Friday, June 03, 2005

The last throes of truth in Iraq

The Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson has a good column on the death rattle of truth in the administration regarding Iraq.

HE WHITE HOUSE is searching for weapons of mass deletion.

On CNN's ''Larry King Live" on Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney said of the violence in Iraq, ''I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

This is after May became the deadliest month for US forces since the January elections, with 76 US military casualties.

At a press conference on Tuesday, President Bush was asked about the US casualties and the deaths of 760 Iraqis since the new Iraqi government was named April 28. A reporter asked Bush, ''Do you think that the insurgency is gaining strength and becoming more lethal?"

Bush responded, ''I think the Iraqi people dealt the insurgents a serious blow when they, when we had the elections."

Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers was asked on ABC's ''Good Morning America" about the deaths. ''Myers said, 'Well, first of all, the number of incidents is actually down 25 percent since the highs of last November, during the election period. So, overall, numbers of incidents are down. Lethality, as you mentioned, is up. . . . I think what's causing it is a realization that Iraq is marching inevitably toward democracy."

Do not even think of bringing up Amnesty International. The human rights group published its annual report last week, a report in which the organization's secretary general, Irene Khan, said, ''The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law."

To that, Bush cried, ''Absurd." Cheney said, ''I was offended." Myers said, ''absolutely irresponsible."

All that is missing is a banner behind them saying, ''Misinformation Accomplished."


Read the rest.

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