{"id":57,"date":"2003-07-23T00:27:52","date_gmt":"2003-07-23T07:27:52","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2003-07-23T00:27:52","modified_gmt":"2003-07-23T07:27:52","slug":"celebration-in-baghdad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/23\/celebration-in-baghdad\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebration in Baghdad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On one of the nightly news programs this evening, news of Uday’s and Qusay’s deaths was said to have been greeted by Iraqis with celebratory gunfire. The video showed sporadic green flares across the Baghdad sky to support this claim. Struck me as odd that Iraqis–who aren’t supposed to own guns, remember–would be out shooting at the clouds for kicks. Then I read this version<\/a> by an American soldier on the scene:<\/p>\n

Fireworks are lighting up my sky\u2026not happy to be alive\u2026forth of july fire works\u2026but rather m-249 tracer rounds and parachuting flares\u2026red rounds arcing up in sweeps\u2026distancing themselves from each other\u2026losing their luster the farther they fly\u2026<\/p>\n

When I get up on top of my truck I can pick out from where they are being fired\u2026from the individual guard points\u2026and compounds\u2026I think we do it just to let the Iraqis know that we know they\u2019re up to something\u2026I wonder what the Iraqis think\u2026\u201dstupid americans\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s all a scare tactic\u2026 I hope it\u2019s working\u2026
\nwe\u2019re just letting the Iraqis know we are out there and we are paying attention\u2026\u201dbring your best shot\u201d\u2026\u201dwe\u2019re watching you\u2026watch us\u2026so back the hell off\u201d\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Limbaugh is right: the mainstream press is biased as all hell.<\/p>\n

Update (7\/23): The aforementioned blogger now seems to concur with press reports about the shooting<\/a>–after having read the reports on the internet. My earlier questions still stand, and his earlier commentary is still illuminating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On one of the nightly news programs this evening, news of Uday’s and Qusay’s deaths was said to have been greeted by Iraqis with celebratory gunfire. The video showed sporadic green flares across the Baghdad sky to support this claim. Struck me as odd that Iraqis–who aren’t supposed to own guns, remember–would be out shooting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"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\/57","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}