Sunday, August 27, 2006
Betterer and Betterer
Or the ongoing Iraqi civil war.
The security situation in Baghdad is just looking rosy. Why Baghdad is so safe it makes most U.S. cities look down right dangerous. Except, as CNN reminds us there are the occasional incidents
As is so often the case in Iraq these days (or rather years) the bombing of the Palestine Hotel wasn't the only bombing of the day. The same CNN story notes how,
CNN ought to be ashamed of themselves for implying that the target of the bomb was a Shiite area and not the Palestine Hotel,
Or the ongoing Iraqi civil war.
The security situation in Baghdad is just looking rosy. Why Baghdad is so safe it makes most U.S. cities look down right dangerous. Except, as CNN reminds us there are the occasional incidents
A bomb planted in a minibus killed five people and wounded 10 when it exploded outside a hotel in a commercial area in the heart of central Baghdad.Of course, this is nothing really to worry about. I mean it's not like the Palestine Hotel has come under attack before or anything (really the cement truck bombing in 2005 is just the kind of chaos that happens after an invasion and is the kind of messy thing that happens while democracy takes root).
As is so often the case in Iraq these days (or rather years) the bombing of the Palestine Hotel wasn't the only bombing of the day. The same CNN story notes how,
at least two people were killed and 20 others wounded when a car bomb exploded outside Al-Sabah, Iraq's state-owned daily newspaper.Just so everyone's sure of what happened here, a bomb blows up in front of the Palestine Hotel, which the CNN story fails to mention had been attacked earlier and that the Palestine Hotel was (and perhaps still is) the "home" of many journalists, especially foreign journalists. Next a bomb blows up in front of the state-run newspaer. Hmmm...somehow this strikes me as more than just your run of the mill sectarian violence that CNN claims it to be. This sounds like someone sending a message to someone. It sounds like someone with a plan rather than just random violence. It sounds like the kind of thing that happens in a civil war, where targets are selected for a strategic or tatcial purpose.
CNN ought to be ashamed of themselves for implying that the target of the bomb was a Shiite area and not the Palestine Hotel,
the bus was on Saadoun Street, heading toward a Shiite neighborhood, when it blew up outside the Palestine Hotel.CNN sure is connecting the dots in a very strange manner when it comes to these bombings, doing its very best to put the bombings down as nothing more than two random acts instead of a sign that there maybe a plan behind the violence. Now one may ask why is CNN claiming that the attack on the Palestine Hotel wasn't really an attack on the Palestine Hotel and was really a bomb that missed it real target--a Shiite area? The answer to this query is that random violence isn't a sign of a policy failure. Targeted bombings of journalists, however is a sign that the government in Iraq is powerless, that the Bush policy is a failure (though if someone can acutally point to a "policy" I'd be ever so grateful), and that Iraq is in a state of civil war. Thus, CNN spins the bombing of the Palestine Hotel to make it seem like just another random bombing, and even worse a bombing that missed its real target, in order to obscure the fact that whatever the U.S. and the Iraqi "government" are doing to bring peace and democarcy to Iraq isn't working, hasn't worked for at least two years, and doesn't have much chance of working unless some dramatic policy changes are made.