(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Thursday, May 08, 2003
"This region was the first to get schools back up and running, to have guarded fuel stations and about 24 hours from now to stand up an interim government," US military spokeswoman Major Charmaine Means said of Mosul three days back, as the city, Iraq's third largest, was preparing to hold "liberated" Iraq's first election.
Indeed, as they say. By all accounts, Major Means and her colleagues were presiding over an ethnically diverse town mustering heroic feats of reconstruction. Even The Australian, which has run some truly regrettable material in its day, allowed that the "Melting pot city" was "a model of stability."
So how do unelected Resident Bush's feel-good forces further this expanding freedom? By taking it away of course. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that higher-ups in the Army, steamed that Mosul's only television station continued to show feeds from al-Jazeera, ordered troops on the ground to seize the station. Rightfully objecting that placing armed troops in the station "would intimidate the station's Arab employees into airing only programming produced by, or acceptable to, the American military," something somewhat out of consonance with the Western-style freedom of the press we promised to deliver, the above Major Means refused the order. She was cashiered on the spot.
Another instance of the crushing of dissent? Nah, I'm sure Herr Professor Doktor Reynolds will confect a justification for this disgraceful episode. posted by Anonymous6:12 AM
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The Watchers
WBW: Keeping track of the war exhortations of the warbloggers.
