(MG) A recent piece by John Pilger reveals interesting information about the occupation of Iraq (which as we all know is going badly by any definition, from any perspective, except al-Qaeda's).
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More often than not, [media] censorship by omission is employed: for example, by omitting the fact that almost 80 per cent of attacks are directed against the occupation forces (source: the Pentagon) so as to give the impression that the occupiers are doing their best to separate “warring tribes” and are crisis managers rather than the cause of the crisis.
There is a last-ditch sense about this kind of propaganda. Seymour Hersh said recently, “[In April, the Bush administration] made a decision that because of the totally dwindling support for the war in Iraq, they would go back to the al-Qaeda card, although there’s no empirical basis. Most of the pros will tell you the foreign fighters are a couple of per cent and they’re sort of leaderless... there’s no attempt to suggest there’s any significant co-ordination of these groups, but the press keeps going ga-ga about al-Qaeda... it’s just amazing to me.”
