Posted on 04/11/2003 5:43:36 AM PDT by BurkesLaw
Less than a week before Saddam Hussein lost his very big bronze head in a square in midtown Baghdad, to the cheers of Iraqis and Americans alike, the Independent's favorite anti-American reporter Robert Fisk was envisioning a very different picture. For Bob, the pathway to Iraq's capital was "a place of fast-moving vehicles, blazing Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, tanks and trucks hidden in palm groves."
"Anyone," intoned Fisk in that special way he has, "who doubts that the Iraqi Army is prepared to defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad," where "black-uniformed men of the Saddam Fedayeen with red and black 'kuffiah' scarves round their heads ... did not look to me like a 'degraded' army on the verge of surrender."
Indeed, said Bob, these Iraqis were "masters of concealment," brimming with self-confidence. "The Americans and the British never expected this resistance," he pronounced.
Boy, that's for sure.
Just a week or so later, U.S. troops were arriving and departing as they pleased from Baghdad, by ground and by air, while liberated Iraqis cheered, gave the boot and the spit to ubiquitous portraits of Saddam, and even kissed the helmeted "infidel."
It was an astonishing scene, reminiscent in many minds of the Allies' systematic routing of Axis forces in World War II, leaving behind them towns and villages of stunned and joyful men and women from whom the yoke of their oppression had at last been lifted.
Surely, even Robert Fisk could get into the celebratory spirit of the day, could he not?
Well, er, no, as it turned out.
While millions watched incomparable scenes of liberation from the very heart of the beast itself, Fisk tore off an angry screed, sounding for all the world like a spoiled little boy whose Yuletide dreams of bitter coalition carnage had been hopelessly battered when Father Christmas brought photogenic candy instead.
"The Americans may think they have 'liberated' Baghdad," Fisk tut-tutted. "But the tens of thousands of thieves – they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty – seem to have a different idea what liberation means."
That's right. Mr. Fisk -- now apparently serving as the stand-in for "Baghdad Bob" due to the hasty departure of the actual article -- decided to focus, on this day of days, on all that nasty looting going on here and there, as the poor residents of Baghdad decided to help themselves to a little of what the diplomatic corps and, certainly, Saddam's favored few had once enjoyed.
But this wasn't just any old looting spree, akin to the ones common following sports championships here in the West. Oh, no. To Robert Fisk's jaundiced eye, this was The Worst Looting Ever!
"It was the day of the looter," he roared. "They trashed the German embassy and hurled the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag – flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section – as a mob of middle-aged men, women in chadors and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian embassy was broken into a few hours later."
Holy hissing cats! How dare these people "fling" a European Union flag when they should have been out there burning American ones! And what kind of uncivilized mob is sadistic enough to hurl bureaucratic desks, for the love of Pete? Have they no respect for the faceless gray automotons of "Old Europe" diplomacy?
And those "screaming children" -- Mr. Fisk is here referring, of course, to the children screaming in glee at the liberation party, not the ones just recently pulled from the hell of Saddam's Children's Prison -- just look at them playing Frisbee with records (Mozart, good God!) and even displaying the gall and temerity to dump German history books from the embassy window! Why, those children should have been studying those texts to learn more about their brave champion, Gerhard Schroeder!
We shall display some semblance of pity and leave Mr. Fisk's long-faced shadow in just a moment, except to point out in passing that his tortured prose, composed during this latest war he has plunked his ass in the middle of, provides a prima-facie glimpse into the hilariously baroque meanderings of the leftist talking heads and tapping fingers throughout Operation Iraqi Freedom. Fisk offers a pluperfect sampling of the twin ultimate overriding truths about the Left in these tender years of the twenty-first century: they cannot handle freedom, and they cannot know joy.
Indeed, throughout the course of this war, the majority of the press, both print and electronic -- with the emphatic exception of Fox News, a handful of influential U.S., British and Australian dailies, and the ingeniously "embedded" reporters themselves -- have donned the pleated skirt and played at being Saddam's Cheerleader. Most of the time the 'rah-rahs' have not been quite overt enough to merit the reporters, anchorheads and columnists facing, for example, being strung up by the feet and beat mercilessly about the face and head, but there has been more than a little backchannel pep reserved for the dictator. Gimme an "S"! Gimme an "A"! Etc.
Peter Arnett's infamous comments, which got him summarily booted from any media outlet worth caring about, encapsulated much of this zeitgeist, and instantly gave the lie to any pretense that this was one "impartial" journalist just doing his job: "It is clear," Arnett opined to Iraq's state-run interviewer while the band launched into "On Saddam" faintly in the background, "that within the United States that there is growing challenge to President Bush and the conduct about the war. And it is clear that our reports here about the Iraqi civilian casualties in the war, and the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States, and it helps those who oppose the war and challenge the policies to develop their arguments."
It doesn't get much more blatant than that. And because it doesn't, other pontificators have had, for the most part, to satisfy themselves with fomenting an atmosphere of doom with just a tad more delicacy.........
(Excerpt) Read more at iconoclast.ca ...
I continue to be astounded at the hate-filled reaction of the leftists. They couldn't care less about the Iraqi people, innocent babies, or the "shilren." This was a breathless, hopefilled opportunity for somebody to take America down a peg or two, perhaps with lots of American bodybags to ice the cake, and their sugarplum visions disintigrated literally before their eyes at the sight of jubilant Iraqis hugging and kissing soldiers, thanking the troops, and chanting praise for George Bush. No wonder they're such petulant foot-stompers today...they didn't get their way (their way=GWB humiliated, American soldiers killed with "a million Mogadishus" in the streets of Baghdad, the U.S. defeated).
Their mastery to the contrary notwithstanding, even they couldn't conceal their trucks and weapons when they were burning in the trees and beside the road.
Tut, tut. This is merely a liberal's greatest dream come true. Wealth redistribution in overdrive!
Precisely. The public schools work as designed.
Where's his journalistic objectivity?
Might be TP shortage.
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