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Seattle Times distorts the Iraq War

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003216299_bushiraq22.html

Now in its fourth year, the war has taken a heavy toll: More than 2,600 Americans have died and many more Iraqis have been killed. Last month alone, about 3,500 Iraqis died violently, the highest monthly civilian toll so far.
So let's be clear about "the war". There is no "the war". There are a multitude of conflicts currently playing out in Iraq. The current war that the US is directly engaged in, is among violent Islamofascists who want the US out of Iraq so they can take over and establish an Islamic dictatorship.

Aside from that, there is the "sectarian violence" which is Shiites slaughtering Sunnis in exchange for 30 years of Sunni slaughter of Shiites - and vice versa going back 1,400 years.

And, some number of these deaths were perpetrated by criminal gangs similar to our own mafia, who have been kidnapping and beheading for ransom for many decades in Iraq.

The Seattle Times uses the passive voice, and uses a word ("died") which blurs important facts. "Iraqis have been killed" they say, without specifying who killed them. "The war has taken a heavy toll" they say. Clearly the Times wants readers to conclude that "the war" killed everyone. Since there would be no war without US troops in Iraq, the Times wants us to think that nobody would be killed if we just left Iraq, and that nobody would ever have been killed had we not gone to Iraq in the first place. (Please don't say that this is an absurd conclusion. Because this is in fact the "progressive" stance - violence in Iraq would stop if we would just leave, that's all they want! And according to Sean Penn, Iraq was a peaceful land where children flew kites on the banks of a river of milk and honey.)

This is the importance of the passive voice in this article: it is to distract attention away from the fact that there are specific groups of Islamofascists of various stripes that are doing the slaughtering. In fact, all of the civilians and US troops murdered in Iraq each month are being murdered by Muslims - Muslims driven by power, by revenge, or by greed. They are not being murdered by the US, or "the war".

Why doesn't the Times state this? Because the Times agenda is for the US to get out of Iraq. The article's author therefore wrote the piece in a tone that specfically avoids placing blame for these murders where it belongs - on violent Islamofascists. And that's what these are, MURDERS, vicious slaughter of innocents. They are not "have died"s. By refusing to state simply where the blame for these murders lies, and by refusing to call them murders, the Seattle Times has abdicated morality lock, stock and barrel. They have handed the murdering hordes moral legitimacy.

By simply using the passive voice and lumping all the deaths together, the Times places blame for those deaths at the feet of the US - when in fact those murders, of US troops and Iraqi civilians alike, are being perpetrated by certain groups of Islamofascists.
Groups who must not under any circumstances be allowed to take control of Iraq.

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