Perception Gap in Iraq

[kskiska]

Iraq's newly empowered politicians have not stemmed the violence and instability in their country. But nearly three weeks of partial sovereignty may have helped the Bush administration's drive to reduce its political vulnerability on Iraq at home.

Reducing that vulnerability is now the White House's most urgent goal. What happened at the June 28 handover ceremony in Baghdad was not so much a transfer of sovereignty as it was a transfer of political responsibility -- from President Bush to a willing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

(snip)

Read through or watch Allawi's blunt, sparse statements and you too may be impressed by how much of his message is intended to reassure his American audience, rather than Iraqis. They are more keenly aware of the huge obstacles that Allawi faces in carrying out his ambitious promises.

To the relief of the White House, the American public and media seem to be slowly trying to tune out Iraq's continuing violence. Accounts of all but spectacular assaults slide deeper into network news broadcasts and the inside pages of newspapers as the summer and the U.S. presidential campaign progress.

(snip)

Administration officials privately acknowledge that alarm bells went off this spring over sudden, sharp declines in public support for the war in Iraq. "If we lose the critical mass of American public support, we lose everything we are trying to do in Iraq," said one official, avoiding the obvious thought that Bush could lose his reelection bid as well.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50502-2004Jul14.html

[Solly Mack]

1. Yes..tune out the death. ...tune out the dying

so much easier that way. shop...shop...shop

[demoman123]

3. People also get inured to it.

"Four GI's killed in Iraq" has become a routine headline.

[Solly Mack]

5. sad isn't?

[demoman123]

6. In this case, yes.

But it's a two sided coin. Without "stimulus accomodation"--declining sensitivity to stimuli with continued exposure--we'd all go nuts. So it has its benefits, too. But not in this case.

[Solly Mack]

9. I live on an army post. I don't have the luxury of detachment

Don't want it either. I want to feel what I'm feeling. Mostly it's just anger.

[nolabels]

11. Your next stop

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call ... THE TWILIGHT ZONE."

http://www.scifi.com/twilightzone/gallery/

[demoman123]

17. Thanks for the invitation,...

But I wouldn't want to impose on your hospitality.

[nolabels]

20. Who said anything about invitations?

http://www.beastieboys.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=18105

[demoman123]

22. Great pics of you and your friends!

But you can see why I can't accept your kind offer to visit your homeland. :)

[nolabels]

24. How sweet ! I have friends <()>

http://www.socialpsych.wjh.harvard.edu/

[kskiska]

2. I guess we're also tuning out our troops

over there. Out of sight, out of mind.

[Jacobin]

4. <hands over ears> LA LA LA LA LA LA

Bomb blasts?

I don't hear any bomb blasts.

Gunshots?

I don't hear any gunshots.

Dead soldiers?

I don't see any pictures of dead soldier's coffins.

Typical.

Just fucking typical.

[tnlefty]

14. So true. One of my kids used to do as you describe when he was about

2 and I was telling him no about something or stating that we needed to get something done. Just didn't want to hear it.

[THUNDER HANDS]

7. interest will pick up once we reach 1000 dead

Americans only pay attention to BIG...ROUND...NUMBERS.

998 killed? Big deal.

1000 killed? Woah!

[daleo]

8. Bushbot version of "Support the Troops!"

Ignore them.

[Larkspur]

10. Juan Cole said that the sovereignty transfer was only to help transfer

Iraq from the front pages to the back before the election in November. Seems like it is working, but we have 130,000 troops over there, so Iraq may not recede into the back pages as much as Bush wants, but we'll see.

[leftchick]

15. as usual Juan Cole is spot on....

I am not too hopeful that the US corporate repuke owned media will go against the bushco* plan....

[jean]

12. it's not going away - there is horror (child torture/rape) and gross

incompetence with US fingerprints all over this Iraq quagmire.

See what Sy Hersh said about child torture and rape in bush gulags in Iraq (and who knows where else?)and about Pentagon incompetence and budget crisis here:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0107946/2004/07/14.html#a1922

This will hit the fan and splatter all over bush.

from Hersh's ACLU speech (see the link):

'Hersh describes a Pentagon in crisis. The defense department budget is “in incredible chaos,” he says, with large sums of cash missing, including something like $1 billion that was supposed to be in Iraq.

"The disaffection inside the Pentagon is extremely accute," Hersh says. He tells the story of an officer telling Rumsfeld how bad things are, and Rummy turning to a ranking general yes-man who reassured him that things are just fine. Says Hersh, "The Secretary of Defense is simply incapable of hearing what he doesn’t want to hear."

The Iraqi insurgency, he says,was operating in 1-to-3 man cells a year ago, now in 10-15 man cells, and despite the harsh questioning, "we still know nothing about them...we have no tactical information.”

He says the foreign element among insurgents is overstated, and that bogeyman Zarqawi is "a composite figure" hyped by our government.'

[UpInArms]

13. pretty soon they will try to sell this as

a US intervention into an Iraqi civil war situation - denying that we went in first and started dropping bombs.

sheesh!

[leQ]

23. it's been long predicted that civil war would happen, but my question is

just who would benefit from one? is iran playing instigator? i've read that they're starting to infiltrate en masse, and i wouldn't put it past them to remember the previous war.

but there's definitely a decrease in the u.s. coverage, and the way it's being covered. it's like a movie. you can almost predict what's going to happen next. and then there's some surprise that usurps it all.

[The_Casual_Observer]

16. This is all just too linear and predictable

Rove&Co are nothing if not 100% predictable with their simple minded strategy. They know that at least 30% will buy into it every time.
Immediately after the "handover" the press began calling every thing in Iraq a "security" mission. The only thing different is that Bremer isn't there and some other CIA stooge ex pat Iraqi fatso is "in charge"
I expect to see this fatso guy outed fairly quickly.

[nolabels]

21. Things are going well in the worlds newest Democracy

Inventing Iraqi Democracy in North Carolina

by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
July 1st, 2004

Just days after the coalition handed Iraq over to a caretaker government, several individuals hired by a private contractor to teach Iraqis about democracy and creating civic organizations say that they completely failed in their task.
(snip)
(I wonder why they don't try this the US first :crazy:)
In real terms, this meant RTI staff in Iraq were charged with setting up local neighborhood councils, providing technical advice for municipal services such as garbage collection and water supply, and funding new local community organizations and initiatives.
(snip)
No Serious Plan

Kuhaida also complained that RTI lacked a serious plan for delivering democracy. "We can't even get our own people in the United States to vote, how are we going to do that in Iraq?" he wondered. "We needed to at least do some strategizing and thinking, but I saw no evidence that we were doing that."

"There was no plan at all after the war," he added. "The whole thing was running on a whim, basically. There wasn't even a bad plan out there. I am totally disturbed by my government and the lies that were told to me. I take them personally."
(snip)
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11402

[struggle4progress]

18. kick for smoke and mirrors

:kick:

[DeepModem Mom]

19. kick