NBC: Iraq in civil war; White House disagrees

For the first time a major TV network in the US(NBC), described the situation in Iraq as a civil war, resulting in an official disagreement by the white house. This is very important to understand how the americans get their news. What is obvious to the rest of the world is not for americans who generally get their news from such networks.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NBC News on Monday branded the
Iraq conflict a civil war -- a decision that put it at odds with the White House and that analysts said would increase public disillusionment with the U.S. troop presence there.

NBC, a major U.S. television network, said the Iraqi government's inability to stop spiraling violence between rival factions fit its definition of civil war.[....]
Several analysts said NBC's decision was important as the administration would face more pressure to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq if the U.S. public comes to view the conflict as a civil war.

The decision "certainly is a major milestone," said Ted Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

"That does change the terminology and is likely to change the perspective of viewers, and one suspects other media outlets will sooner or later follow suit."

Public weariness with the conflict -- which has now lasted longer than U.S. involvement in World War Two -- helped Democrats take control of Congress from Bush's Republican Party in November 7 elections.

Analysts said Americans would not tolerate U.S. troops being used as referees between warring Iraqi factions.
NBC: Iraq in civil war; White House disagrees

What kind of people have we become?

We take our breakfast and enjoy our morning coffee while reading or watching the news of hundreds of Iraqis, being blown off by some suicide bomber whose act is supposed to free his country from the US occupation. And then we kiss our wives goodbye and drive to work enjoying our favorite music (George Michael’s for me). During lunch break, we eat a sandwich while surfing the news sites, looking at dead bodies and torn cars and bloody scenes and then go back to work. We’ve been immunized against pain and we got used to injustice, we’re loosing our humanity, we accepted the fact that Iraqis, Palestinians, Sudanese have a different destiny then ours. They die, we watch!

This is what we became, even the Americans who ask for US withdrawal, they do it to save US soldiers life and US money not for the poor Iraqis who are supposed to be free now, enjoying democracy paid by Uncle Sam.

It is as if we’re watching a big reality show, where children, women and men die because of decisions of some lunatic politicians who are telling us that they made it their job to change the world and make it a better place for all of us. BS!!

Isn’t so obvious that the war in Iraq is wrong? Why don’t we leave these poor people live and enjoy their life the way they want it, raise their kids and build their country their way, the same way we do. How can they dare, stand in front of cameras and tell us that this is the right thing to do, and that they’re dying for their own good!!

Isn’t so obvious that the people of Palestine are suffering from injustice and cupidity? Isn’t so obvious that it is time they have their own state? Don’t they deserve to live in security, the same way most of us do? How can they dare explain to us that they deserve this life (or death)!

Why is it that power falls always in the hand of unwise people, blind people, cupid and idiots? Even democracy is failing preventing these aggressions. The US government is staying in Iraq against the will of the majority of US voters, why? Why do the Israelis believe that they are better fighting the Arabs than cooperating with them? Why is it that these leaders who wanted to fight for the freedom of Iraq and liberating it from Saddam, don’t do the same thing for Sudan, or North Korea or a lot of these poor countries in Africa who are still fighting for food and water? Why do they think that we are idiots and will believe such lies? At least during the colonization era, the British or the French were not hiding it that they need these countries for their own use. Now they achieve the same thing by making us believe that they are helping.

Today 150 died and 300 got wounded in Iraq. 3800 died in October, 3300 in September, 3000 in August. 60000 civilians died form violence, more than 500,000 died from the effect of the war on the country infrastructure. A country is losing its population, its history is being looted, thousands of historical artifacts thousand years old are lost, and one of the seven world wonder is being a world blunder. Enough is enough! Stop helping them, leave them alone! Mr. Bush, it is a civil war that you created all right! So at least don’t insult us by saying it is not.

I think we do owe these people an apology, in the form of bringing to justice whoever is responsible for this mess. Whoever opened this Pandora box that is spreading death and misery should be held responsible for his acts.

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Key points in the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq report released Wednesday:

CIVILIANS VIOLENTLY KILLED: October (3,709), September (3,345), August (3,009), July (3,590).

PROFESSIONAL TARGETS: Assassinations of professionals continued at an alarming rate in the past two months, including journalists, teachers, professors, lawyers, doctors and political and religious leaders.

DISPLACED PEOPLE: An estimated 1.6 million have sought refuge in neighboring countries since 2003. An estimated 418,392 people have been displaced by sectarian violence and 15,240 by military operations since Sunni-Arab insurgents bombed a Shiite shrine in Samara on Feb. 22, 2006. An estimated 100,000 people per month have left Iraq in the past few months.

DETAINEES: At the end of October, there were 29,256 detainees in Iraq, about 46 percent held in coalition facilities and 54 percent in Iraqi prisons.

TARGETED SCHOOLS: Schools have increasingly become a target for sectarian and other criminal attacks. More than 300 teachers and Ministry of Education employees were killed and 1,158 wounded in 2006 alone.

CLAIMING BODIES: During October, more than 200 unidentified bodies were transferred to cemeteries in the two Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. If a victim is killed in a military operation, family members may be reluctant to claim the body at the morgues, fearing militias or security forces there could take revenge against the rest of the family.

IRAQI SECURITY FORCES: Absenteeism is widespread among Iraqi army and police forces, some of which are infiltrated by militias and death squads. In Kirkuk alone, half of the 5,000 member police force and its 13,000 army soldiers reportedly are not reporting for duty at any given time and many fail to return to duty.
UN Report about Iraq (The Associated Press)

The Bush effect

It is amazing how some visionary people can predict or see through the cloud of current events. Georges Orwell in his “1984” fiction book described through the story of a couple of lovers how the world would be in 1984. The book was written in 1946, just after WWII and the start of the cold war era.

The deception, the totalitarianism, the despotism, the Big Brother concept, the population surveillance, the spinning of the news, the rewriting of history by governments to suit its politics, justifying the unjustifiable…etc. On all this, Orwell was right on.

And I am not talking here about governments of banana countries, I am thinking about the current administration of the USA, headed by President Bush.

I talked about one of the aspects of news spinning and truth twisting in a post, a couple of days ago. In the same series, I want to share with these blunders made by Bush’s administration.

1) Iraq war spending:
SIGIR, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is a body created by US congress to oversee the spending of over $3 billion of taxpayer’s money on Iraq reconstruction. This team audited hundreds of projects saving around $400M. It investigated 243 cases of abuse or embezzlement that sometimes resulted in arrest and jailing of such wrong doers. It also issued reports criticizing the white house effort of reconstruction.

I guess Bush’s administration did not like seeing these contractors having tough time trying to get the money, so in mid September, he instructed republicans in the congress to slip a small provision in a military bill they are working on, that would close this office by 10/07. They did, it passed and he signed it. A lot of congressman did not know that the just did that until 2 days ago! The new democrat led senate just introduced a bill that would extend the SIGIR mission beyond 2007. The fact that a lot of this

2)Bush Internment camps
In January 2006 Homeland Security awarded a $385 million contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton Co., to build "temporary detention and processing capabilities" aka “internment camps” in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. Actually more clues about the US switching to be a police state can be found on this article “Toward a police state in America”

3) On October 17, 2006 Bush signed the Military Commissions Act (MCA). This law was barely covered in the US and it breaks all the rules of civil and human. Under the MCA the president or the secretary of defense can declare any person US citizen or not an "enemy combatant" who can be jailed, has no right to an attorney and can even be tortured. Jail time in unlimited!!!! Is this constitutional? You understand now how right was Orwell in “1984”.

4)In the same Military bill used in (1), republicans buried deep down the hundreds of acts, sections and titles a small provision that give full power to the president to use the state national guards, which in the US is normally equivalent to a state martial laws, since that’s the only time where state soldiers report to the president instead of their governor. Some call this a mini coup. This information was not mentioned in any newspaper and it came to light through blog rumors. A journalist took the time to check and confirm it. I did the same exercise by checking the congress site, and found it here, look for Title V, Subtitle B, section 531 :-). So now soldiers can be used on the US soil at any time, peace or war, whenever the president or the secretary of state requires it.

" To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. " George Orwell.

" Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. " George Orwell.