Monday, July 10, 2006

More Pentagon Reporting

NPR's morning edition "covers" the US military Iraq scandals/atrocities that are receiving attention lately. Steve Inskeep interviews NPR's Pentagon correspondent . After discussing the rape/murder investigation and the Haditha Massacre investigation, Inskeep asks Bowman "why all this is coming to light now." Bowman answers this by saying, "What we do know is that Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli who runs the day to day operations in Iraq is very concerned about the deaths of innocent Iraqis; he’s very concerned about fighting this in a classic counter-insurgency way which is to gain the trust of the Iraqi population, get information on the bad guys, and that’s how you end an insurgency. You don’t end an insurgency by using heavy handed tactics: kicking doors in, shooting indiscriminately and using bombs, so Chiarelli I would say again is--he understands how to fight the insurgency and is much more adept than some of his predecessors." This is simply mind-boggling for its complete lack of evidence or truthfulness. What proof is there that Chiarelli cares one iota about Iraqi deaths? What is the "classic counter-insurgency?" Is it what Chiarelli learned at Fort Benning when he was being trained there January to July of 1978 (Ft. Benning being the home of the Latin America torture/massacre counter-insurgency training center, the "School of the Americas." The bad guys? Just who are the "bad guys"--our troops occupying the country illegally, the interior ministry police torture/death squads we helped train, the militias, the foreign jihadis, the nationalist insurgents? Then to finish the piece with the refrain of "he understands how to fight the insurgency." This isn't reporting; it's nothing but Pentagon propaganda. If you want Dept. of Defense information on Chiarelli you can look at the Multi National Corp - Iraq website.

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