Mother Jones
by Judith Coburn

07/18/05

'Cost of the war': a cliché to normalize the carnage, like the anaesthetizing term 'collateral damage' and that new semantic horror, 'torture lite.' And yet the 'cost of the war' report, by now a hackneyed convention of American journalism, includes only American casualties -- no Iraqis -- itself a violation of the American mainstream media's own professed commitment to 'objectivity.' Three years of 'anniversary' articles in the American media adding up the so-called 'cost of the war' in Iraq have focused exclusively on Americans killed, American dollars spent, American hardware destroyed, with barely a mention of the Iraqi dead as part of that 'cost.' The dead are counted. But they are Americans. The names are named. But they are Americans. The names and numbers of the dead are intoned aloud or their photographs papered on media 'walls' and they are always only American. Publishing or pronouncing the names of the American dead everyday without ever mentioning the names of the Iraqi dead offers a powerful message that only American dying matters...

http://tinyurl.com/78mg7


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

A controversial fly-on-the wall account of the Iraq war by one of Britain's most senior former diplomats has been blocked by Downing Street and the Foreign Office. Publication of "The Costs of War" by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the UN during the build-up to the 2003 war and the Prime Minister's special envoy to Iraq in its aftermath, has been halted.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071805R.shtml

Mehrere Berichte machen erneut deutlich, dass der Krieg gegen den Irak und die Besetzung des Landes den islamistischen Terror gefördert haben und auch hinter den Anschlägen von Madrid und London stehen.

http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20546/1.html

In the months before the Iraqi elections in January, President Bush approved a plan to provide covert support to certain Iraqi candidates and political parties.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9489.htm

Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq: War radicalized most, probes find

New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank -- both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States -- have found that the vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself.

http://snipurl.com/gb9o


From Information Clearing House

How many Iraqis have died in our war in their country? Is there a better symbol of how the war for Iraq has already been lost than our ignorance about the cost of the war to Iraqis?

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=6963


From Information Clearing House

Jose Antonio was three when his mother died, eight when his father passed away. He was 22 when he began an all-too-familiar and perilous trek, first across Mexico and then on to the US. He loved America, he had often affirmed, even though he had never been there. It was as if he was grateful - in advance - for the dreams that the hankering inspired. Grateful and beguiled. The seduction would soon prove fatal.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071705F.shtml

A quarter-century after Iraq's invasion of Iran launched the Middle East's bloodiest modern war, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari arrived in Tehran on Saturday for a three-day visit that officials on both sides said signals a new alliance that could change the religious and political balance of power in the region.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071705D.shtml