Wonkette
Yes yes, the War in Iraq is now five years old and has reached 4,000 American deaths. There's no real plan for reconciliation between the government and the insurgents and various Terrorists, so it's pretty much stalled forever. In other words, Iraq is super boring and not of interest to anyone. The media knows this, too! According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, "Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer." Well maybe if anything *cool* were going on over there, like COWBOYS/INJUNS or COUPS or PASSIONATE SEX or SPACE LASER FIGHTS, they might cover it more.
Another obvious reason for this declining news share has been the presidential election, where coverage of the candidates' various words placed out of context and ambiguous adjective selections has demanded the Main Stream Media's full attention. Also, the draft — sadly enough, young people can only care so much.
Anti-war and pro-war activists alike have their various reasons to be upset over this decline, but the real victims here are a single, unique breed: self-proclaimed liberal pundits who were hawkish about the war, then pretended they hated the war when it went bad, then made up BS evidence about how it's turning around, or whatever other popular news trends there have been on Iraq that they are always available to comment on:
"I was getting on average three to five calls a day for interviews about the war" in the first years, said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow on national security at the Brookings Institution. "Now it's less than one a day."
Someone save Michael O'Hanlon! He has more embarrassing things to say about Iraq but no one will listen!
Comments
Kind of the inverse Field of Dreams: If you destroy it, they will leave.
O'Hanlon has a point. What will happen to this country if journos stop asking neocons questions just because they've been wrong about every God-damned thing they ever opined upon in the last seven years?
Mass neo-con unemployment, that's what! Murdoch and Ailes can't keep the whole damn lot of them in Mountain Dew and Cheetos on their own, ya know.
Maybe these 'victims' can get some gainful employment trying to convince everyone what an imminent threat to our existence Iran is. Hope I am not giving anyone any ideas here.
No one ever reports on all the airliners that land safely. And right now, Iraq is perfectly safe and no one's getting so much as a finger hurt over there. Plus over all the war's turning out to be a real bargain.
Feh. Bernanke's miraculous, single-handed reversal of the economic downturn is so much more riveting news.
Breaking--Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki admits to spending 3 million dinars on a two oil barrels whore. Media races back to cover the story, and downloads of Nawal al-Dupre's song, Move ya Koran, soar.
It's hard to report on how well the war is going when the military won't let you off the base because you get killed. We should just take their word for it that the biggest problem is that there are so many rose petals raining down from heaven that it's clogging up their oil and water pipelines. Also they explode and kill people when they hit the ground.
Journalists: 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wake us up for the 2nd Tower of Babel...'
I don't blame 'em. The Iraq War is sorely lacking. Where's its Tet? Where's the firebombing of an old medieval city. As far as I can tell, nobody's been marched off to a death camp. Meh. Change the channel...
@Joe Dog: Jesus, it's like you're just begging to get that foot put in your mouth.
@LittlePig:
And God knows the New York Times has only so much room on its op ed page.
@queeraselvis: Somedays, I can't discern caustic satire from witless asides.
War stories don't sell copies. Whore stories do.
I was reading about Depleted Uranium the other day. Very interesting. It is made from nuclear waste (because it is cheap) in ammunition for its "pyrhophoric" properties (when it is turned into dust, it spontaneously combusts, melting through steel armor). It was used heavily in Mosul and Basra in both Gulf Wars, and has doubled the rate of birth defects, as well as causing Gulf War syndrome.
The good news is that it is possible to clean up some DU (from unexploded munitions etc). But of course the United States isn't going to pay for that.
Also, the actual total number of U.S. troop deaths number in the tens of thousands (including troops who are injured or become sick in Iraq, come home, then die). These are close to Vietnam War numbers already.
when bush joins the fighting troops after he loses his present job (he thinks war is romantic!), then the press will cover the iraq war again.
When the Green Zone becomes unsafe, this will seem like wall-to-wall coverage. All the "reporting" will then be done from Kuwait and Google satellite images.
@WadISay: It did, however, noone cares, because it is all such OLD NEWS! No Whore Diamonds (TM) for tuscan warriors.
Mebbe we could get Amt Winehouse and Firecrotch to move to the Green Zone.TMZ would be all over that shit!
@BluntObjects: oo oo! Could we kill one of them off?
It takes an Israeli to make counterinsurgency sexy.
@weazel: Who, Golan Cipel? I didn't know the kids were calling it "counterinsurgency" these days.
The Pew study also mentions that since the Iraq War pretty much equals all foreign news stories, what this really means is that all the news stories Amerikkkans get about the rest of the world are alsssssso zzzzzz excuse me, I gotta take another nap........
They need to get themselves a Democratic primary with a crazy ass white woman and a bad ass black man. Duh.
@kadycee: Unfortunately, Iraq is more likely to get the Republican's version of elections: The Sunni Romney, the Shiia McCain, and a Kurdish Ron Paul, with his ultra-pro human minor support base. Dissappointment would be iminent.
Maybe if Jessica Simpson showed up, we'd lose, and then we could just go the fuck home.
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