The media is al-Qaeda's best p.r. agency

in the top reuters story this morning on the latest u.s. military push in iraq, al qaeda is mentioned 13 times in a 614 word story...

• al Qaeda militants (4x)
• Sunni Islamist al Qaeda
• al Qaeda (5x)
• al Qaeda hotbed
• stronghold of al Qaeda
• al Qaeda domination

reading the article, you would think that al qaeda is not only everywhere in iraq but is also behind all the insurgent activity that's going on... but, as is typical with our media, you have to read down to paragraphs 14 and 17 to get any clue about the bigger picture...

President George W. Bush has sent 28,000 extra troops mainly to Baghdad to help curb sectarian bloodshed and buy time for Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to reach a political accommodation with disaffected minority Sunni Arabs, who are locked in a cycle of violence with majority Shi'ite Muslims.

[...]

[Brigadier-General Mick Bednarek, deputy commanding general, operations, 25th Infantry Division] said the fight against al Qaeda in Diyala also involved local Sunnis Arabs who opposed the United States but who wanted to end al Qaeda domination of their communities.

being the good little robotrons that we are, we read and hear al qaeda, al qaeda, al qaeda, 24/7, and we KNOW (because we've been told time and time and time again) that osama bin laden heads al qaeda, that al qaeda is our mortal enemy, and that al qaeda is out to destroy us in our beds as we sleep, so, by extension, we are fighting osama bin laden and terrorists in iraq... after all, the bush administration has to have multiple ways of reinforcing their key themes, right...?

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Cheney in Iraq: What, no mention of the oil law?

you can't tell me the passage of the oil law wasn't high on the agenda, but it isn't mentioned here...

Vice President Dick Cheney and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki acknowledged problems in the pace of reducing violence in Iraq on Wednesday, but both pledged their governments would continue working together toward a solution.

but maybe we can hazard a reasonable guess about WHEN it was talked about...

Once safely ensconced in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, however, Cheney appeared to reserve his toughest language for his normal target – the press. Cheney held a lot of photo ops with key Iraqi leaders like Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, but was adamant about not taking questions. At one point, Cheney emphasized to the assembled journalists that “this is just a photo spray.” Later in the day, as reporters filed into an embassy conference room for another photo of Cheney they overheard him tell his staff “then we kick the press out.”

wait, wait, wait... HERE IT IS...! i just KNEW it had to be kicking around somewhere...

U.S. officials have been livid since discovering that Iraq’s fledgling parliament – hardly a hive of activity in the first place – was planning to take a two-month summer recess, postponing work on a bill spelling out how oil money would be shared among Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian groups or a law authorizing new regional elections.

goddam it, don't they have a clue about priorities...? whassamadda wit' dose folks, hah...?

"[F]or the Iraqi parliament to take a two-month vacation in the middle of summer is impossible to understand,” [said] The new American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker.

poor clueless, ungrateful bastards...

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Leon Panetta is full of shit

saying "no open-ended commitment" to the iraqis will accomplish absolutely nothing except giving bushco an open-ended invitation to extend the iraq war for the rest of his presidential term... i don't care if leon panetta is "former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a member of the Iraq Study Group," he's still full of shit...

Instead of dividing over the strategy on the war, the president and the Congress should make very clear to the Iraqis that there is no open-ended commitment to our involvement. As the Iraq Study Group recommended, Iraqi leaders must pay a price if they continue to fail to make good on key reforms that they have promised the Iraqi people.

In calling for a specific withdrawal date, the House and Senate versions of the supplemental spending bill send a clear message to the Iraqis (even if they do face a certain veto). The worst mistake now would be to provide money for the war without sending the Iraqis any message at all about their responsibility for reforms. Both the president and the Congress at the very least must make the Iraqi government understand that future financial and military support is going to depend on Baghdad’s making substantial progress toward the milestones Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has publicly committed to.

and what's included on panetta's list of satisfactory benchmarks...? if you guessed the oil law, you can go to the head of the class...

The Iraqis promised to achieve, by the end of 2006 or early 2007, the approval ... of a law to regulate the oil industry and share revenues...

i find it so very interesting that something that totally favors big oil in ways unheard of in the industry gets buried in a list of so-called "benchmarks" and the benefit to big oil never gets mentioned... why is that, do you suppose...?

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