Anyone else notice that the Iraqi Information Minister is behaving like a coy young maiden? Down playing the war to his constituents/peoples?
Todays edition of the Gov’t run Baghdad News paper is telling Iraqi Nationals that they are winning the war, beating the Americans, and suffering little damage from the invaders.
Now that the American’s have secured Saddam’s airport, local Baghdad citizens are realizing it is all a shame…Their Governement is blatently lying to them to try and rally support for those last few fighters who may rise up and get shot… To me this is completely pathetic.
Per another thread the Iraqi Gov’t kicked out Al-Jazeera…Does this strike anyone else as irretrievably stupid? As one of the newspapers what you’d think they would want around, they remove. Either something very bad is about to happen and the Iraqi Gov’t doesn’t want the rest of the Arab world to see it - even though they would anyway - or the Gov’t has been hit so hard that the chain of command has crumbled to people who have completely no idea of what to do?
Anyone else think they Iraqi Gov’t is flailing around with little to no control over their war units…?
I saw part of the interview yesterday in CNN, frankly it was just bizarre. He made claims that the prisoners of war taken by the coalition were “brought in by the americans, not real iragis”. That the coalition troops were not just outside Baghdad, that the Iraqi troops were winning every battle. And so on.
The CNN analyst made a good point, that he obviously was not talking to anyone outside Iraq, this was on Al-Jazeera, CNN was carrying the feed, but rather to the inner circle or to govt. supporters, to keep them from bailing. Now that the coalition forces are IN Baghdad those inner circle loyalists who stayed behind may no longer have the option to flee, which might have been the intent of the speech.
Duck - well if they wanted to go down fighting, maybe they should start by not lying to the people of their own country. I just find it completely ridiculous what they are telling the populace…Iraqis can’t be that naive to believe that crap.
Really – it’s not much different than Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence that the war has been going according to plan all this time. “We meant to do this! We wanted to stretch our supply lines thin and have the Iraqis snipe at us from the rear! We were expecting car bombs and fake surrenders and other dirty tactics! Really!”
Both sides are spinning this war to make themselves look good. To chide Iraq for it is to be amazingly naive.
Sorry rjung - but there is a major difference between Rummy saying we expected this, that, and the other thing, and the Iraqi Information Minister publishing complete lies about the campaign. Telling people that they are actually winning. And that no Iraqis have been killed. Do you really not saee any difference?
This is hilarious! To state there is no material difference between Rumsfeld’s press conferences and the utter, verifiably false horseshit coming from Iraq’s Minister of Defense–frankly, it’s incredible.
I expect any day now to hear the Minister, with a flaming missile in his ass, deny the fact that there’s a flaming missile in his ass. With that same incredulous look on his face, as if the very question were ridiculous. There will be a gaping hole in the wall behind him through which we can see a U.S. Marine directing traffic as the Minister further denies the presence of Coalition forces in Baghdad. And there will still be people who say it’s no different, really, than the information Rumsfeld provides.
I get this sense that in a few days, there’s going to be a broadcast from the Information Minister in which he continues to claim that Iraq is winning the war…during which coalition soldiers storm into the picture.
Just a question–are Iraqi TV broadcasts being seen anywhere outside of Baghdad? It’s hard to believe that the Information Minister expects his words to be taken seriously in, say, Umm Qasr or Basra.
How interesting, rjung. Are you privy to the Pentagon’s actual war plan, including discussions of various contingencies and possibilities, that you know for certain that Rumsfeld is lying?
Or do you just assume Rumsfeld is lying because you hate Bush?
And as they’re dragging him off in shackles, he’s yelling “Ha HAH! They fell into our trap!”
Seriously though, I suspect that every government on earth will come out with as much propaganda lies/spin as it can get away with. The Iraqi government, never having had to deal with any transparency or investigative journalism, will just say what it wants. In that way, there is some kind of comparison.
Every side has its own spin, that’s true. But the Iraqi nonsense is something beyond that. IMO, it’s the natural mindset cultivated by the ruling power in a dictatorship. They expect their word to be believed because, well, they said so. Period. It starts to become immaterial whether something is factual or not. It’s the truth because they said it’s the truth, and if you disagree, they have ways of dealing with you. Want to know who won the first Gulf War? Just ask them, they’ll tell you…it just becomes laughable when they’re in a position where their power is disintegrating around them and they can’t stop their bullshit. They just can’t.
Nah, I’m just going off what the Pentagon has been tossing around before the shooting started:
Unconventional tactics? Fake surrenders? Supply-line sniping? Car bombs? Nah, don’t sweat it, we’ll just “shock and awe” them on the first day, and the Iraqi army will fold like a house of cards. Uh-huh. Yeah, quick-n-easy. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Providing examples of what was expressed prior to the start of the war is not a terribly good way to show how “the Pentagon” is lying about the ongoing military campaign in the manner that the Iraqi minister is. Just admit it. You overstated your point. You can be against the war and still recognize that the Minister of Information is virtually incapable of opening his mouth without letting fly another bald-faced lie, even when verifiable facts contradict him.