my heart aches for the man and child pictured.
the monsters who kicked this off are beyond despicable.

wow, that is the worst bicycle chain accident I have ever seen.

Good thing "combat operations" (AKA unauthorized, illegal invasion and occupation of a UN Member country omn false pretenses) is over, and the Iraqi Health system and all other US destroyed infrastructure is fully restored to help this kid.

"On September 16, 2004 Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, speaking on the invasion, said, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

There is an international law that forbids a nation from assassinating a leader or dictator of another nation. If Bush/Cheney were to have sent U.S. CIA agents to Iraq to kill Saddam then Bush/Cheney would both be prosecuted for a war crime.

But instead Bush/Cheney killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, thousands of U.S. troops, wounded probably a million Iraqis along with thousands of soldiers who lives are ruined forever, imprisoned untold numbers of innocent men and tortured, who knows how Iraqis.

The people living under a dictatorship know whether or not they should overthrow their leader or if the result would be, as the people of Iraq knew, a bloody civil war which would open their borders for other countries like Iran to take over Iraq.

Why aren't Bush/Cheney and their other gang members in prison? Now that Obama is president there is no possible good military End Game and maybe no political End Game either. How will America ever make amends for this international crime? I am so very sorry for my governments aggression against Iraqis.

Is AP now suggesting that their reporters now tell the truth as opposed to the time of Bush-Chaney? Is this an admission of lying?

Glenn Greenwald has a good post up about the flip side of this issue: MSNBC and the Pentagon effectively partnering to provide Exclusive Coverage of the (bogus) End of the (bogus) Iraq War.

I won't post a link, because it appears that there's some conflict or hassle about CD publishing Greenwald's columns here. Maybe they'll publish a teaser and a link, as they've been doing lately.

I don't want to be collateral damage.

Hallelujah! Finally, a journalist has grown a pair and is willing to confront President Barry on the lies about "ending" the Iraq War. Dare I hope for even one more?

Even if it is for the wrong reason (Attack Obama 24/7), they are absolutely right. Would the soldiers still there disagree?

"Seven blood-and-lie-filled years after much of the media mindlessly mouthed the Bush line on Iraq, the AP has issued a memo to reporters warning it not to do the same with Obama."

After seven blood-and-lie-filled years of needless and illegal aggressive war under the Bush regime we have had over a year and a half of blood-and-lie-filled needless and illegal aggressive war under the Obama regime.

Shrug.

I was pissed at Bush & CO. back when they ran this scam on the dumb asses who call themselves Pats. Pats they are not, Patsies they are.
Now the Jr. neoconservative Obama is selling us more BS.
Back to the streets!!!

"AP has issued a memo to reporters... "

Wow. AP now has "reporters"? They are not supposed to "uncritically repeat" or "mindlessly mouth" official statements? That would be a change in job description. Why the change now and not for the last 9 years of our invasions?

Joe

Can anybody give background on the tragic photo of the boy that leads the article?

Is it since the end of combat in Iraq?

The AP memo ends with:

"We can add that beyond U.S. boots on the ground, Iraq is expected to need U.S. air power and other military support for years to control its own air space and to deter possible attack from abroad."

Here is the justification for the 50,000 troops and the many "enduring" bases, faithfully parroted by the compliant AP.

Don't kid yourself that AP is adhering to journalistic excellence. It is a Govt. mouthpiece.

Nice to hear AP harbors aspirations to become a news service.

Stellar advice like this does not get us all the way there, but it is a nice start.

The world media and the peace loving Jesus following Christians of the world are as silent as the constitutional loving Americans that have allowed the Patriot acts to stand.

The war on terror has almost been decided, we are on the throngs of defeat, for they have us living in a police state and our free press won't report on the war or the attack on the constitution.

I say this as a patriotic American citizen who loves this country and believes that the constitution defines what kind of people Americans. are supposed to be.

We don't torture, we don't spy on ourselves and we respect rule of law and civil liberties.

Freedom of the press was not shutdown by the elite, it was abandoned our editors and reporters.

"The world media and the peace loving Jesus following Christians of the world are as silent as the constitutional loving Americans that have allowed the Patriot acts to stand."

When the misnamed PATRIOT Act was proposed and voted in, I spent days reading it and comparing it with the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

I wrote to every legislator I could reach with the annotations showing which rights, and what part of our Constitution it illegally contravened. The data was accompanied by a description of the way the Constitution can be amended, pointing out that it cannot be changed or canceled by Legislative or Executive fiat.

I also sent it off to the media and to the ACLU, and some Constitutional Lawyers. Nobody would answer me, or touch it with a ten foot pole.

I figured then that we were lost. Since then, concentration camps built, surveillance of virtually every American, hundreds of thousands on no-fly lists, border watch lists. Renditions, torture, all the trappings of any two-bit dictatorship.

When the Democans took the legislature in 2006, I waited for some change, some curbing of Bush and his endless, illegal wars, and hopefully impeachment.

My fascist Congressman did write back to tell me we didn't elect the Dims to end the war, or impeach Bush, but to get a few cents raise in the minimum wage. (He never mentioned that they were going to give us all a chance to earn it.) In his letter to me, he also said he wasn't convinced that Bush had broken any laws. I sent him a letter with the Bill of Rights and Constitution laid out with the unconstitutional things he was doing opposite the relevant text. I then told him if he could read that and say he didn't know if the president had broken the law, then Bush wasn't the only one who needed to be impeached.

I never heard back from him, but I got talked in going to the Dims annual BBQ at the park. Ran into Mr. Larsen there, and when he realized who I was, he turned his back on me and walked away. I felt flattered. I have a peace bookmark that I hand out. Just for the fun of it, as he worked another table, I walked up and said, "Oh, Mr. Larsen, I forgot to offer you one of my Peace bookmarks and put one in his hand. He looked at it, replied "NO!" and shoved it back at me. I turned to the table and asked if anyone would like a Peace bookmark. Every one there enthusiastically said yes. Some took two or three to pass around. I went to all the tables until I ran out of bookmarks. Larsen looked like he had just drank a large glass of sour milk!

However, they are still around, and the Obamanation is no different than being Bushwhacked except we are all much poorer and watched much more closely. The Banksters and Wall Street gamblers got our trillion$ and we get foreclosures and outsourcing.

The two parties are a two-backed beast. One back has an "R" on it, the other a "D." If you pull them apart and look down the middle, you'll see a very small number of very powerful, wealthy, individuals pulling the strings to both sides. They don't care which of the two wins an election because they own them both, and both dutifully do what they are told.

Anybody that votes for either party is just digging their own grave, because they only represent those shadowy controllers that pull their strings and give them sufficient bribes.

For a southern Democrat who actually fights Obama's conservatism, see the following website:

votejohnwolfe.com

For a southern Democrat who actually fights Obama's conservatism, see the following website:

votejohnwolfe.com

So the media hacks making up the propaganda arm of the corporate government of Nazi-amurraka, are willing to question someone who is commonly perceived as "left" rather than the jack-booted thugs that got us into this! I guess you don't want to question the jack-booted thugs because they may step on you. Meanwhile they preen on the canard that the media are left-leaning. Nothing like hearing it parroted on the right telling TPTB who is really safe to have around (the dim-wits who think there is a communist or socialist lurking behind every blade of grass) and who isn't (anybody who knows the media merely serve as the voice of whitewashed corruption).

And while they're on a truth-telling binge, AP reporters should also challenge "official" statements about:
1. Iran's "dangerous" nuclear bomb;
2. Israel's "desire" for peace;
3. the US "democratizing" mission in Afghanistan;
4. "progress" on financial reform;
5. the "revolutionary" health care reform law;
6. how BP is taking responsibility and cleaning up the Gulf;
7. etc, etc, etc.