Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Poodles on Linoleum, Part Two

Remember below, how I suggested how the administration is scurrying like the above-referenced canines to find a way out of Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck? From this morning's paper:

"On the eve of a presidential policy speech on the future of U.S. forces in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters Tuesday that Iraqis soon would shoulder much of the future work for securing and rebuilding their country, which U.S. forces invaded in March 2003."

From the same edition, though, we have this:

Iraqi government officials failed Wednesday to deliver the promised results of an investigation into alleged torture at an Interior Ministry jail in Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi forces discovered 173 malnourished Iraqi detainees when they went into the facility on Nov. 13. Some inmates showed signs of torture, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. A U.S. general was so concerned with what he found that he took immediate control of the jail but the military has released few details about it since.

and this:

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq. The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Makes you proud, doesn't it?

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