New York Times refuses to admit Iraq not in a civil war
Published Tue, Nov 28 2006 9:58 AM
Technorati Tags: War on Terror
In an article in the New York Times today Sheryl Gay Stolberg and John O'Neil immediately jump on statements by President Bush. The very first sentence of the article notes that he refuses to call the sectarian violence in Iraq a civil war.
TALLINN, Estonia, Nov. 28 — President Bush today said Al Qaeda was to blame for the rising wave of sectarian violence in Iraq, which he refused to label a civil war. Mr. Bush said he would press Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, during meetings in Jordan later this week to lay out a strategy for restoring order.
It's not a civil war, no matter how much the New York Times, Reuters, and the Associated Press want to portray it as one. It's a couple of nests of terrorists fighting one another. Sunni terrorists have been attacking Shiite terrorists, and the Shiite terrorists have been attacking Sunni terrorists.
There isn't open rebellion against the Iraqi government. In fact, most of the sectarian violence is isolated to a few small areas. Sunnis and Shiites appear to be able to live peacefully in Basra.
The Associated Press has been using terrorist sources to prop up the lie that Iraq is in a civil war. Their reporting has been proven to be false. We know this because two of their primary sources that they've been using for months have turned out to be fraudulent.
The growing cycle of violence have prompted warnings from world leaders, including Jordan’s King Abdullah and Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, that the country is at the brink of civil war.
This is wishful thinking. Kofi Annan lost his credibility a long time ago. The man simply cannot see things the way they are. He has opposed the war on terror almost since its beginning. He certainly opposed the invasion of Iraq, quite possibly because his son was heavily involved in corruption with the oil for food scandal.
What we are really experiencing is the growing media cycle more than a growing cycle of violence. Iraq has been a violent place for quite some time. According to CENTCOM violence in Iraq has actually dropped since the end of Ramadan.
This summer we heard the first talk of civil war in Iraq from media talking heads and pundits. Soon that became the story line. "Is Iraq in a civil war?", "The civil war in Iraq." blah-blah-blah-civil war-blah-blah.
Last year it was comparisons of the so-called insurgents to the American founding fathers and Iraqi militiamen (al Qaeda and other terrorists, including Iranians and Syrians actually) were "revolutionary heros". And of course all through the war there have been the constant comparisons to Vietnam.
The president acknowledged that there were high levels of sectarian violence in Iraq, but he put the blame for the disorder squarely on Al Qaeda.
“There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of the attacks by Al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal,” Mr. Bush said, adding that he planned to work with Mr. Maliki “to defeat these elements.”
Referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq who was killed by American forces over the summer, he added, “The plan of Mr. Zarqawi was to foment sectarian violence.”
Of course the New York Times glosses over this fairly quickly because it doesn't fit the story line. They immediately return to the theme that it's a civil war.
Mr. Bush’s remarks are at odds with statements made in recent weeks both by American military commanders and by Mr. Maliki.
While American military and intelligence officials credit Al Qaeda’s attack on a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February with having sparked waves of sectarian violence, more recently the officials have consistently described a more complicated picture. Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency characterized the situation before Congress as an “ongoing, violent struggle for power.”
That assessment was more in line with Mr. Maliki’s declaration after the recent bombings that such attacks are “the reflection of political backgrounds” and that “the crisis is political.”
Of course it's political. Al Qaeda's goal in fomenting the sectarian violence is to destabilize the region. That doesn't make it a civil war. The so-called insurgents want to destabilize Iraq. The sectarian violence is occurring between Sunnis and Shiites. It's terrorists fighting terrorists and terrorists killing the Iraqi people.
When a Sunni terrorist kills a Shiite terrorist in Sadr city the Shiites use that as an excuse to rail against the Americans because we're not providing enough security. When Shiites direct reprisals at Sunni mosques, the Associated Press calls on a terrorist source to lay false claims of barbaric violence at the Shiite's feet and to say that the Iraqi military just stood by and watched.
General Caldwell described Al Qaeda as having been “severely disorganized” by American and Iraqi efforts this year, but said it is still “the most well-funded of any group and can produce the most sensational attacks of any element out there.”
He summarized the continuing violence in Baghdad this way: Shiite militias conducting murders and assassinations in the city’s Sunni western section, and Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda staging “high visibility casualty events” in the city’s predominantly Shiite east.
General Caldwell declined to say that the country was engulfed in a civil war, saying that Iraq’s government continues to function and that the conflict did not involve “another viable entity that’s vying to take control.”
"General Caldwell declined to say that the country was engulfed in a civil war". In other words, General Caldwell was pressed by the reporter to say that the country was engulfed in a civil war and didn't give the reporter the satisfaction.
That's what this is really about. The major news media and the Democrat party want the world to have the perception that Iraq is in a civil war. They want the perception to spread that what's happening there is the result of a failure of western ideas in a muslim region. After all, wasn't that what they said before we went in? That the Iraqi people and in fact all Arabic people weren't suited for democracy?
They are actively seeking the defeat of the United States in the War on Terror. They're doing it through a campaign of misinformation and propaganda under the guise of "objective news reporting." But they're still doing it.
Linked at Gateway Pundit, Rightwing Guy, Right Pundits.
Trackback URI for this post: http://perrinelson.com/track.aspx?postid=202
Permalink URI for this post: http://perrinelson.com/2006/11/28/202.aspx
Subscribe to this entry's
comment feed. (Atom)
Comments to this entry are closed.