WTF Is It Now?!?

Another gray day with showers the rest of the bloody week.


Tried posting this yesterday, but Blogger pooped out again:

"Britt Hume today was saying that Clinton and Gore and Cohen all said Saddam had WMD. So what. Obviously Clinton didn't believe that information enough to launch a full blown invasion.

"But Bush did.

"So either he is a fool who was taken advantage of or he misled the American people into supporting a war with devious and dubious evidence." - WCG, BC Forum.

AP tallies 3,240 civilian deaths in Iraq
BAGHDAD - 'At least 3,240 civilians died across Iraq during a month of war, including 1,896 in Baghdad, according to a five-week Associated Press investigation. The count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll - if it is ever tallied - is sure to be significantly higher.'

Meanwhile, the numbers from Iraqi Body Count are between 5531 and 7203.


Thousands died.

And in a related story.....

Winning the hearts and minds of the conquered Iraqi people
Bomb them under false pretenses, force a foreign government on them, secure their oil, leave the streets in chaos, and forbid them from writing about it.

One element of Operation Iraqi Freedom is moving too quickly for the Bush misadministration - freedom of the press.

Both the U.S. State Department and commanders of U.S. occupation forces in Iraq are scurrying to come up with rules for the proliferation of media suddenly blossoming in the absence of Saddam Hussein's reign of censorship and repression.

Vehicles of news and opinion, and, apparently, more of the latter, are popping up everywhere, and much of the opinion is apparently critical of the United States and its occupying troops.

"There is no room for hateful and destabilizing messages that will destroy the emerging Iraqi democracy," said Mike Furlong, a senior adviser to the authority.

But what sort of democracy can the Iraqis build without a free press?

"All media outlets must be responsible," Furlong declared. Responsible to whom - the Iraqi people or the occupying authority?

Those shepherding this new democracy would do well to consult one who helped birth another one more than 200 years ago. In the Virginia Bill of Rights, a model for Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, George Mason wrote that freedom of the press "can never be restrained but by despotic governments."

Maybe the story should read 'Iraqis are scurrying to come up with rules for the media under the Bushies' reign of censorship and repression.' - snipped from here.