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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

DeBaathification farce hits the front pages

This is not an "I told you so," it is a genuine question. If little old me was able to determine ten days ago that the Iraqi deBaathification law was a disastrous joke, why did it take so long for this to make a front page?

posted by mikevotes at 7:13 AM

10 Comments:

  • One more element not in my previous post. Any Baathist hoping to return to government will have to subject themselves to a "security screening" by the Interior Ministry. If I'm a Sunni living in a Sunni area, how likely am I to want IP/Shia militia asking about me and spreading my name around?

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 8:25 AM  

  • "...the law could set off a new purge of ex-Baathists, the opposite of U.S. hopes for the legislation."

    In fact of course the US hopes were to separate the 'good' Baathists from the 'bad' Baathists. Another divisive move designed to destroy Pan-Arab aspirations.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:40 AM  

  • Has the traditional press ever shown any interest in analysis of Iraq? NPR and BBC have had some interesting, insightful pieces, but the print and video media has largely been reporting what administration and beltway pundits dictate. No?

    By Blogger -epm, at 9:59 AM  

  • Even the most liberal of the traditional press works from the precept that Saddam was a brutal dictator who had to go. No deviation from that line is acceptable.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:11 AM  

  • Anon, definition? Good Baathists are the ones who will sell out for money power?

    ...

    EPM, McClatchy has been pretty good over the years, but they tend to do a significant overview piece a week rather than daily coverage.

    And the LATimes has been decent at times.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 11:27 AM  

  • Later: The interesting thing to me is that largely, they didn't cover this at all. It's not so much that they misrepresented, although that did happen.

    It's that this has been mostly ignored.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 11:29 AM  

  • I think it's part of a general trend in Iraq coverage. US casualties are down...'the surge is working' has become the new mantra so Iraq isn't on the front burner.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:42 AM  

  • Yeah. Agreed.

    We're now to an "aaceptable" level of death.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 1:37 PM  

  • I find it difficult to understand why this wasn't picked up sooner--surely the fact that the Sunnis were against it was a dead giveaway.

    It's not that there aren't plenty of smart people in the media; nor is it that they're afraid to criticize Bush, because we've seen plenty of that.

    But maybe it's that, since the surge turned out better than most of us expected, the media is leery of being too pessimistic. Maybe it needs to be an incontrovertible failure before they label it as such.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:20 AM  

  • I think that's part of it.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 7:05 AM  

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