{"id":10268,"date":"2011-07-03T19:56:01","date_gmt":"2011-07-04T03:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=10268"},"modified":"2011-07-03T19:56:01","modified_gmt":"2011-07-04T03:56:01","slug":"nyt-spin-echoes-changing-narrative-on-continuing-iraq-occupation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/03\/nyt-spin-echoes-changing-narrative-on-continuing-iraq-occupation\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT Spin Echoes Changing Narrative on Continuing Iraq Occupation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over eight years, the US troops fighting in Iraq have faced massive local opposition, as well they might as an occupation force overseeing a war which killed a massive number of civilians. <\/p>\n<p>This would explain the surprise, then, when the <em>New York Times<\/em> led with the story &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/07\/03\/world\/middleeast\/03iraq.html\">Iraqis Hope US Special Operations Commandos Stay<\/a>&#8221; today. How could this possibly be true? <\/p>\n<p>The short answer is, its not true. When you read the article you quickly realize that the hope of &#8220;Iraqis&#8221; is based entirely on quotes from a couple of military commanders who see a benefit in the continuing occupation, or at least see the writing on the wall and are getting out of the way of the moving bus. <\/p>\n<p>Yes, a handful of Iraqis stand to benefit from continuing the disastrous US war for a few more years, but we have also seen massive numbers of Iraqis publicly protesting against them remaining. Putting these two samples side by side, does anyone really think the <em>New York Times<\/em> is reasonable in declaring this as an Iraqi &#8220;hope.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Clearly not, but it seems to reflect the Obama Administration&#8217;s effort to spin the continuation as something only grudgingly granted to the pleading Iraqis. And whether that pleading is just a couple of people after months of administration haranguing, why should that get in the way of a good narrative? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over eight years, the US troops fighting in Iraq have faced massive local opposition, as well they might as an occupation force overseeing a war which killed a massive number of civilians. This would explain the surprise, then, when the New York Times led with the story &#8220;Iraqis Hope US Special Operations Commandos Stay&#8221; today. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10270,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10268\/revisions\/10270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10268"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}