ANOTHER BAD JOKE

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE in war between my propaganda and yours?  Mine becomes the truth if I win the war.  Or so it would seem.  As previously noted, the Bush administration doesn’t believe truth is enough to win a war.  You could call that a joke as poor as Bush’s sad try at humor in suggesting the bombing of another al Jazeera office after two have been bombed already.

THE JOKE sounds more bitter when you realize how willing some are to suspend the concept of the free exchange of ideas and sovereignty for a little mayhem, murder, and paranoia. What sort of society fosters such a response?  A confident one?  Or a doubting, questioning one?

SHUTTING DOWN al Jazeera and taking action against its base nation, our “nominal ally,” Qatar, are the right thing to do, according to the likes of Daniel Johnson. 

. . . how far can the West tolerate the dissemination of Islamist propaganda intended to poison the minds of Muslims against Jews and "Crusaders."  The fact that it is the major Arab global network does not give Al Jazeera the right to disseminate material that directly threatens American or British national security.

THE WEST CAN ONLY “tolerate” free expression as long as it respects Western ideals.  The antidote for poisonous propaganda can only be truth.  Stronger, more invasive measures weaken the claims we make for a free society as a model for others to emulate. When did America become so paranoid and weak that it must resort to lies and quell opposing views both at home and abroad?  Or are the weak and paranoid only “our leaders?”  What a pathetic joke indeed. 

NOTE: "Crusaders" is not something Middle Easterners typically attach quote marks to with a certain air of disdain because the stories of "The Crusades" have been passed down by both word of mouth and the written hand for generations.  History has a long memory in a land puncuated by periods of violence.  More on this at Firedog Lake.

RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING
FIGHTING LIKE AMERICANS [Guardian UK] The meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair took place at a time when Whitehall officials, intelligence officers, and British military commanders were expressing outrage at the scale of the US assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, in which up to 1,000 civilians are feared to have died. Pictures of the attack shown on al-Jazeera had infuriated US generals. The government was also arguing with Washington about the number of extra British troops to be sent to Iraq at a time when it was feared they would be endangered by what a separately leaked Foreign Office memo called "heavy-handed" US military tactics.
There were UK anxieties that US bombing in civilian areas in Falluja would unite Sunnis and Shias against British forces. The criticism came not only from anti-war MPs, but from Mr Blair's most senior military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers. When Mr Blair met Mr Bush in Washington, military advisers were urging the prime minister to send extra forces only on British terms. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, said while British troops had to fight with the Americans, "that does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans". 

THE HERETIK NOTES in the end how this war is viewed will come down to Fallujah.  What was done there, how the total war was waged there split the British from the Americans, and it got covered by al Jazeera harshly.  Harsh truths may not wait for the history of the tomorrow of passing decades.  Harsh truths may come with a tomorrow next week if not sooner.

CAN SOMEBODY SAY CONSPIRACY?  [Juan Cole] Aljazeera was getting out the word of high civilian casualties in Fallujah, creating an outcry and prompting threats to resign among the US-appointed Interim Governing Council politicians. The plot is, of course, odious, if the evidence for it stands up, and I would argue that it was criminal. The FBI has busted mafiosi for plotting out murders over spaghetti in restaurants in Queens. How is this different?

THE HERETIK SEES no difference. At some point Bush and Blair and Daniel Johnson all fell into the same moral sewer.  Not much light down there and what gets tossed around is what is there.

BOOM, BOOM, OUT GO THE LIGHTS [Boris Johnson via Ceci]  . . .if his [Bush’s]remarks were just an innocent piece of cretinism, then why in the name of holy thunder has the British state decreed that anyone printing those remarks will be sent to prison?
We all hope and pray that the American President was engaging in nothing more than neo-con Tourette-style babble about blowing things up. We are quite prepared to believe that the Daily Mirror is wrong. We are ready to accept that the two British civil servants who have leaked the account are either malicious or mistaken. But if there is one thing that would seem to confirm the essential accuracy of the story, it is that the Attorney General has announced that he will prosecute anyone printing the exact facts.

THE HERETIK OFTEN hates clonelike sportsspeak.  The latest phrase you will hear is, “Lights out.”  Done, over.  In the case of George W. Bush, Boris Johnson wins the Lights Out Award for most pointed piercing of the prick’s balloon with “neo-con Tourette style babble.”  And it is light’s out for Bush because the OSA response previously noted by the British is so off the hook, it’s a walk off homer, it’s . . . oy.


ALSO: al Jazeera wants answers from Bush and Blair. AND: A message from al Jazeera staffers.

Comments

[grannyinsanity]

Joe, here is a pre war article where America threatened to shoot non embedded journalists:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29750.html

I wish Al Jazzeera all the luck in the world getting an investigation and the truth. Really.

Eason Jordan could not get it, neither could Christine Ampadour or the National Geographic reporter who was fired in midshift on live television.

Daniel Pearl's death has never been fully and openly investigated. Nick Berg was not a journalist, but his death was also never fully and openly investigated.

Two of Reuters employees were held, subjected to severe physical stress, slapped around, and sexually humiliated for days after the army cleared them of any suspicion of anything. There was not an open and thorough investigation there, either.

There have been 90? or so journalists deliberately killed in Iraq and Afghanistan without much ado.

Jeanne at Body and Soul wrote an awful lot about journalist deaths, that's where I go every time I try to write about it. (I haven't succeeded once)

Good Luck getting that investigation, Al Jazzeera.