Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
"I know if you just report on those few places, it does look chaotic. But if you travel around the country, what you find is a bustling economy, people opening businesses right and left, unemployment has dropped." - Civilian Administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer, April 2004
"They are not in Baghdad. They are not in control of any airport. I tell you this. It is all a lie. They lie. It is a hollywood movie. You do not believe them." - Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, April 2003
NIce. I'm glad to see my favorite part of the war hasn't been completely forgotten.
Posted by: Fontana el-Labs at April 6, 2004 02:22 PMThanks for the pictures!
Now Bremer has that kicked-mutt look about him we're used to seeing from the domestic spinners. Also, can we all agree to be alarmed when the spin on the Iraqi economy is indistinguishable from the spin on ours?
Bremer claims he's been traveling around, but I'll bet he's got a damn big armed escort everytime he leaves his office. Presumably not from the Iraqi police.
And who's at the tiller for the U.S.? At this moment I gotta gues Abizaid, who just flushed Rumsfeld by leaking that some troops (including from the 82nd) are being "held over".
Rumsfeld says commanders in the field will "get what they need" (that's in quotes 'cause CNN had a camera on him in a briefing room when he said it). So if anything goes wrong, Abizaid gets to take the fall. Let's hope the General's not as generous with his men as the Secretary is with ours.
Apparently in a month or so American troop strength will be up by, what, 20%? over half a year?, with most of them being into their second year on the ground. And meanwhile the Dutch are out and the South Koreans have called off 3600 troops scheduled to deploy.
Anybody want to count references to "coalition forces" in major media over the next two weeks? They can say "coalition", and they can say "forces", but who can say "coalition forces" without a bag over their head?
Posted by: Rah at April 6, 2004 02:27 PMBeautiful. Just beautiful. Gave me a giggle, thanks :)
Posted by: cyclopatra at April 7, 2004 04:30 AM