Northern Valley Beacon

But if you look at how President Bush constantly refers to the press as an actor that distorts and muddles reality in Iraq, it's apparent that those alleged distortions have become essential to the administration's contention that progress is being made.

Thus, he tells us, there are two Iraqs: one, a country portrayed in images of blood and chaos, and another, rosier Iraq, where life goes on, schools are built, hospitals opened and whole towns mended after grievous disorder. For a blunt example of how this works we turn to Vice President Cheney this past Sunday, appearing on Face the Nation. Bob Schieffer seemed to corner Cheney at one point, presenting him with a list of rosy predictions the veep had made that never came to pass. "I remember when you were saying we'd be greeted as liberators; you played down the insurgency 10 months ago, you said it was in its last throes," Schieffer said. "Do you believe that these optimistic statements may be one of the reasons that people seem to be more skeptical in this country about whether
we ought to be in Iraq?"

Cheney slipped the punch like a deft boxer and countered with a hard short right to Schieffer's solar plexus: "No. I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad.

It's not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress towards rebuilding Iraq."Just like that, Cheney tells us that though we might think we know what is happening in Iraq, it is actually an illusion, a function more of a producer or editor's need to sell newspapers or pump up ratings.

President Bush has been making the same argument via a subtler rhetorical device: He simply throws the word "images" in front of any uncomfortable information about Iraq. So, for example, in his March 14 speech to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies he described things in this way: "In the past few weeks, the world has seen very different images from Iraq, images of violence and anger and despair."

We don't think this is nitpicking on our part. Take a look at Bush's speech yesterday in Cleveland: "The central front on the war on terror is Iraq. And in the past few weeks, we've seen horrific images coming out of that country." He continues, "Others look at the violence they see each night on their television screens and they wonder how I can remain so optimistic about the prospects of success in Iraq. They wonder what I see that they don't."

We're not seeing car bombs ripping entire blocks apart and blowing dozens of Iraqis to bits. We're seeing images of car bombs ripping entire blocks apart and blowing dozens of Iraqis to bits. This is simply an extension of what Cheney told Schieffer. Because the violence is only "on their television screens," it's as if it does not actually exist out there in the world; it is only the "image" of violence.

posted by David Newquist  # 12:45 PM