whup whup whup whup whup whup whup...

"Saigon."

"Shhhhiiiiiit."

This is the end

Beautiful friend...



I was cleaning out some assorted MP3's today and came across the opening track of Apocalypse Now, that haunting rendition of The Door's The End that begins with the sound of helicopter blades whup-whup-whupping by. Accidental, but appropriate. That film, with all of its warts and problems, does illustrate in stark manner the euphemistic vocabulary that the Pentagon has crafted and put into play to describe the daily horros of war. "Pacification" in Vietnam meant nothing of the kind, and the now infamous but still popular "collateral damage" was created to explain in meaningless terms that B-52's dropping tons of bombs through the clouds in the general vicinity of a transponder might not actually know the difference between "charlie" and "friendlies." For the most part, the Pentagon cared little either way.

So it goes today. Turns out that Tomohawk cruise missiles travelling at 500 miles per hour aren't always as "precise" as the War Planners and Propagandists would have us believe. Bombs loosed from their moorings on aircraft sometimes do not respond to their guidance systems and crash through the rooves of homes, exploding and killing civilians. More to the point, the overall targeting strategy, contrary to Bush administration claims, involves widespread heavy bombing of large parts of Baghdad, which is filled with civilians. By definition, they are targets, even if the bombs don't actually have their individual names painted on them. The US media and the Pentagon are not even speculating on the numbers of Iraqi caualties thus far, military or civilian, claiming that "the Iraqi government has not released such figures." Of course, the Iraqi government has released such figures, sometimes branded as estimates, and while they do occasionally get mentioned, they are followed by an official US denial of their accuracy. Then, we start all over again. US officials have their own military estimates for Iraqi deaths, but they sit on them, and the media for the most part will not report them in any serious or useful way - it is considered to be "bad for morale." That type of decision, in and of itself, disqualifies anyone taking it from being a journalist or news organization and relegates them to propagandist. Himmler and Goebbels would be proud.

Sad to say, the best TV reporting so far is coming through C-SPAN, which has been running news shows from Canada, Lebanon, and the BBC. To be sure, this is still not saying much, but how revealing it is that the BBC's coverage covers so much more ground than the US coverage, even though they have far fewer people in the field and fewer resources to draw from. Watching the Beeb's reporting and then US TV reporting, one might almost forget the Brits are involved in the war...

But they are. Shame on Tony Blair.

A further note on the deaths in the Baghdad marketplace, caused by an errant missile or three. US officials began floating the story immediately after the explosion that the missile was Iraqi in origin. They had zero evidence to support this claim, and still have no basis for it, but continue to make it. These are the same officials that are constantly telling reporters to "watch what they say," blah blah blah.

Now we know why.

The story that seven US servicemen who were killed and their bodies moved and videotaped were in fact executed continues to be bandied about by all the major media, high US government officials, and the military. This is the attack wherein five other servicemen were taken prisoner and videotpaed while being interviewed, sparking a show of outrage from same said officials. I have not seen the dreaded tapes, nor have I read or seen anything that even hints that those killed did not die as a result of combat. If anyone has anything, lemme know.

Til then, I'm gonna batten down the hatches and keep the National Weather service site up. :)