The Foley scandal is eating up all the TV News broadcast time, and a large section of internet bandwidth, as well. Which is unfortunate in a way, because the most glaring symbol of Republican incompetence and misrule continues to be Iraq:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — For a second day, gunmen dressed as Iraqi government forces staged a mass kidnapping Monday, raiding several computer stores in central Baghdad and seizing at least 14 people, a Baghdad emergency police official told CNN.
The abductions were carried out by at least 25 gunmen impersonating Iraqi security forces. The kidnappers, traveling in seven vehicles, raided computer stores near Baghdad’s Technology University around noon (5 a.m. ET).
On Sunday, at least 20 gunmen, several disguised as police commandos, kidnapped 26 workers from a Baghdad meat processing plant, according to a Baghdad emergency police official.
Now remember, this is all happening at a time when the entire city of Baghdad is supposed to be virtually locked down under martial law.
Martial law, which has been in effect for several months, includes a nighttime curfew and gives the government extra powers to make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations when it deems necessary. The law will cover all of Iraq except the autonomous Kurdish areas in the north.
At a time and place When the bulk of our active forces are deployed there to “improve the security situation” we can’t stop mass kidnappings in broad daylight. Nor can we stop any of the following:
(cont.)
In other violence on Monday, three roadside bombs in Baghdad killed three people and wounded nine others, including three Iraqi soldiers, police said.
Earlier in the day, two Iraqi policemen were killed and three other officers were wounded when gunmen ambushed their patrol in Kut al-Hay, a Kut health center official told CNN. Kut al-Hay is located about about 125 miles (200 kilometers) south of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, in Kut, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) south of Baghdad, the morgue Monday received five bodies that were recovered from the town of Suwayra a day earlier. Three of the bodies had been decapitated. […]
Three U.S. Marines died Sunday in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Monday. […]
The British Ministry of Defense Monday confirmed the death of a British soldier, killed Sunday in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
The soldier, a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, died in an attack on the Shaat Al Arab Hotel base in Basra, the MOD said. Another soldier was seriously injured in the attack. […]
Other developments
Police found 50 unidentified bullet-riddled bodies, some with signs of torture, scattered across the Iraqi capital on Sunday. … Meanwhile, there was no let-up in attacks across Iraq Sunday. At least six bombings wounded 25 people and killed four others.
Saturday night, gunmen shot and killed a Shiite sheik who headed the local office of the Shahid al-Mihrab organization, which is funded by Iraq’s leading Shiite political party, a police official told CNN. Sheik Numan al-Nassri was killed near his home in Diwaniya, a predominantly Shiite city about 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Baghdad.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday by small arms fire in Iraq’s volatile Anbar province, according to a military news release. The soldiers were assigned to the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary.)
The U.S. military also said Sunday that a U.S. soldier died from injuries suffered in a Humvee accident near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Saturday.
This is run of the mill reporting from Iraq, day after day, every day. A catalog of horrors: torture, bombings, deaths, mutilations and failure. It isn’t shown on our television screens much anymore, and the name “Iraq” rarely comes up except in conversations about political developments back in America. But this is the reality our television media, and much of our print media is ignoring every day. And this is only the stuff that gets through the filter of editors and publishers and god knows who else-ers censoring content. I don’t think we have even the faintest idea how horrific Iraq truly is.
And that’s because they want it that way. The corporate controlled media wants it that way, and the Bush White House wants it that way, and the Republicans running for Congress want it that way. And so, our neighbors, many of our loved ones, and most of our fellow Americans, those who do not share our obsession with news and “politics,” have only the vaguest notion that something is not right in Iraq. The true picture, hidden from us, is even more hidden from their collective consciousness.
Because if they understood even half of what we know, they’d be screaming in the streets for Bush’s impeachment. And there would be no disconnect in the polls between those who see Republicans as weaker on Iraq, but stronger on terrorism, than Democrats. They would know they’d been had by a gang of incompetent fools and criminals, lied to and spun like so many children’s tops. They would get the connection between our failure in Iraq and the increased risk of terrorism around the world that 16 American intelligence agencies reported months ago to President Bush.
They would, that is, if someone would tell them. If our nightly news spent as much time reporting on Iraq as they do about the latest video game craze, or the latest celebrity break-up. Somebody like our intimidated, subservient, Republican campaign contributing mass media.
I know. Crazy to even think about it, isn’t it?
