RE: How many dead since May 1?

["Jose G. Perez" <jgperez@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>There is the difference between "been killed" and "died", but it's
hard to 
believe that they are trying to pass off the deaths of the 32 missing 
soldiers as "accidents."<<

Actually, 39. And yes they are. Terrible, tragic accidents. The
secretary regrets and all that ...

Even in Vietnam, when the troops shot officers in the back or fragged
them in their bunks as they slept, these were often officially reported
as victims of "friendly fire." Gives a whole new dimension to the idea
of friendship.

But back to Iraq. It is, by all accounts --at least all accounts we are
meant to see-- a very surreal place. Tanks go swimming in the Tigris ...
planes fall out of the sky ... ordnance detonates ... guns misfire ...

And then there's them pesky Iraqi masses who stage an insurrection,
overwhelm the colonial occupiers, and offer them up. But that only
happens to the Brits. Because they know all about colonial occupations
and being offered up, like in the North of Ireland.

Study the story cited elsewhere in this thread. There is not a single
substantive statement about the events the famous three-letter website
was reporting on. Every single item reported is what the Pentagon,
Centcom, or some other official source "said." 

In "normal" bourgeois journalism, each such statement would be
immediately followed by what the *other* side said, or by a statement
like "repeated phone calls to the offices of the Iraqi resistance to
obtain their version of these events went unanswered." 

Absent such an office, a traditional bourgeois reporter operating on
J-school ethics rules in Baghdad would at least add something like, "but
some (many) Iraqis claim (believe) that the plane did not fall by
accident, but was shot down by the resistance" or "that the tank did not
make a wrong turn, but was thrown into the water by the explosion of a
land mine" or some such statement. 

The fact is that there is not even the pretense of presenting a "fair
and balanced" report on what the various sides to the dispute *claim*.
The impression a reader is left with is that the news outlet is simply
the official organ of one of the sides in that dispute.

The story I referred to is cleverly constructed as if to make it seem
that they are talking about what happened in Iraq. It is datelined in
Baghdad. But in fact, what it reports is solely, exclusively, what U.S.
officials "said" happened, and as far as I remember, none of those
statements came from Iraq. 

Having been a journalistic hack for a few decades now, I can tell you
for a fact, the number of attributions is a dead giveaway that those who
published it do not *necessarily* believe, not for one second, that the
accounts being passed on are necessarily true. What IS true is that the
US officials actually claimed all these things. And that is ALL.

In countries where there have been "totalitarian dictatorships" and
"authoritarian regimes," people develop a skill -- reading between the
lines. A very useful skill to have in these times.

José