How can these two headlines tell such different stories?

posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:28 PM Permalink

Headline one from the NYT:

Calm in Iraqi Cities After Cleric Calls for Truce

versus headline two from Huffington Post:

US Green Zone Attacked Despite Cleric's Order To Stop Fighting

Article text from headline one:

Iraqis returned to the streets of Baghdad after a curfew was lifted, and the southern port city of Basra appeared quiet on Monday, a day after the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called for his followers to stop fighting and in turn demanded concessions from Iraq’s government.

Mr. Sadr’s statement on Sunday afternoon was released at the end of six days in which his Mahdi Army militia had held off an American-supported Iraqi assault on Basra.

No serious clashes were reported in Basra on Monday morning. In Baghdad, which had been virtually brought to a standstill by protests and violence over the past week, life appeared to return to normal with the streets filling with traffic. A succession of mortar shells rocked the Green Zone. But in most neighborhoods, people went back to work and shopped for supplies that they were unable to buy during the curfew.

From article text from heafline two:

The fortified Green Zone came under fresh attack Monday, less than 24 hours after anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told his fighters to stand down following a week of clashes with government forces.[…]

The rocket or mortar attacks on the nerve center of the U.S. mission and the Iraqi government continued more than a week of near-daily fire mostly from Shiite-dominated areas of eastern Baghdad.

The number of rounds going into the zone has dropped in recent days, but the continuing attacks indicate that al-Sadr may not be able to reign in all Shiite militia factions..

The U.S. Embassy said no serious injuries were reported and the U.S. military said it had no reports of major damage. At least two Americans working for the U.S. government died in attacks on the zone last week.

Oh, pardon me. I was foolish enough to consider the Green Zone as part of the city of Baghdad, when everyone knows that it is really a 104-acre self-contained city being built as a monument to bush at tremendous cost.

Oh, pooh. There's that word "city" again describing bush's monument to himself, even though it is completely part of and surrounded by Baghdad.

Maybe headline two should have read:

Subsets of Baghdad City, "came under fresh attack Monday, less than 24 hours after anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told his fighters to stand down."

I also find this part of the article to be highly offensive and indicative of the current trend to believe any propaganda from the Embassy there:

The U.S. Embassy said no serious injuries were reported and the U.S. military said it had no reports of major damage. At least two Americans working for the U.S. government died in attacks on the zone last week.

I'll wager that the families of the two Americans killed during this almost non-stop bombing of the Green Zone would vehemently disagree with the conclusion that, "…no serious injuries were reported and the U.S. military said it had no reports of major damage.…"

Just how callous can our government get?

Labels: Bush, bush war doctrine, disclosure, disinformation, Iraq war, propaganda