Red Flags
Here's a fun little gaffe for Fox, from
NewsDissector.orgFOXNEWS.com sounded as usual like the Administration it serves. Their headline: "SADDAM HUSSEIN CAPTURED"
The stories: "Bush Knew of Capture Saturday. President was at Camp David when he learned Saddam possibly in custody"
"Joy in Iraq Over Saddam's Arrest. Iraqis celebrate by firing guns into the air, honking horns, cheering"
What is odd is that Fox was showing all these Iraqis dancing around and waving red flags with Arabic slogans, which I (and they) could not read. Later, a shot from another angle showed that on the other side of the flags was the hammer and sickle! These cheering Iraqis, portrayed as backers of the Coalition, were actually Communists.
What is interesting about this--and not noted on any of the networks--was that the US connived in Saddam's rise to power in the first place in order to stop the Iraqi Left from posing a threat to Western oil fields. Brutal nationalists such as Saddam then--and more recently, fanatical fundamentalists such as the Taliban--were backed by the US as part of its anti-Communist Cold War strategy. The first people killed by Saddam in Iraq were the Communists. At the time, Washington had little critical to say about those human rights abuses.
* Ray, 12/15/2003 02:02:10 PM
