AFP/Ali YussefI'd like to say that this is unbelievable, but in this era of the PR presidency, the UN is reporting that Iraq Seals Data on the Civilian Toll.
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 20 — The United Nations office in Baghdad says that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the country’s medical authorities to stop providing the organization with monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the conflict there, according to a confidential cable.
The cable, dated Oct. 17 and sent to United Nations officials in New York and Geneva by Ashraf Qazi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, says the prohibition may hinder the ability of his office to give accurate accounts in its bimonthly human rights reports on the levels of violence and the effect on Iraqi society.
Concern over the numbers of civilians who have died in Iraq has risen sharply at a time when organized attacks by insurgents are swelling the numbers of victims and when a new report from a team of Iraqi and American researchers shows that more than 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion.
I have no doubt that Bush told al Maliki that he needed to do something about the bad news coming out of Iraq if he wanted continued support from the US government.
What a travesty. Pretending civilians aren't dying in droves there isn't going to make it so. And nothing Bush does in his PR offensive is going to erase the stench of this catastrophe.
American voters won't be fooled either. The pictures don't lie.
I want to take a moment to salute the Iraqi photojournalists who have continued to work in incredibly dangerous circumstances to bring the truth to the world. Regular readers may have noticed that the photographs I post here often have arabic names in the captions. These are the stringers working for the Associate Press, Agence France Press and Reuters. The fact is that it is just too dangerous for western journalists to work in Iraq unless they are embedded with a military unit. The locals have stepped into the gap, risking their lives on a daily basis to bring the story to the world. We owe them our gratitude.
BTW, in the photograph above, a family is putting the body of one of their relatives into a coffin. He was killed in what is now commonly labeled as "sectarian violence," a sanitized description if I ever heard one. Just another of the nameless victims that chimpy and his puppet al-Maliki want to hide from the world.
Appalling.
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3 comments:
I have no doubt that Bush told al Maliki that he needed to do something about the bad news coming out of Iraq if he wanted continued support from the US government.
I doubt this has anything to do with Fredo. Maliki doesn't need to suck up to that asshat anymore. Fredo needs Maliki as much as Maliki needs Fredo.
This is Maliki realizing that worldwide stories of Iraq falling into a full fledged civil war aren't improving his chances of staying in power. So he -- having learned well from his puppet masters -- thinks that lying about reality can change reality.
just yesterday i was saying that the difference between iraq and veitnam was the paucity of pictures. actually there are a lot of other more significant differences.
i'm sure there are plenty of pictures, they just don't want to show them on our tv.s lest we start to accept nos. like 600,000 dead.
i'm sure there are plenty of pictures, they just don't want to show them on our tv.s lest we start to accept nos. like 600,000 dead.
Oh, yes. A friend of mine was with the AP for years (in the ME area). He said that the wire services put the photos out there, but US media doesn't run them.
European media does.
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