Propaganda Propaganda

U.S.: Al Qaeda video shows armed boys in training (CNN)

(images: Reuters, AP/ Multi-National Force - Iraq/Handout.  Also Sabah Arar/Pool - Reuters. Via YahooNews. sample caption: A screen grab from an al Qaeda video released February 6, 2008 shows boys brandishing weapons. U.S. forces seized Al Qaeda videos which showed Iraqi children younger than 11 carrying out mock kidnappings and attacks, the U.S. military and Iraqi officials said on Wednesday. Videos played to media showed about 20 boys, mostly under 11, wearing balaclavas and brandishing AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers almost as big as themselves. final caption: U.S. Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force - Iraq's Communication Division, speaks during a joint news conference with the spokesman of Iraq's Ministry of Defence Mohammed al-Askari in Baghdad February 6, 2008)

Comments

[jtfromBC]

Is "Al Qaeda in Iraq" an NGO ?

'Iraq's anti-corruption board (?) revealed on Saturday that there were FIVE MILLION Iraqi ORPHANS (!) as reported by official government statistics, urging the government, parliament, and NGOs to be in constant contact with Iraq's parentless children.'

[http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/70886/?page=entire]

[weisseharre]

"What fresh child is this?"

[black dog barking]

Instant PTSD for the patrol that encounters weaponized children. Whirlwind reaping anyone?

In other Iraq news today SecDef Gates rolled out announced the successor to the Surge: the Pause. And bombs in Baghdad disrupted what little electrical power was left for the city.

Baghdad residents and many urban dwellers elsewhere are used to living without national power, which is on just a few hours a day at best. Those who can afford the alternative have private generators or are wired into private neighborhood generating systems.

But gasoline and diesel fuel prices have risen to the point where many, if not most, people simply do without electricity.

Late last month, a spokesman for Waheed said there would be no improvement in electricity service until 2011.

Urban living without electricity kinda takes the civil out of civilization. Heckuva job Bushie!!

[jtfromBC]

"over and over again we've seen that Middle Eastern television channel Aljazeera that seems to have a wonderful way of being Johnny-on-the-spot a little too often for my taste".
- Rumsfelt

Posted in fond memory of Donald
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dA3U6C6e7E

[MonsieurGonzo]

“Red Hand Day on 12 February is an annual commemoration day to draw public attention to the practice of using children as soldiers in wars and armed conflicts.”

[jtfromBC]

Propaganda Propaganda -- Western Style

---- Recruiting Kids to Kill by Ron Jacobs

"Now, if I understand this right, the US military is appalled and disturbed because some Iraqi insurgent groups (that may or may not have anything to do with Al Qaida in Iraq) are using videos to propagandize among adolescents in the hope that they will enlist. Meanwhile, the US military, which is engaged in the same type of operations as the Iraqi insurgency only as the occupying force, glorifies its mission of bloodshed, intimidation, and killing in videos, video games, in schools, on the television, at shopping malls and through the mails. Naturally, these methods are not training the US adolescents that they are targeting for operations, but they are definitely "meant to spread the US military's message among the young (to borrow Admiral Smith's words.)"
[http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs02072008.html]

MonsieurGonzo thanks, Red Hand Day is a timely reminder indeed.