"Representative" Protesters?
Reported by Marie Therese - September 1, 2004 -
During yesterday's Big Story with John Gibson (8/30/04, 5:37 PM to 5:40 PM EDT), Gibson's sidekick, Heather Nauert, said: "For some of them [the protesters] activism is their job, some are unemployed, some are retired and some are students." Implication: None of them work at REAL jobs like REAL people!!
She then ventured fearlessly into the belly of the whale, girded for battle with her microphone and trusty cameraman to record for posterity a representative sampling of the tens of thousands of protesters lining the streets of the Big Apple. Here's what she came up with.
Mothra, middle-aged white woman dressed like an overgrown butterfly.
Joe Kings, dreadlocked young African-American, registering voters of both parties.
Brooke Atherton of A3A Coalition, who used words right out of FOX's Bomb-Throwers' Lexicon: "Funded by corporations," "U.S. ruling class," "war and agression abroad"
Two unnamed lesbians hawking their "Dykes Against Bush" T-shirts.
And lastly Rayan Elamine, an earnest young man from Direct Action to Stop the War.
NAUERT: "Some Americans would say that the war in Iraq has saved Iraqi lives because there won't be anymore mass graves."
ELAMINE: "You know what. There's been 11,000 people that have died since the beginning of the war. I think that's a really high amount and Iraqis continue to die daily and U. S. soldiers continue to die daily. I'm not sure where the perception is that Iraq is a safer, more democratic place right now."
NAUERT (never one to go far off script): "...What about the mass graves and that there won't be people going into mass graves in Iraq?"
ELAMINE: "What we saw in Abu Graib is that the U.S. also participates in oppression of Iraq's...."
Aha! "Oppression." Yet another word from the Bomb-Thrower's Lexicon. Full battle mode, Heather!
NAUERT (interrupting): "That's different...."
ELAMINE: "and in killing of Iraqis."
NAUERT (on message): "That's different from mass graves."
ELAMINE (capitulating): "Of course that's different from mass graves."
QUICK CUT TO NAUERT (standing somewhere else): "OK. Well, he refused to answer my questions about the issue of mass graves and whether Americans had actually saved more Iraqi lives by taking out Saddam Hussein. Instead, he wanted to talk about the Abu Graib prison abuse scandal."
Comment:
How rude of him!! Imagine. She's upset because he won't stick to the issue of massive killing, preferring instead to speak of smaller amounts of the dead.
Well, Heather, here's the answer to your question.
There is a mass grave of 1,000 Iraqi bodies in the city of Fallujah, courtesy of the American military.
And, by the most conservative accounts, there are 11,000 new graves throughout Iraq courtesy of America's short-sighted participation in an illegal and immoral war. And, in the United States, there are almost 1,000 new graves for the same reason.
As for Saddam's body count, apparently that's in some question at this point. In Britain, Tony Blair is taking heat because he exaggerated the actual number of bodies that would be found in the mass graves. In a report filed with The New Standard Lisa Ashkenaz reports:
(begin excerpt) Jul 20 - Prime Minister Tony Blair's office admitted that he exaggerated the number of bodies found in mass graves throughout Iraq by about 88 percent. The Observer revealed June 18 that its own calculations found that 5,000 bodies have been recovered from 55 gravesites; according to the British publication, Downing Street has confirmed the number. The Observer notes that an additional 215 suspected mass gravesites have yet to be examined and confirmed.
During a joint press conference held by Prime Minister Blair and President George W. Bush last year in London, Blair admonished critics of the countries' actions against Iraq, stating: "When we've already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves -- there is something bizarre about these situations happening, and people saying that they disagree..."
Blair's claim was widely used as further justification for deposing Saddam Hussein. A graphic report from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) released this January entitled "Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves" features the claim on its first page. A USAID press release dated June 15 also contains Blair's assertion. (end of report)
If the grisly pattern of Saddam's crimes against humanity hold true, the Iraqis will probably unearth abother 25,000 bodies in the remaining 215 graves.
This would leave Bush and Blair with a distinctly lower death toll (thank God!), which could mean - using tried and true Enron accounting principles - that there are 345,000 Iraqis who are now alive that were presumed dead before the war.
Perhaps this offers Bush-Blair a way to put a positive spin on things .
With this new information they could, in fact, claim that there has, in fact, been a net GAIN of life in Iraq!
