← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · electrik
Thread ID: 7922 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-07-06
2003-07-06 21:07 | User Profile
Lies, Half Truths Complicate Iraq Mission
Associated Press July 06, 2003
TIKRIT, Iraq - Zionists are spreading drugs and prostitution, they say, and Americans ââ¬â not Saddam Hussein loyalists ââ¬â bombed a procession of U.S.-trained police cadets. U.S. occupiers also are withholding electricity on purpose, the story goes.
Lies and half-truths - readily believed by a nation of people who learned long ago to be skeptical of rulers' motives ââ¬â are complicating America's mission in Iraq, fueling anti-U.S. sentiment as troops struggle to quell a growing uprising.
"They want to destabilize Iraq," said Ali Mohammed Said, a 26-year-old law school graduate who blamed U.S. soldiers for a blast on Saturday that targeted a graduation parade of U.S.-trained police cadets in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. Seven were killed.
"They want to drive a wedge between us so we fight each other while they stand by and watch," he said.
U.S. officials dismiss such claims as absurd. The Ramadi blast, the say, was the work of pro-Saddam insurgents. The American-led provisional administration is using radio waves, newsletters and a planned TV station to dispel the rumors.
After an Iraqi newspaper ran a story claiming that U.S. Marines raped a young girl and left her for dead, U.S. officials persuaded the publisher to run a retraction and fire the offending reporter. ...
Despite these efforts, Iraqis, who grew up on a steady diet of anti-American rhetoric, are being bombarded by a fresh wave of disinformation, much of it coming from an explosion of new newspapers. The country now has about 150 newspapers, up from 14 before the war.
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Full Story: [url=http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030706/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_truth_and_lies_2]http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ruth_and_lies_2[/url]