...In the ministry of propaganda department..

I was reading this story from the AP regarding Bush's press conference today, when I came across this little line that jumped out at me like a barracuda from a hole in a coral reef:

Nearly four out of five Americans, including 70 percent of Republicans, believe civil war will break out in Iraq, according to a recent AP-Ipsos poll.

Okay... when does a "belief" translate into reality? What possible relevance can a mere belief impose, one way or another, on a reality that is thousands of miles and a world away from those who hold that belief? And why the need to bring that belief to the forefront of a story by a medium that is supposedly charged with reporting fact?

The only relevance that I can see is the relevance of wishful thinking on the press' part that such a scenario will indeed be the case; that tens of thousands of Iraqis will die in such a conflict; allowing their self-righteous collective bony finger of indignation to be righteously pointed at their real enemy; who in their case is not the terrorist element fighting our soldiers and blowing up civilians in Iraq, but President George W. Bush, himself.

And with regard to defending one of their own dinosaurs,

On Iraq, Bush bristled at a suggestion that he had wanted to wage war against that country since early in his presidency.

"I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong ... with all due respect," he told a reporter. "No president wants war." To those who say otherwise, "it's simply not true," Bush said.

This un-named reporter was none other than that dimentia-ridden dinosaur, Helen Thomas. Why is she still in the White House Press Corp, anyway? Rather than a business suit, perhaps she should be fitted with a straitjacket.


(Filed under the fifth column)