Repercussions
As wide ranging as my interests are, I can't cover them all with any decent depth. I chose racial issues as a focus for several reasons:
- It affects me more directly than most other issues.
- I can do it where few other seem to be willing or able to
- If America dies, it will not be from invasion. It will be from internal collapse, and unresolved racial issues will be primary among the causes
This comes to mind because after posting a news clip about the Bush puppet regime in Iraq
I'm sorry, Bush MUPPET regime shut down Al-Jazeera's Baghdad office I see this at The Blogging of the President 2004.
First, Remove The Witnesses... by Ian Welsh
If you're going to crush the Iraqi resistance you're going to have to kill a lot of people fairly indiscriminately. That means, in this media age, that you don't want witnesses - specially not witnesses with cameras. In Iraq the veil of darkness has been inexorably falling for months now, as the Western media, most of whom were always unwilling to leave guarded areas, have been coralled through terror, threats and killings. Really, Robert Fisk and a couple others aside, there is only on media source left operating in Iraq. Al-Jazeera.
Barely.
The Iraqi government has shut down Al-Jazeera's Baghdad office. In Fallujah, where Al-Jazeera has the only operating camera crew, Al-Jazeera journalists have been fired on rather often; perhaps because they insist on reporting events like US soldiers opening fire on ambulances and on the fact that Fallujah is degenerating into a full fledged old-fashioned siege; in other words, they're being starved out. Once weakened sufficiently, the US and Allawi's Iraqi forces will sweep in (or at least that's the plan.)Under the veil of darkness the campaign will continue. Al-Jazeera was certainly biased, but it was more useful than either the resistance reports or official US reports.
Flit has suggested in the past that that we're about two years from concentration camps. It's looking a lot more likely now.
The real question, the real thing to watch here, will be to see how many fronts are opened. If the US and Allawi can keep it primarily in al-Sadr city, Najaf and Fallujah - they can win. If insurrections spread into open fighting elsewhere the Fallujah siege will likely be relieved and the pressure will pull off of Najaf.
I'm starting to think things are getting thick enough that I should cut back on some of the frippery and link to some of the more analytical blogs again.
