At Blondesense, discussion on how the soldiers who fired upon Nicola Calipari and Giuliana Sgrena have been cleared of wrongdoing. The news article is brief. Just states committed no wrongdoing and will not be disciplined. The comments section brings up a March 25th interview–Naomi Klein Reveals New Details About U.S. Military Shooting of Italian War Correspondent in Iraq–discussing how Sgrena said they were on a secured road for ambassadors and that the bullets were fired mostly from behind, the bullet that killed Calipari and injured her coming into the car from behind. The photos of the car showed only the right side (facing) and the front, not the rear. Italian investigators were never permitted to examine the car.
Last week it was the clearing, of responsibility for the abuse of detainees, of four of the five top Army officers overseeing prison policies and operations in Iraq. (See the Heretik for a rundown.)
No responsibility. No WMDs (announced yesterday). No responsibility.
The report, which refuted many of the administration’s principal arguments for going to war in Iraq, marked an official end of a two-year weapons hunt led most recently by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer.
The team found that the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. sanctions had destroyed Iraq’s illicit weapons capabilities and, for the most part, Hussein had not tried to rebuild them. Iraq’s ability to produce nuclear arms, which the administration asserted was a grave and gathering threat that required an immediate military response, had “progressively decayed” since 1991. Investigators found no evidence of “concerted efforts to restart the program.”
Administration officials have emphasized that, while the survey group uncovered no weapons of mass destruction, it concluded that Hussein had not given up the goal of someday acquiring them.
Source SFgate
No responsibility.
Anyway, investigation exhausted, no WMDs found. Bush goes strolling through the bluebonnets, hand in hand, with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and then off with Delay to Gavelston TX to grind some more on Social Security.
Bang bang. No responsibility. They do as they please. They manufacture their reasons. The reasons crumble and still no responsibility.
I’m sure most everyone has seen the photo of the Iraqi child whose family was killed at one of those many, many bang bang bang oops accidental checkpoint shootings. Happened some months ago, a powerful photo, is still popping up here and there. I had thus far managed to keep my seven year old son from seeing it. I stay away from sites showing the gore while he’s nearby. But last night he was standing there as I scrolled down Rox Populi’s site and there it was on the page. My son said, “What’s that?!” Sigh. I scrolled promptly past it and stopped and turned and hugged him and said I was sorry, I’d not intended for him to see it. And I explained it to him. He had turned away from the computer and told me to go away from that website so he would not see that “disgusting” picture again. I said well disgusting wasn’t how I would describe it. Sad and tragic and horrifying instead. “But what was all that red?” I told him. He became animated telling me all about a magical cartoon character and how he would never be killed in war, how he would do such and such movements with his arms, zoom, voom and he would be all right and never be killed. Then, “Write those people and tell them to take that disgusting picture off the page so I don’t have to see it again. Why did they put that picture there? Why do they want people to see it?” I explained to him that people put up the picture to show the tragedy, the horror of war, the innocent people who are killed (civilians being overwhelmingly the victims in Iraq), who are victimized (Iraq war is blamed for starvation). I said that they show pictures like that because there are people who close their eyes to how bad it is, who don’t want to know. I explained as briefly, as simply as I could.
“I know war is bad,” he said, “I’ll tell them. Now, write that website and tell them to take away that picture so I won’t see it again.”
I hate those pictures too, and try, unsuccessfully, to avoid looking at them. I don’t know any pro-war Republicans, so I can’t ask them how they deal with this. Yet I am curious. My guess is that they have some psychological method of not seeing them.
Jim, my feeling is that they don’t see and so don’t deal. The pro-war Republicans I know don’t visit alternative news sources on the web that have this material. They don’t visit progressive websites. And mainstream television news isn’t showing it. I imagine that those who do see it shut off a sypathetic response by promptly throwing up a defensive wall of “This is anti-war, anti-American propaganda”. Even if they acknowledge the pictures show reality they will discredit through believing the ulterior motive in showing such reality is to damage American image.