My opinion Amy Goodman : Tapestry of manipulations has unraveled into
Iraq civil war
My opinion Amy Goodman

"Every great work of art goes through messy phases while it is in
transition. A lump of clay can become a sculpture; blobs of paint
become paintings which inspire."
No, this is not Pablo Picasso speaking, but Maj. Gen. William B.
Caldwell IV, spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, comparing
the carnage in Iraq to a work of art in another audacious attempt to
paint Iraq as anything other than a catastrophe.
The general's remarks do bring the great artist to mind. Picasso's
epic painting "Guernica," named after the city in Spain, captured the
brutality of the bombing of that city during another civil war, the
Spanish Civil War.
The painting, almost 30 feet wide, is a globally recognized depiction
and artistic condemnation of war. Picasso shows the terror on the
faces of people, the frightened animals. He shows the dead, the dying,
the dismembered. A tapestry reproduction of it adorns the lobby
outside of the United Nations Security Council.
In February 2003, before then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
gave his major push for war at the United Nations - a speech he would
later call a "blot" on his record - a blue curtain was drawn across
the tapestry so that the image would not be the backdrop for press
statements on the coming war. Immediately, posters and banners of
Picasso's "Guernica" began appearing at the anti-war demonstrations
sweeping the globe.
The attempted control of imagery and propaganda, language and spin has
been a high priority of the Bush administration. Yes, the Pentagon
forbade photographing the flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers. But
the manipulation goes beyond the war.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "Every gun that is made,
every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed." If Eisenhower
worked for the government today, he would have to revise his
statement. Recently, the Bush administration stopped using the words
"hunger" or "hungry" when describing the millions of Americans who
can't afford to eat. Instead of suffering from hunger, the Agriculture
Department now says these people are experiencing "very low food
security."
While the Bush administration has had some success in covering up the
truth, it seems like reality is finally beginning to outpace its
efforts.
Take, for example, Hurricane Katrina. A side effect of the Bush
administration not responding to that disaster in a timely fashion is
that when the network reporters went to New Orleans, there were no
troops to embed with. What we saw for one of the first times was the
network correspondents reporting from the victims' perspective. Day
after day, unspun, unfiltered. Bodies floated across our TV screens. I
remember a young woman reporter interviewing a man whose wife's hand
had just slipped out of his, as she told him to take care of their
children. After telling his story, the man waded into the water in
shock with his boy. The reporter started to cry. The reports
galvanized the country. Could you imagine if for one week we saw those
images in Iraq: babies dead on the ground, women with their legs blown
off by cluster bombs, soldiers dead and dying. Americans are a
compassionate people. They would say no - war is not an answer to
conflict in the 21st century.
The debate now in vogue is whether Iraq is in a civil war. Sectarian
violence on a mass scale is acknowledged all around: Gone are the
harangues that the media are not covering the "positive stories" or
the "good news" - there simply is no good news in Iraq.
The Iraqi Ministry of Health estimated 150,000 Iraqis have died since
the invasion. An October medical journal article estimated the
civilian death toll as somewhere near 655,000.
The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has now lasted longer than
the U.S. involvement in World War II. Iraqis suffered the most violent
day in the entire war while Americans were celebrating Thanksgiving.
Iraq, like Spain in the 1930s, is in a civil war. A civil war started
by the U.S. invasion and fueled by the U.S. occupation. The shroud
over the U.N.'s "Guernica" tapestry is gone. Now the only shrouds
worth noting are those that wrap the victims of the daily slaughter in
Iraq.
My opinion
Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now," which airs in Tucson on
radio station KXCI (91.3-FM) and Access Tucson. For broadcast times
and to e-mail Goodman, go to www.democracynow.org