i'm not the only one confused!

This guy has tried, and has read a great deal, so if he is confused what chance have I.

Date: February 24, 2003 02:09 AM
Author: don ([email protected])
Subject: where is the press?

When will the war begin? A question that seems to entrance us all. I pore over news accounts from the standard press attempting to make some sense of it all. I read the BBC in hopes of finding news and clues that the U.S. media is unwilling to provide, news that will even slightly illuminate what the hell is going on. And then some kind soul mentions debka.com - or was it a kindness? I now have an overview of what is going on, but so many questions are raised by my seemingly 'new' knowledge that I find myself more puzzled than before.

Is the news as presented by debka actually true? If it is, then why doesn't the popular media report it? How is it, if this news is accurate and the entire world obviously has access to it, that almost no one is talking about what is really happening? I confess myself baffled. I will tell you what I am led to believe is happening.

The war has not yet been declared as officially beginning because it is going so well without being declared.

The two major oil cities in the North, for most purposes now a Kurdish state, have been surrounded by troops from the U.S., Turkey and Iran. It is not a fullscale occupation, but the troops are there, airfields have been built, and a sort of standoff exists while everyone eyeballs the other side. The Iraqui presence is mainly an intelligence one; they apparently have a wide-ranging and very good intelligence service working the entire middle east. Small actions in the North are carried out by odds and ends of guerrila groups driven by narrow agendas: e.g. the recent assasination of top Kurdish leaders, upon whom the U.S. was depending, by so-called defectors. These groups appear to abound and this doesn't bode well for the idea that the entire region won't Balkanize itself in short order; alliances and truces are very short term arrangements. There just isn't enough to go around when the payoff comes.

The Western side of Iraq is largely controlled by U.S. and Jordanian troops. The last figure I find for U.S. troops in Jordan is 8,000 plus armor. They land at Aqabah and their presence is denied by Jordan.

The most interesting theatre is the South. U.S., British and Iranian troops are now well into Iraq; they control the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates and have Basra encircled. They avoid cities as they move north and have the equipment in place to move strongly and quickly toward Baghdad by water.

While little-noticed reports seep out about continued air strikes in the southern no-fly zone, it would appear that large scale bombing is actually the order of the day. And the scant reports of commando groups on the ground inside Iraq are actually referring to large, multinational troop movements. Now, we can either accept these reports as factual, and come to the conclusion that the war started months ago, and that very few are willing to talk about it, especially the mainstream press, or we can come to the conclusion that news such as that provided by debka.com is all bunk and we are being misled by some Zionist conspiracy - debka originates in Israel.

My own perception is that the war is probably in almost-full swing right now, but won't officially 'start' until some event comes to fruition. When Baghdad is under actual seige, the oil towns and fields are either blown or taken, or Saddam slides away in the night, or WMD's come out of someone's closet then we can have the 'war'. And it will certainly be a quick one at that point. Doesn't this save Mr. Market a lot of headaches? Won't we all laud Bush for a clean victory?

So, while I think all, or most, of the above is probably true I must wonder at the complicity of the press in the lack of information offered to the public. To think that most of the media in the world is silent while what is tantamount to a world war unfolds is to imagine a conspiracy of unreasonable extent; if it were only the media in the U.S. I could see the manipulation succeeding to a large extent, but the entire globe? Come on....

Yes, I can fully credit the U.S. with waging a quiet war, with lying right and left, but I must say the part the press is playing, or not playing, in all this leaves me quite confused. There should be more mainstream reporting on troop movements, casualties, victories... The press cannot possibly be so fooled by the smoke and mirrors of arguments at the U.N., within N.A.T.O and between feuding politicians, that it doesn't realize the war is taking place without them. Why the silence? This is the media's bread and butter. How can they be so completely coerced or bought-off?

Any one seeing info confirming any of the above from other intel sites, e.g. Jane's or Stratfor? don




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