US grip Fallujah, we lose grasp of Reality

When I read the news, I have this sense that while it's telling me the content of what's happening in the world, it is also propagating the manner in which the world chooses to believe things are. Context always depends on a base of reception, which is it's own context. I feel like while news is talking about America's "propaganda war", it is at the same time FIGHTING that war almost against it's own will. I respect journalists because their job is to be objective and report things as they are. The tragedy is that they often have unrealiable sources that feed them information that they are in no position to objectively authorize, so they've gotta take short-cuts. I think that it is this ACCIDENTAL deception (ignorance?) that perpetuates war and famine and disease upon this god-help-us earth.

Here's an example from the Associated press. I've highlighted words that may demonstrate my point of view because certain words in sentences seem to eat away at the validity of the rest of the words in that sentence when you read into what they could mean. Take Rumsfelt' s quotes. I will try to translate what I think they mean:


1: "“You cannot have a country that is free and democratic and respectful of all the people in the country if you have safe havens for people who go around chopping people’s heads off,” Rumsfeld said Monday in a briefing at the Pentagon."

translation: if anyone is safe in their own homes they could have the opportunity to chop off someone's head. That is why we cannot have a free and democratic country or respect anyone in Iraq.

This is based on my assumption that: People are usually safe with others in their own homes until they get their heads get chopped off

What else might the news be saying?:

2: "The bulk of the defenders are believed to be Sunni Muslims from the Fallujah area, but they also include an unknown number of militants from other countries, including followers of Jordan terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It’s unclear whether al-Zarqawi is still in the city; Sunni clerics insist he never was. His followers have been blamed for deadly bombings and the slayings of foreign hostages."


translation: We don't know where the heck Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is. We don't even know how many other countries are involved either. We conducted an interview and found that most repondents from the area disagreed with the assertion that al-Zarqawi might be in the city which was the standard justification for the attack in the first place. Since we can't find him we'll attack anyone else who is there on the basis that they're his followers, even though he might have never gone to Fallujah.


3: "Commanders estimate about 3,000 insurgents are dug in their positions in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad. The vast majority of the civilian population of some 300,000 is believed to have fled, the U.S. military said."

While families and terrorists are all mingling together underground, Commanders would like to think that they are dealing mostly with terrorists, not civilians, so that they can shoot anything that moves. However, it would be quite convenient at this point, to know who is who because anyone in that situation would want to build a bomb shelter, not just "insurgents".

"Insurgent defenses are believed strongest in the Jolan neighborhood, a poor district in the heart of Fallujah. Sunni guerrillas also control other cities north and west of Baghdad. They are distinct from the Shiite Muslim followers of firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who launched an uprising throughout southern Iraq and parts of Baghdad earlier this year."

translation: no translation available

"At the same time, the U.S. military will be fighting a propaganda war, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski reported from Washington. The reason U.S. and Iraqi troops started by seizing Fallujah’s general hospital was to stop the insurgents from inflating the numbers of civilians who were being killed or wounded." Source: The Associated Press

I agree with Jim except that the U.S. is already fighting the propaganda. No use of "will" necessary. The rest I translate as:
Coalition forces want anyone who is injured in the area to die. While it would be difficult to filter wounded terrorists and civilians, -I mean, afterall, everyone is red when they're bleeding to death,- they cannot allow anyone, including any civilians that are killed in the crossfire, to recover. Clinton bombed the Al-Shifa plant, Reagan worked over the "soft" targets with automatic weapons. Think of this simply as a continuation of a tradition.

source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6403689/

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