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There's no business like show business |
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| FTLComm - Tisdale - Wednesday, March 19, 2003 | ||||||||||
| The American television networks have been disturbingly eager for their country to
get into another war ever since the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade
Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. The war in Afghanistan was a dismissal
show business failure with almost all of the fighting being carried out by war lords
against the Taliban and just not enough high tech missile strikes and American GI's
kicking butt. Almost all casualties in that episode that can hardly be consider a
war involved American's crashing aircraft and helicopters or dropping bombs on either
their own people, German or Canadian forces or wedding parties. So the American public have been deprived of retribution and the invasion of Iraq, which many claim was planned long before the terrorist attacks of September 11 to gain effective control of the oil reserves owned by that country, looked like it would have much more Cecil B. Demille qualities. In order to go to war the United States had at first maintained that Iraq was a threat to the United States as they had "weapons of mass destruction" however after playing with this game for a long time it was realised that no one would "willing" agree with such a story so the United States president said it was to "free" the people of Iraq from a terrible dictator and that "regime change" was the goal of the invasion. Tonight at 9:30 Eastern Standard Time the air raid sirens went off in Baghdad as air attacks began and as they had stated, their first target was the leader of the country. Other planned air operations were postponed or diverted for a "target of opportunity" attack to try and kill the leader of the country. At the time of this writing (11:00 PM) it appears that the attack was unsuccessful. But the real story was the story. The television networks including those in Canada ready with experts, analysts, maps, simulations and live images of antiaircraft fire. Correspondents on the telephone from their hotel rooms or like Ted Koppel standing beside parked armour in Kuwait. This is a made for TV war with the "embedded journalist, censored footage from the ships launching cruise missiles and the poker faced President of the Republic telling his people that this could be a long struggle, not without sacrifices. With over a quarter million American and British troops as possible targets the cowboy spirit of blowing something up United States air force and navy pilots will no doubt do their duty. ( I realise that this is appearing to be sarcastic but the truth is sometimes hard to accept. In the 1991 Gulf war the leading cause of American casualties was "friendly fire.") War may be hell, at least for those about to killed but there is no business like show business. Below are some of the images from the first half hour of the Second Iraq War as seen on various networks. |
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