The Soap Source

A friend of mine sent me an article from Salon, in which the Pentagon is accused of staging the whole Jessica Lynch rescue in order to create a wonderful bit of PR and psy ops.

I’ve dug into this a bit, and a variety of respectable players in the Blogosphere, such as Andrew Sullivan and instapundit are questioning the America-Staged-The-Whole-Thing story.

The whole thing began with a BBC story, which states that the rescue effort was a complete sham, staged for propaganda benefit, and that the soldiers involved were shooting blanks and pyrotechnics to make the whole production more dramatic. The author of this story, John Kampfner, later told CNN in an interview that while he questions the Pentagon’s spin on the story, he did NOT believe that the event was staged. To me, however, the above-referenced BBC article sure sounds like that’s what he was saying.

The “Iraq’s most wanted” deck being circulated in Iraq after the war, which later became a souvenir hit, the magazine NewsMax has issued a new “America’s enemies” deck entitled the “United Nations of Weasels.” This is a hoot. The spades are foreign leaders who caused us trouble. The Ace of Spades, of course, is none other than Jacques Chirac. Vladimir Putin warranted the ten of spades. His inscription reads “helped arm and defend Saddam despite his ‘friendship’ with Bush.” The hearts are Hollywood “activists,” like Michael Moore (don’t even get me started about what a fraud and loser he is) and Susan Sarandon. Diamonds are American politicians such as Ramsey Clark and Dennis Kucinich. Lastly, the clubs are journalists and writers spoke out against the war, such as Peter Arnett and Ted Turner.

Just as post-WWII West Germany was divided into sectors adminstered by the US, England and France, so too will Iraq be divided into sectors, this time administered by the US, England, and Poland. “Why Poland?” one might ask. Part of the answer is obvious: other likely candidates actively opposed the war, and now they can’t or won’t join the rebuilding effort. This knocks off France, Germany and Russia. Why not Australia? They were an important part of the coalition. To be honest, I have no idea, I haven’t seen any discussion of this.

The author, Aleksander Dugin, Chairman of the political party “Eurasia,” writes that the war in Iraq as divided Europe into two camps divided by philosophy and outlook. On the one side we have England and large parts of Southern and Eastern Europe: Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, the Baltics. On the other side we have France, Germany, Belgium. So far, so good, this is fairly obvious.

Mr Zlobin believes that much of the discord between Europe and America arises from a difference in outlook concerning Islamic terrorism. Where the Europeans see al-Qaeda as something between organized crime and “local” terrorist movements like the IRA or Hamas, the US sees terrorism as another “-ism” akin to communism or fascism, which must be fought on a global scale to defend civilization itself from the ideological nihilism of al-Qaeda. He chides President Putin for siding with the Europeans, and further notes that America exerted great effort to liberate and defend these same European countries from earlier “-isms.” He ended the article by warning President Putin that Islamic terrorists won’t respect the Russian’s neutrality in the Iraq war. Given that Rusians have had their own trouble with Chechen terrorists, I can only assume that President Putin doesn’t see a connection between Iraq and terrorism. I can’t believe that Russia would willingly choose to obstruct the hunt for terrorists. Of course, it is also very possible that the Russians sat out of the Iraq war because Iraq was a client state in hock to Russia for billions.