for obvious reasons, but I would bet that everyone in Iraq knows about them. There is no way Pace isn’t briefed on the death squad operations.
Of course he is. Everyone with half a brain knows we are being lied to under orders that come straight from Rummy via Cheney.
At the moment, Rummy, Condi and Abizaid have emerged from their caves and are on the Hill.
And just so it’s all very clear, here’s an AP top story on the testimony this am.
“Rumsfeld Says Iraqis Would Stop Civil War”
Let me tell you a story that happened a couple of days ago. One of my tenants is Marine with the Air Squadrons. He just returned last Saturday from an eight month tour in Iraq. I asked him how bad it really is over there. His reply flabbergasted me. His words were almost the same as Gen. Pace’s. He sais the media only shows the bad stuff. That the violence is pretty isolated mostly around Bagdad. I said but you are in the air not on the ground. His response was “Yeah but they shoot rockets at us all the time. He was damn proud he brought all of his squadron home safe and sound without any deaths or injuries.
He also said that it will take at least ten years over there but that we will be there permanently. He said, “You know just look at Germany, Japan etc. We never left there either. He is an officer and a career Marine. I so wanted to ask him what he was smoking but being in the position I am in(manager of the complex) I thought better of it. Are these guys brainwashed or what?
Air Sqaudrons.
He’s not a grunt on the ground on patrol. I’m not minimizing his service or the danger he was in, but the air war is not the same as the ground war. I just don’t trust his perspective.
That was my perspective too Steven.
Like a captain, a general is the last to go awol.
“NeoCon allies desert Bush over Iraq”
These are the right-wing intellectuals who demanded George Bush invade Iraq. Now they admit they got it wrong. Are you listening, Mr President?
and in a related article that’s worth a read
“At last, the warmongers are prepared to face the facts and admit they were wrong.”
Don’t believe any of the “good things” that happenned in Vietnam were reported either. Could it be that there weren’t any?
What an idiot!
Pace is not as dumb as some of the general’s they have had over there. He simply has sold out. Look at the pained expression on his face. He is battlling his internal demons, he’s lying, he doesn’t feel very comfortable doing it. That’s an improvement over what they usually have.
He’s nothing like that baldheaded awful killer Gerneral who “brilliantly” led the stupidest invasion in 1.000 years and immediately retired to spend more time with his family in the corporate sector. Wha’ts his name?