New from Patrick Cockburn
I have highlighted several stories written by UK Independent journalist Patrick Cockburn over the past month or so. Cockburn reports directly from the heart of Iraq with great courage. You'll get a true picture of Iraq from Cockburn's reporting: "One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought" and "Nothing but misery".
Now we have a chance to hear Patrick Cockburn from London, but who was in Iraq at the same time Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Vice President Dick Cheney were there last week. The 22-minute AUDIO segment below broadcast yesterday as part of KPFA Pacifica Radio's Flashpoints program:
Cockburn fully deconstructs the reality behind the Cheney-McCain PR angle, that as McCain puts it "Americans are more understanding of the success of the surge." This mantra is swallowed whole by American media.
Cockburn suggests some obvious questions they should be asking. For example, why did McCain this time avoid taking another well-protected shopping trip through the open-air Shorja market in Baghdad he touted last spring as a great "success"?? Perhaps it is because, as Patrick Cockburn explains in this interview, that the market today is under the control of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
The whole Cheney-McCain program makes Cockburn's "blood run cold" as they pretend not to notice the clashes and bombings erupting all around them. Meanwhile, a deluge of propaganda continuously mis-characterizes the situation, for example in lies told about last month's "Downs syndrome" bombers (they did not have this condition, as the U.S. quietly admitted later).
This is essential material. Interviewer Dennis Bernstein does a terrific job. Go HERE to download whole program from which this segment came.
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