Recently a study reported that 3,605 Iraqi civilians, police and army personnel were killed in 2010. That number was higher than the 3,481 killed in 2009. This is not to mention the defects and deformities of other Iraqi civilians due to U.S. weapons, which was investigated in another study to be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and was reported on by Guardian last week.
Now the U.S. has suffered its first casualties of 2011 in Iraq.
2 soldiers were killed in an attack this weekend. The attack came within 6 months after President Obama told the American people that "combat" had ended, and the script reading Sears catalog models of the corporate media congratulated him for it. Already, writers at major newspapers are using the talents of their trade to bring us propaganda that would make them shoe-ins for Winston Smith's vacated job at the Ministry of Truth if it didn't just exist in the world of fiction. Some articles, like this one from the Washington Post, are attempting to reassure the American people that the continued violence in Iraq is only a hiccup in the plan for the eventual withdrawal of Obama's "non-combat troops". Sounding like a nervous husband explaining the lipstick on his collar to an already jilted wife, articles like this one try to cement the myth that Iraq was only George Bush's war and that it went away shortly after he did. In reality the occupation and the resistance to it continues, and it always will, living on in different chapters as the puppet government there gets better at controlling the people with less supervision from its conquering overlord.
Smoothing over the crowd for the administration and the Pentagon is not the role of the press. The basic commandments of journalism dictate this, but thanks to egos, careers, and the corporate domination that both giveth and taketh away these things, the old commandments of the fourth branch now lay busted at the feet of Lady Liberty, buried under the thermite peppered rubble of the Trade Towers, sarcastically decorated with American flags made in China.
Brushing off the deaths of soldiers who, as the Fox News variety of brainwashed zombies enjoy claiming, made "the ultimate sacrifice" in a war that most Americans think is over is not only disrespectful, but also a stark dereliction of duty by members of the press, even in the transparently Orwellian world of today. Reporters, like the author of the Washington Post article, are acting as PR reps for the war under Obama, nervously stating, "Yeah some soldiers just died, so sad, but"wait a second"stay seated"the war is over"really"Yes We Can!".
If not for the existence of the Internet, America would already be deeply entrenched in the next war with Iran, pulling its hair out in fear of even more horrendous, uninvestigated terror attacks.
