NYT lying for the Bush regime again - when will it stop?

[Dhalgren]

"The New York Times confirms that "over a thousand" officers and troops of the Iraqi army declined to fight the Mahdi Army in Basra or deserted their posts. It also reports that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki replaced them by inducting 10,000 Shiite "tribal" fighters into the Iraqi army. But the Iraqi press didn't call them "tribal," it called them Badr Corps, the paramilitary of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and now al-Maliki's main political ally. I'm not sure about the source of the discrepancy, but the NYT piece seems to be based on interviews with Iraqi and American government officials. It is possible that the need to strengthen the Iraqi army by turning to a Shiite militia trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (terrorists!) was just too embarrassing to admit. So the officials used the euphemism "tribal forces" with the foreign press."

Juan Cole is cuttingly kind, here. The NYT is flat-out lying and there is no recourse. There is nothing we can do but point it out. It really pisses me off... :grr:


Also mentioned in Dr. Cole's piece - US troops in Iraq were dressed in civilian clothes and came under attack by Mahdi Army troops. WTF?

Juan is smokin' today...

www.juancole.com

[SpiralHawk]

1. Are our sons and daughters ashamed to wear the uniform of Commander AWOL...

and his cabal of republicon homelander chickenhawks?

I am sure they would rather wear the uniform and represent an America of truth, justice, and true freedom -- not the pack of oil-profiteering lies the chickenhawk republicon homelanders have sent them to war under....

[Dhalgren]

2. I was also wondering,

what kind of "civilian" clothes? American or Iraqi? They called in air-strikes, so whatever they were up to was at least legitimate on its face (regardless of what was really happening); hmmm...

[SpiralHawk]

3. We know the republicons are into occultism

and this appears to have been some kind of occultly disguised operation...what one might expect when your putative Commander in Chief is a deserter, his backup VP has Five Military Deferments, and their gaggle of republicon homelander media propaganda spokesmodels (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, etc.) are all bona fide Chickenhawks.

Naturally, they like to HIDE the truth...and they are 'leading' our troops into darker and darker occult territory...

[Dhalgren]

4. Well they should all stand-by for a Muslim exorcism.

I imagine that the mullahs will have a little something for anyone dabbling in the occult arts, witchcraft, satanism, and the like. I would bet that a Muslim exorcism would not be pleasant...I'm just sayin'...

[kenny blankenship]

5. The Badr Brigades are also known as the Shia Death Squads

you know: the fine folks who ethnically cleansed Basra, as well as sections of Baghdad, leaving dozens of executed, tortured Sunni bodies (heads destroyed by electric drills or decapitated) in empty lots every night. Their lethal rivalry with the Mehdi Army of Muqtada Al-Sadr is their sole qualification for Army service. Of course they were able to carry out their earlier program of ethnic cleansing because they were in the employ of the Interior Ministry as special Security Police, since the Interior Ministry was in the control of a SCIRI captain, Bayan Jabr. The overwhelming evidence of Jabr's direction of the Death Squad activities lost him his ministership--he was moved to head up the Finance Ministry and another Sciri loyalist (Jawad Bulani) appointed to replace him at Interior. This should work out real well.