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Iraqis protest terrorism and no one reports it

By Frank Salvato
web posted March 7, 2005

No matter how much the "new media" exposes the elite media for its agenda -- its biased, slanted framing of stories and the non-reporting of important events -- it just keeps at it as if "we the people" are too stupid to notice. It boggles the mind. As the old guard's credibility plummets, not unlike a dot.com stock in early 2000, the mainstream's media continues to adhere to their elitist agenda of skewing the information offered to the American people regardless of the realities of any given situation.

An incredibly huge event took place recently in Hillah, Iraq. Just one day after terrorists detonated a massive car bomb killing at least 125 Iraqis, who were lined up to take physicals in an effort to gain employment with the local police force, thousands of Hillah residents took to the streets in protest. They weren't protesting against the "American occupation" and they weren't protesting against the "aggression of the West." They weren't protesting the treatment of terrorists being detained at Abu Ghraib. They were protesting against those who committed murder against their people. They were protesting against terrorism, Baathism and Wahhabism.

Think about it, if these 2000-plus people would have taken to the streets in protest of inhumane treatment and indiscriminate terrorism prior to March of 2003 "Chemical Ali" would have been dispatched to recreate his gassing of the Kurds. The fact that this number of people chose to exercise their new freedom of speech, and to do it in protest of Islamo-Fascism with chants of, "No to terrorism! No to Baathism! No to Wahhabism!" is an incredible story which those in other oppressively ruled Arab countries would embrace. Undoubtedly, the people of Lebanon would applaud their Arab brothers and sisters in their quest for freedom.

Yet there was but a whisper of this monumental event in the mainstream media. There was nothing printed about it in the New York Times. There was nothing printed about it in Reuters. The story was absent from the online pages of CNN, MSNBC, USA Today, CBS and even FOX News. No television station -- network or otherwise -- covered the protest. The only mainstream outlet to cover the story -- a story that faded quicker than William Hung's singing career -- was the Associated Press (AP). To be fair, ABC, a few mid-tier newspapers and Salon.com picked up the AP story but in order to read it in its entirety on Salon.com you had to be a premium member. How paradoxically capitalistic for a left-wing publication.

Unsurprisingly, the AP story, "2,000 Demonstrate at Iraqi Bombing Site," penned by Rawya Rageh, had less to do with the actual protest of terrorism than it did with a sub-story about Florence Aubenas, the French journalist taken hostage two months ago. Of the 1,016 words in the article only 358 were about the protest and even then only 95 words actually reflected the outrage at terrorists and their actions. Rageh, however, did manage to find Hussein Hassoun, one of the only protesters who chose to blame the Hillah police for the carnage. He blamed the police for having the applicants line-up outside the building where the terrorist struck rather than the cretin who actually committed the murders. There's one in every crowd.

It is indisputable that the bravery of the Iraqi protesters and the monolithic event itself was ignored by the mainstream media. It's hard to imagine that the media elite would simply overlook such a pivotal story, especially when it was offered up by the AP. No, a mainstream media outlet that missed this fantastic story wouldn't be worthy of publishing a junior high school newspaper. It is more likely that they chose to pro-actively ignore it.

But why on earth would the media elite gloss over a story that highlights such a good, brave and revolutionary event? The answer is simple; if they had reported on the turn of events in Hillah they would have had to celebrate something the Bush Administration foretold for the Iraqi people.

As has been demonstrated since George W. Bush's election in 2000, the media elites won't acknowledge, report or celebrate anything that proves the Bush Administration correct. The president and the whole of his administration said that given the chance, the Iraqi people would take to the streets to embrace freedom and democracy. Yet, every step of the way the old guard media and the liberal left have insisted the president and his people were wrong. They insisted we were embedded in a quagmire and that we were creating terrorists not freedom loving peoples. They were and are so incredibly wrong. They were wrong about Afghanistan, Iraq and, by proxy, Libya and they are proving to be wrong about Lebanon. In fact, regarding freedom and democracy in the Middle East, when have the mainstream media and the liberal left ever been correct?

An historical event took place in Hillah, Iraq on March 1st 2005. The newly found voice of freedom in Iraq reigned supreme over the threats of terrorists. Conversely, our free speech standard bearers continued their disingenuous and politically partisan assault on the American people, this time by turning a blind eye to an extraordinary event. It's a good thing the protesters in Hillah -- the freedom fighters of Iraq -- weren't counting on the mainstream media of the West to cover this event. The old guard would have failed them miserably. Oh, wait, they did.

Frank Salvato is a political media consultant and managing editor for TheRant.us. His pieces are regularly featured in Townhall.com. He has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and numerous radio shows. His pieces have been recognized by the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention and are periodically featured in The Washington Times as well as other national and international publications. He can be contacted at oped@therant.us Copyright © 2005 Frank Salvato

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