The toppling of the statue was staged; it was an improvised, propaganda campaign. A US Army Psychological Operation Unit’s choreographed event.
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/03/nation/na-statue3
Hussein’s capture, according to the dates growing in the background, had to occur months before the video was alleged to have been released.
http://www.indiadivine.org/audarya/ayurveda-health-wellbeing/919541-palm-trees-never-lie-date-saddams-foxhole-pics-months-out.html A former marine backs up the above – here, saying that Hussein was found in Dour, near Tikrit, in a modest home, where an intense fire fight eventually produced Saddam’s surrender.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/former_marine_says_public_version_of_saddam_capture_fiction/
As for the efficacy of the surge:
“Mainstream media and simplistic operational planners have promoted the false idea that there is an overwhelming correlation between more troops and more security. However, mass plus men plus money do not always equal success. Unfortunately, “the Surge” slogan supplanted comprehensive initiatives of the “Petraeus Doctrine.” The catastrophe of the mis-association rests in the future application of surges as a strategy to win counterinsurgencies; of immediate concern is how this perception affects the conflict in Afghanistan. As troops were surged to Afghanistan in 2010, once again Petraeus began influencing the operations. Due to the initial success of Village Stability Operations in the fall of 2010, these operations are rapidly expanding and may bear the brunt of Taliban offenses and attrit their numbers during the summer campaign season of 2011. If the tide does change in Afghanistan in 2011, will the victor once again write the history by touting the Afghanistan troop surge of 2010-2011 rather than the decisive operational changes; therein leading future counterinsurgency practioners further astray” http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/732-thiel.pdf
And what of The U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions inquiry on Iraqi women handcuffed, summarily executed with their children in 2006? http://www.factoverfiction.com/article/3377
Then, there’s the recent recovery of hundreds of discarded documents from a Tikrit landfill describing the business as usual protocols of coalition forces such as the targeting / shooting of children in cars that refused to stop at checkpoints. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/world/middleeast/united-states-marines-haditha-interviews-found-in-iraq-junkyard.html?_r=1&ref=world
“…[T]he overall Iraqi death toll…ranges from around 100,000 to upwards of a million, depending on whom you trust. It likely produced some 4.5 million orphans, on top of the half million children killed under the earlier sanctions regime, along with veritable legions of widows.” http://open.salon.com/blog/judy_mandelbaum/2011/12/16/iraq_war_commemorations_ignore_ongoing_humanitarian_disaster
That NPR and Tom Bowman could have so glaringly excluded these well known facts (admittedly, discussion of the surge’s efficacy was momentarily brought to light here) calls into question the intention of the article. Is All Things Considered carrying water for the US Army's Psychological Operations Unit? It’s the increasing prevalence of articles such as these – those that lead with false and misleading content at the outset – which drive me to encourage my friends and colleagues to discontinue support for NPR and it’s affiliate stations. (Please feel free to quote the above italicized line on the Thursday “Letters” portion of your program.) By promoting the deceptive practices of the US Army’s Psychologcial Operations Unit, NPR has effectively become a victim these lies. Further propagating and disseminating this disinformation is not only tragic, it clearly illustrates the underlying misleading motives that abound at NPR. I sincerely wish it were otherwise. I would point NPR’s editors to www.democracynow.org for an example of journalism free from corporate and military influence.
As I’ve been writing this note I recall Gandhi’s thoughts on war, those that NPR might be wise to heed: “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
Humanitarian disasters prevail with or without ceremony. Please start paying attention to them. These are the legacies that social scientists will ponder in the next century. Those that ask “how could we have let this happen?”
