The first of Jamail's columns is published today on tomdispatch.com - and a great window it is to understand what's truly happening beyond the reach of the spin masters. It's crazy how there's been a concious effort by the U.S. propaganda machine to hide the real news from the U.S. and Iraqi citizens. But, as the old saying goes, information yearns to be free. So here's a paragraph - at no charge!
Yet among Iraqis the growing resistance was predicted long ago. One telling moment for me came last June amid daily suicide car bombings in Baghdad. While footage of cars with broken glass and bullet holes in their frames flashed across a television screen, my translator Hamid, an older man who had already grown weary of the violence, said softly, "It has begun. These are only the start, and they will not stop. Even after June 30." That, of course, was the date of the long-promised handover of "sovereignty" to a new Iraqi government, after which, American officials fervently predicted, violence in the country would begin to subside. The same pattern of prediction and of a contrarian reality can now be seen in relation to the upcoming elections.
You owe it to yourself to read the entire article, as well as this one today from Znet. Remember that last week, the governor of Baghdad province was gunned down? The MSM characterized his assassination with as much ho-hum as a crack dealer being shot in South Central LA. The assassination rated two short paragraphs in the "liberal" San Francisco Chronicle.
Jamail fills in the blanks:
...But the details on the killing of the governor from an eyewitness escaped the news. The convoy was hit by a well coordinated attack. There were two groups of fighters who manned cigarette stands which line the streets of Baghdad, awaiting the governor. In addition, there were gunmen on the tops of nearby shops…the convoy was attacked, and the governors car escaped…only to be chased down by a car full of gunmen who finished the job. The only civilians who were shot were hit by the random firing from the governor’s guards...
And this about Fallujah, where apparently a complete and total news blackout is in effect. Remember, this is a city the size of Austin, Texas that was literally wiped off the face of the earth:
The demolition of Fallujah continues. Two of my sources inside the city, who live in different neighborhoods, report that the military is now burning homes. Apparently, they are finding booby traps, so they are piling furniture up in the homes, dousing it with fuel, and burning it...
Dahr Jamail is an independent American doing the job that the mainstream media should have been doing all along. That the few of us who read Jamail's dispatches have to rely on a few brave souls like him to understand the reality of Iraq rather than the "Neverland" scenario spun by the MSM, tells you how far the MSM has been assimilated into the propaganda machine.
For the life of me, I still don't know why a government agency had to pay Armstrong Williams a quarter million dollars to get a bullshit message out. There's plenty of media whores who would / were / are doing it for table scraps in the Green Zone.
