Washington Post soft-pedals stories that US actions against "Al Qaida & insurgents" wipe out entire Iraqi families.
In related news, the NEW YORK TIMES _buries_ the news that thousands of Jewish families have been deported from Italy, in cattle cars directed through Switzerland, on their way to death camps in Germany and Eastern Europe late in 1944 and early 1945.
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This WASHINGTON POST article, and its posting on the web, illustrates the Washington Post's function as a propaganda conduit for the US government, and specifically as a propaganda outlet for pro-war reporting.
In our previous post, we attempted to outline that the Iraq War has become a slow-burn genocide or ethnic cleansing, a modern reprise of Saddam's 1991 _Anfal campaign_ that saw the deaths of up to 300,000 Iraqi Shiites put down for rebelling against Saddam's regime, as US forces and commanders did NOTHING to stop the mass-murder executions.
Except this time around, the United States forces are arming and supplying the Shiite death-squads against Sunni religionist (if the US troops aren't dropping the bombs and doing the firing themselves), instead of sitting back as Sunni Republican Guards killed thousands of Iraqi Shiite rebels.
The George Clooney movie "Three Kings" portrays a handful of renegade US troops trying first to steal looted gold from bunkers left behind by Saddam's retreating army, and then modifying their plans to protect some of the victims targeted for extermination by the same Iraqi army returning after the cease-fire with US forces. According to chapters 2 and 3 of Peter Galbraith's first-person witness to Gulf War I Iraq (from his book "The End of Iraq"), the movie is pure Hollywood fantasy, because in fact American troops were PROHIBITED by their commanders from DOING ANYTHING to protect the victims, even though those US commanders going all the way up to the then Secretary of Defense Richard (Dick) Cheney and President George H.W. Bush (Sr.) COULD EASILY HAVE DECLARED Saddam's forces were IN VIOLATION of the Gulf War cease fire treaty, especially regarding the use of HELICOPTER GUNSHIPS to pave the way for tanks and infantry to complete the Anfal scorched-earth campaign - which was witnessed in plain view from the American side of the treaty lines. (Some of which were still in Iraqi territory.)
Cheney- Sec. DoD at end of Gulf War I, as Saddam's Anfal campaign wiped out 300,000 rebels
http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/cheney.htm
Gates- http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/09/1444242
Galbrith- http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=517687
According to DemocracyNow.com, the CIA director at the time was none other than Robert Gates, currently the newly appointed Secretary to replace Secretary Rumsfeld at the DoD. Since Bush, Sr., Cheney, and Gates were AT THE HEART of the US command decision TO DO NOTHING as Iraq's Republican Guards killed up to 300,000 Iraqis, it does not bode well for Iraqis today that the Bush Jr/Cheney/Gates team is now the "new" leadership team commanding the Iraq war today. (As we all know, Bush Jr. is far more obstinate, incurious, inexperienced, and ill-informed than his father ever was.)
Which brings us back to the WASHINGTON POST, in their latest article they severely soft-pedal the possibility that the two alleged "AL QAIDA" homes the US bombed into rubble were in fact the dwelling places of two entire Sunni families.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/09/AR2006120900286_pf.html
<< Controversy erupted over the Tharthar raid.
Ishaqi police Capt. Mohammed Faisal said that two houses belonging to two brothers were destroyed in the bombing. Khalaf Muhammad, 41, a farmer in the Tharthar area, also said that two houses were bombed and that 18 people lived in them. He said neighbors found the bodies of women and children in the rubble.
The Associated Press released a photo of a man holding a dead child at the bombing site. Another news agency, Agence France-Presse, also showed photographs of dead children. >>
NOTE (by going to the Post's online article, URL above) that the whore Post DOES NOT include a decent link to ANY of those international news stories of children and women KILLED IN THE US BOMBING of the two homes.... but instead gives you the Post's in-house link to.... FRANCE !!
We correct that propaganda omission, by including the link and article to an India Telegraph story on the same US mission, below. (As a predominantly HINDU nation with terse relations with Islamic Pakistan, India is probably not overly biased for the Muslim p.o.v. in the Iraq war, if, indeed, there is a singular "Muslim point of view" in the region's current Shiite-on-Sunni (and vice-versa) bloodbath.)
Regarding the Washington Post's PROPAGANDA, MISINFORMATION function re the Iraq War, we include this line from the first "Spotlight" review of Galbraith's book, at Amazon:
<< The author's basic proposition is that THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC HAS BEEN UNDONE by extraordinary arrogance, ignorance, and political cowardice. >>
That summation certainly applies to the cowardly, lying Washington Post over these past half-dozen (or full-dozen) years.
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Iraq police: Children killed in US attack:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061209/asp/foreign/story_7117269.asp
Iraqis inspect bodies of children allegedly killed in the US attack in Ishaqi, 90 km north of Baghdad. (Reuters)
Ishaqi (Iraq), Dec. 8 (Reuters): Iraqi and US officials gave sharply differing accounts of an overnight raid and air strike today in which up to 20 people were killed, with a town mayor accusing American troops of killing five children.
The US military issued a statement saying ground forces with air support killed 18 men and two women in the Thar Thar area of Salahaddin province, north of Baghdad. It suspected all of being al Qaida militants and said it found weapons including rocket-propelled grenades and explosive suicide vests.
In the village of Jalameda, near Ishaqi, 90 km north of the capital, police said they found the bodies of 17 dead civilians in the rubble of the family homes of brothers Mohammed Hussein Jalmoud and Mahmoud Hussein Jalmoud. Grieving relatives showed the bodies of five children wrapped in blankets to journalists.
Captain Nasser Abdul Majeed said that the 17 included six women and five children. They had been sent to the regional capital Tikrit to determine the cause of death.
The houses, surrounded by open fields, were flattened in the raid, leaving little but rubble and twisted steel rods.
Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver said the statement on al Qaida referred to the Ishaqi incident. It is an area where the Sunni insurgency is active. Earlier, Ishaqi police and the mayor put the death toll as high as 32.
