planetdan

Monday, November 10, 2003 :::

Mind your propaganda, please.
Even the deeply involved aren't falling for it:

Jessica Lynch, the Army private whose dramatic rescue from an Iraqi hospital was filmed and fed to the American public, says she does not remember being mistreated by her captors and criticizes the military for using her as a propaganda tool to drum up support for the invasion. In an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, Lynch said she has no recollection of being slapped or mistreated, although she does recall an Iraqi nurse singing to her. Lynch also told Sawyer that there was no reason for her rescue to be filmed. "They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," she said. "It's wrong."

And while we're being political, here is a quote directly from George Bush Sr.'s book about how invading Irag is a terrible idea, 10 years before his son went ahead and did it like a bad little boy:

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish.

::: posted by dan at 2:50 PM :: [ link ] :: (0) comments

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