Sadr's Million Man March, Wasn't

[gilliam]

The radical Shiite Sadr wanted 1,000,000 people to march Sat in Bagdad. He worked for weeks to make this happen. He bussed in many supporters. It would seem that he failed miserably. He only got about 10,000. Although a lot of press don’t seem to get it, his march was a bust.

 

[Maccabees]

Maybe a lot of them were still getting out of the Rome area from the Pope’s funeral.

 

[gilliam]

**Talabani (Iraq President)endorses foreign troop presence **
Iraq’s new president Jalal Talabani has restated his support for a continued US and Australian military presence in Iraq, one day after large demonstrations by supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demanded US troops leave the country.

“I think we are in great need to have American and other allied forces in Iraq until we will be able to rebuild our military forces,” Mr Talabani told CNN.

Branding Sadr a “criminal” who should be arrested, Mr Talabani said he opposed setting a timetable for the US military’s exit from the country.

Mr Talabani, an Iraqi Kurd who was elected president on Thursday after lengthy negotiations between ethnic and tribal factions in the Iraqi Parliament, predicted Iraq would be able to to reconstitute its armed forces within two years.

However, he suggested that even after that, the country will maintain a close security relationship with the United States. “We will remain in full consultation and coordination, cooperation with our American friends, who came to liberate our country,” he said.

(Excerpt) Read more at abc.net.au …

 

[gilliam]

This is equivalent to holding a Pro-military demonstration of 100,000 people, 500 anti-war protesters show up, and the media describes the protests as “anti-war.” Without even mentioning the pro-military rally.

Either big media reporters are completely clueless – maybe they should be the ones to learn Arabic, not the military – or they’re intentionally deceitful. With every discovered failure or indiscretion, the latter conclusion seems almost unavoidable.

It is way past time for the mainstream media to accept that by and large, they were wrong about the war, wrong about the insurgency, wrong about the Iraqi people, and probably wrong about the chances for democracy in the Middle East. Until they get over their denial, their reporting will continue to be wrong-headed, nonsensical, or completely irrelevant.
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