The Iraqi Issue (again....)
I guess everyone has heard by now that the Arab League sponsored a meeting between Iraqi leaders in Cairo, and that they all came to the consensus that the US should give the Iraqis a timetable for withdrawl. I mean, how could you not hear about it? If you watch CNN, MSNBC, Fox News....
What's that? They aren't covering it? Strange....
Why do you think that is? Why is something so significant flying under the radar in the main stream media? I have a theory.
Bush doesn't want a timetable, so that explains Fox News' silence. He's given all of his reasons why. It's in his interests that the summit not be covered, that way he doesn't have to address the issue. He's said publically that we'd only be in Iraq as long as the Iraqis want us there. What he really MEANS is that we'll only be in Iraq as long as the people in charge there want us to stay, and right now that group is largely comprised of people that we helped install. Therefore, he can use that as a justification to pretend that it's not "officially" happening, regardless of what the rest of the world (and the Iraqi people) say.
So why isn't the "liberal media" screaming about this, aside from the "fact" that they've been "bushwhacked" by the administration? This is more difficult to puzzle out, but I'll give it a try.
As for the Democrats, there's something risky to using this as a rallying call to get out of Iraq. Frankly, it's politically risky to give a sense of vindication to this extra-governmental body of Iraqis as it could be seen to undermine the authority of the legitimate government. It's also risky to allow the impetus of change to be the Iraqis, rather than the Democrats here at home; it would give the American people the sense that when the Bush administration "responds to changes on the ground" that they are not doing so because of a new, strong Democrat leadership here at home. One more stipulation that I have is this: maybe the "liberal media" isn't as "liberal" as so many accuse it of being.
Of course, there's always the third perspective of why the coverage isn't out there. It hasn't been long enough. The real policy wonks out there haven't had time to really run the numbers and decide how to spin this yet, on either the right or the left, so us in the blogosphere are left to pull our hair out and ask ourselves "WTF?" while the big guys try to turn this to their political advantage.
Let's raise a glass to the bloggers, the only ones out there who are "keepin' it real!"
What's that? They aren't covering it? Strange....
Why do you think that is? Why is something so significant flying under the radar in the main stream media? I have a theory.
Bush doesn't want a timetable, so that explains Fox News' silence. He's given all of his reasons why. It's in his interests that the summit not be covered, that way he doesn't have to address the issue. He's said publically that we'd only be in Iraq as long as the Iraqis want us there. What he really MEANS is that we'll only be in Iraq as long as the people in charge there want us to stay, and right now that group is largely comprised of people that we helped install. Therefore, he can use that as a justification to pretend that it's not "officially" happening, regardless of what the rest of the world (and the Iraqi people) say.
So why isn't the "liberal media" screaming about this, aside from the "fact" that they've been "bushwhacked" by the administration? This is more difficult to puzzle out, but I'll give it a try.
As for the Democrats, there's something risky to using this as a rallying call to get out of Iraq. Frankly, it's politically risky to give a sense of vindication to this extra-governmental body of Iraqis as it could be seen to undermine the authority of the legitimate government. It's also risky to allow the impetus of change to be the Iraqis, rather than the Democrats here at home; it would give the American people the sense that when the Bush administration "responds to changes on the ground" that they are not doing so because of a new, strong Democrat leadership here at home. One more stipulation that I have is this: maybe the "liberal media" isn't as "liberal" as so many accuse it of being.
Of course, there's always the third perspective of why the coverage isn't out there. It hasn't been long enough. The real policy wonks out there haven't had time to really run the numbers and decide how to spin this yet, on either the right or the left, so us in the blogosphere are left to pull our hair out and ask ourselves "WTF?" while the big guys try to turn this to their political advantage.
Let's raise a glass to the bloggers, the only ones out there who are "keepin' it real!"
posted by sadiq at 11/22/2005 09:47:00 PM
4 Comments:
It made a pretty big splash on page 3 this morning in the Atlanta paper. I think the reason the MSM is treating this gingerly is that they haven't a clue how to handle it from the PR perspective.
It's a money business and they do not want to do anything that will endanger the revenue. There is nothing complex here just simple "pay me".
Ooh, nice point fallenmonk! I think that the MSM is waiting to see the way the wind shifts, and once it does (definitively) they'll be saying, "yeah, we've been reporting on that since it happened and nobody was paying attention!"
Right. Nobody was paying attention to an article buried in the middle of the paper and given 16 seconds of cumulative air time on CNN....
To your comment, "What he really MEANS is that we'll only be in Iraq as long as the people in charge there want us to stay, and right now that group is largely comprised of people that we helped install"... Case in point - our lovely friend, Mr. Chalabi. Don't you agree that the raid on his estate was actually part of our govt's master plan; ie, fool the Iraqis into believing Chalabi was no longer a US puppet. Now that he's supposedly established himself as a true Iraqi "leader", the US can "negotiate" with him as such.
That's a good point. I hadn't evaluated it in that light before. I don't know that I agree that the raid on his house was part of the "master plan", but I also don't know that I disagree. If I were one of the head honchos in the administration and that was part of my plan, I think I would have moved heaven and earth to make sure that any evidence of collaboration with the Iranians, such as a copy of the Quran personally signed by the Ayatolla, was supressed. VERY supressed.
But then again, there are a lot of this administration's "strokes of brilliance" that I don't understand the masterful plan behind....
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