The Daily Misleader – 2004-07-02 15:01:49
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1208427&l=42685
Speaking at the NATO conference in Turkey yesterday, President Bush said, “15 months after the liberation of Iraq… the world witnessed the arrival of a free and sovereign Iraqi government.” [1]
The reality, however, is much different.
The same day that US administrator Paul Bremer officially ended the occupation, US prosecutors refused to abide by an Iraqi judge’s order acquitting Iraqi citizen Iyad Akmush Kanum of attempted murder of coalition troops. [2]
Instead, the prosecutors returned Kanum to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, claiming that “they were not bound by Iraqi law.”
In the days leading up to his departure, Bremer “issued a raft of edicts” in an effort to “exert US control over the country after the transfer of political authority.”[3]
Specifically, Bremer empowered a seven-member appointed commission “to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support.”
Bremer also “appointed Iraqis handpicked by his aides to influential positions in the interim government” with multi-year terms to “promote his concepts of governance” after the handover.
Iraq remains plagued by violence and “the primary military responsibility for fighting the insurgency remains as much in American hands as it did yesterday.”[4]
As a result, the New York Times concludes it is “ludicrous for administration officials to suggest that America’s occupation of Iraq has now somehow ended.”
SOURCES:
1. “Remarks by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair,” Whitehouse.gov, 6/28/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1208427&l=42686.
2. “Prisoner 27075 learns limits of sovereignty, Financial Times, 6/29/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1208427&l=42687
3. “US Edicts Curb Power Of Iraq’s Leadership,” Washington Post, 6/27/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1208427&l=42688″
4. “A Secretive Transfer in Iraq,” New York Times, 6/29/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1208427&l=42689
More Misleading
A Letter to NY Times Ombudsman Daniel Okrent and Washington Post Columnist David Ignatius
E. Mainland / White Sepulchre Foundation
Mr. Okrent and Mr. Ignatius:
You’ll presumably want to call your editors’ attention to the following errors:
1. Those held by CIA and US military in various camps and prisons around the world are not “detainees” but “prisoners”.
It is recommended that the Times cease the use of the former word, which connotes a temporary and casual delay: “I have been detained at the hairdressers” or “The teacher detained Johnny after school”.
Miscreants in my grammar school, for example, were “in detention”, which lasted minutes or a few hours until the parents could come and take custody.
“Detainees” is Orwellian Bushspeak, which you would do well to avoid.
2. The Times seems to have suppressed or avoided mention of Allawi’s role as chief terrorist for the Iraqi exiles in the period following Gulf War I, when he organized car bombings throughout Iraq causing many civilian casualties.
We know this from, for example, other media’s coverage of one CIA hireling who complained later that he was not paid adequately for his terrorist services. Wouldnit the fact that Iraq’s prime minister is a former US-salaried terrorist and car bomber be news that’s fit to print?
E. Mainland is the General Secretary of the White Sepulchre Foundation which aims to “give credit where it is due to the foremost scribes and Pharisees and examples of outstanding hypocrisy and bearing of false witness among today’s media, politicians and public figures of America and the world.”
