Saturday, April 05, 2003

First Casualty Of War It must suck only a lot to be an Iraqi living in Baghdad right about now.  Especially if you're a gullible Iraqi.  You turn on the TV and your trusted anchorperson, the Peter Jennings of Iraq, is letting you know that everything is going well and that the Americans will never make it to your front door.  Then "knock knock" and you've got an American tank rolling down your street. Doesn't the Iraqi media/government realize that anyone could just look out a window and see the plumes of smoke, hear the gunfire, notice all the hardcore Saddam backers running in the opposite direction, and realize if they have even an ounce of intelligence that what the government is saying just ain't so?  Of course it was Hitler who said, "The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed."  Seems that truism has been holding up in Baghdad for quite some time. Speaking of misleading information, our government isn't exactly the Mountain of Truth.  At today's military briefing, Maj. Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr. got up and said that it is "irrelevant" to the coalition war plan whether or not Saddam Hussein is the man seen in the videotapes aired on Arab television Friday. Excuse me while I go turn off my bullsh*t detector.  It's making a hell of a racket. Is he trying to convince anyone that the military isn't interested in knowing a) whether Saddam is truly alive or not, or b) his general location?  Are we to believe that no special forces are currently assigned specifically to finding and eliminating Mr. Hussein?  Are we also to believe that our whole plan has changed, because since day 1 we've been told that this is about "regime change"?  Wouldn't they be interested in verifying if that was Saddam, the head of that regime, in the video, when it was recorded, and more importantly, where?  And if Saddam were actually dead, does anyone truly believe that that information wouldn't change any of the military's plans? What a load of crap. Truth truly is the first casualty of war.  But then the truth has been hard to come by for this war for a long time.  The only advice I can give anyone is to listen to the news all you want, but realize that you're only seeing or hearing what someone else wants you to see or hear.  At best it's not the entire picture, and at worst, its not even close to the truth at all. 6:51:08 PM     |

© Copyright 2005 Alex L. Mauldin.