PressEthic

Dick Cheney recently said that he believed the recent surge in violence in Iraq to be an attempt by insurgents to affect the upcoming American election. After all, they have access to the internet as well. They know what's happening in America.

Now, I realize that my ability to tap into the "insurgent" mind is rather limited. One significant reason being I don't speak Arabic. So I went searching around English language Arab sites for some coverage of the midterm elections. What I found falls far short of a provocation to bomb a crowded marketplace for the detriment of Republicans, but it was interesting nonetheless.

I found two noteworthy articles on Al Jazeera's English website (one of the only respectable Arab media outlets available to me).

The first, a straight news piece, tells us that the month of October has seen the greatest number of U.S. casualties since November 2004, the month of the last presidential election (a significant factoid in itself, although questionable), and then immediately goes on to say that Americans are increasingly opposed to the war. Al Jazeera's connecting the two, why wouldn't the insurgents.

The second piece on the Jazeera website is an opinion piece by Sandy Shanks. Shanks rattles on obsessively about the threat of impeachment for W. if the Democrats take the House. Has anybody heard impeachment mentioned anywhere else? He then goes on to propose that Bush will attempt to attack Iran in order to rally voters. Whatever this guy's huffing, it doesn't mix well with the conspiracy videos he's watching.

These articles don't prove anything. There have been many bloody months in this bloody war and there is no evidence that there was an agenda behind this one. Moreover, the English-language Al Jazeera website is far from the most militant news source available to insurgents. In fact, Al Jazeera is often accused of being pro-American by hard-line Islamists.

In light of this fact, the kind of news that hard-liners respect must be far more abrasive to Western sensibilities than Al Jazeera. If Al Jazeera, in English, is connecting increasing American deaths with decreasing American war-support, and dangling the juicy carrot of Bush's impeachment as a consequence of this, what kind of news are the guys with guns getting?

Full stop........................................................

The flip side of this argument is easy to deduce. Cheney is covering his ass. The Republicans' strong issue is safety for the American people. What else is he going to attribute the deepening bloodbath in Iraq to? American incompetence? Increasing instability in the region? Of course not. He's going to cast it as a wicked plot by our enemies to undermine our efforts. The worst thing about politics is that it is conducted by politicians.

I don't know what the truth is but I'm guessing its somewhere in between.