Juan Cole: get ready for Iraq to disappear from TV

[Cocoa]

I think he's right on...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FF18Ak01.html

<snip>
JC: There's some question of whether that could cost Bush the election. A year ago, it didn't seem likely to me that Iraq would be able to affect an election. But the steady drumbeat of violence, the mounting toll of dead and wounded, the miscalculations regarding the siege of Fallujah, provoking the uprising of Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, and then the Abu Ghraib scandal, the cumulative factor of all these events, according to opinion polls, really have taken a toll on Bush's standing. If he were to be re-elected it would be historic: no one has been re-elected with these kinds of poll numbers. I think Iraq has become an albatross for the Bush administration. This so-called turnover of sovereignty - they're hoping that the US press stops covering Iraq like it is doing now, very intensively, as though it is the 51st state, which essentially is being run by the American government. Everyone will have noticed that when Hamid Karzai was elected by the Loya Jirga, the very next day Afghanistan fell off the front page and went to page 17.

ATol: And now it has fallen off the papers entirely.

JC: Now you can have several American servicemen killed and they are not even reported. I discern an unwritten rule among American journalists, that the American public is not interested in places which have their own government. The real significance of the so-called handover of sovereignty is that the Bush administration and its political advisers are hoping that the American press will take this moment as a cue to turn to reporting about Laci Peterson and other nonsense stories, local murder mysteries.

[mhr]

1. Spot On - It Will Become Reagan - Bush - Morning In America 24/7

eom

[THUNDER HANDS]

2. oh they will

We got the summer coming up. That means soccer mom trailer park stories for the next two months.

Get yer shark stories....plenty of shark stories!

[AbbeyRoad]

4. I don't think I could handle ...

another Summer of the Shark.

Let's all live in denial that there's an entire world of people out there living and suffering and dying and watch the media whip itself into a frenzy about frickin' sharks.

[reprehensor]

3. Good catch!

Thanks for posting.

[moondust]

5. Iraq? That's old news.

Bushco will never allow continued bad news from Iraq to taint the reselection farce. I wonder if yesterday's headline "Cheney Blames Media" may represent an early warning to the media that it's time to start falling in line or else.

[MISSDem]

6. Why does the media do this? What can "they" do to them if

they don't fall into line?

[lazarus]

7. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

What can be done to the media? The pig trough can dry up.

[Postman]

8. Persuasive but I disagree

not with 130,000 troops deployed with more needed and truck bombs going off every other day.

In the words of George W. Bushler himself - "Iraq is the central front in the war on terror" - I don't see this getting discarded in favor of Shark Week or more Chandra Leavi stories....

Could it happen? No doubt but Bush's folly in Iraq is a ratings grabber.

[gold_bug]

9. Osama in October?

If the Bush administration knew how to capture Osama, he would have been captured. ... They don't have good intelligence, and even the Pakistanis don't have good intelligence. So I don't think there will be an October surprise.

[redqueen]

10. Who's the secret prisoner?

:tinfoilhat:

[kentuck]

11. Saddam Hussein..?

Himself?