Official US agency paints dire picture of 'out-of-control' Iraq
· Analysis issued by USAid in reconstruction effort
· Account belies picture painted by White House
An official assessment drawn up by the US foreign aid agency depicts the security situation in Iraq as dire, amounting to a "social breakdown" in which criminals have "almost free rein".
The "conflict assessment" is an attachment to an invitation to contractors to bid on a project rehabilitating Iraqi cities published earlier this month by the US Agency for International Development (USAid).
The picture it paints is not only darker than the optimistic accounts from the White House and the Pentagon, it also gives a more complex profile of the insurgency than the straightforward "rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists" described by George Bush....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...688730,00.html
How difficult it must be for the American people to arrive at any clear understanding of the situation in Iraq when the spin, lies and propaganda being disseminated by their administration, their military, and the clandestine groups funded by the U.S. government being paid millions of dollars to plant false stories in the Iraqi media (to be recycled to the poor, gullible Americans as 'good news') that finds its way into U.S. media is in direct contrast to the dark and negative reports being given to the U.S. administration by its own agencies. The American people are fed the 'official, spun version' by a largely compliant U.S. media (with some honorable exceptions), while the real facts are suppressed, surfacing on occasion in non-U.S. or Arab media long before the facts emerge in the U.S.A.
Even the kneee-jerk dismissals of the veracity of Arab media coming from certain Americans are prompted by 'what they are told' for in truth few can read or speak Arabic (or Farsi for that matter), so have no personal ability to assess the accuracy or otherwise of Arabic newspaper, TV, radio or online news reports.
This state of affairs - the official lies being used to shape and influence the opinion of an American public ignorant of facts on the ground - has marked the Iraq conflict throughout its existence.
It is remarkable how, having seen its administration, intelligence agencies and military caught out in lie after lie, over and over again, any section of U.S. society can continue to place any faith whatsoever in the utterances of White House and Pentagon spokespersons. And yet, bless them, many of them do blindly and uncritically cling to 'the official version', a version that the article cited above, along with a great many others, reveals is not borne out by facts on the ground at all.
U.S. propaganda has had scant success in winning Arab 'hearts and minds' but perhaps that is not its primary purpose. It seems clear that the painting of rosy pictures with regard to Iraq is geared more towards trying to convince an uneducated American public to support its illegal, immoral actions in Iraq and elsewhere.
How can any U.S. citizen have confidence in an administration that is trying to manipulate his or her opinion while simultaneously in possession of facts that are in stark contrast to the lies and propaganda being fed to the American public?
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