Car Bomb in Bagdad

[Alyeska]

Well the Iraqi insurgents decided to car Bomb the UN building in Bagdad. Are they fucking stupid? They attack the one target that is garunteed to INCREASE support for the US led opperations.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/08/ ... index.html

[Colonel Olrik]

Vieira de Mello is under the debris..

[Vympel]

I doubt it'll have any positive effect on the image of US forces in Iraq. Remember, these people think the US blew up the water pipelines. In all liklihood, the guerillas will get another propaganda coup thanks to the utterly inept PR efforts of the administration- for example, news has gotten around that the American run channel in Baghdad is seen as a joke- amateuriush, not even on 24 hours a day, filled with public service announcements, and getting soundly thrashed by the juggernaut that is Al Jazeera and the various other countries beaming their stuff into Iraq, e.g. Iran and one other that I don't remember right now. It's literally like public access TV versus CNN. With the Arabs being CNN. They're just putting on a better show. To think that they can't even make good TV anymore, like shit American TV is the most prolific in the world!

On a more serious note- this is probably a message aimed right at the UN: don't come here, it's dangerous. We'll kill Americans and British, we'll kill you too. As the first Danish soldier to die learned a few days ago. Not that the UN is all jumping all over itself to send troops to the same dumbasses who were questioning it's 'relevance' because it wouldn't tow the Washington line.

[Vympel]

Extract:

Not much is known about the progress that is being made in either of those projects, but a third has become, by all accounts, a major disaster.

The Iraqi (sometimes referred to as "Indigenous") Media Network (IMN) project, valued initially at a minimum of US$25 million, was formally launched in mid-April as a successor to a psychological warfare program that beamed radio broadcasts before and during the war into Iraq from a C130 cargo plane called "Commando Solo".

But the IMN was considerably more ambitious in scope, since its aim, as an outgrowth of the IRDC operation, was to put together a new information ministry, complete with television, radio and a newspaper, and the content that would make all three attractive to average Iraqis.

To oversee the job, SAIC hired away the director of Voice of America (VOA), Robert Reilly, an outspoken right-wing ideologue who began his public career in the 1980s as a propagandist in the White House for the Nicaraguan contras.

Reilly tangled immediately with his deputy, Mike Furlong, a Pentagon contractor who worked on media issues in Kosovo. Both men were out of the project by the end of June, according to knowledgeable sources.

"SAIC didn't have any suitable qualification to run a media network," according to Rohan Jayasekera, who has kept an eye on media developments in Iraq for London-based Index on Censorship. "The whole thing was so incredibly badly planned by them that no one could make sense of what they were doing," he said.

Jayasekera noted, for example, that SAIC ordered equipment that was incompatible with existing systems in Iraq and that it had made no plans for TV programming. When it asked for help from VOA, which considers itself a professional news organization, it was forced to rely on hastily patched together and dubbed network news programs, much of which would appeal only to a domestic audience.

"Increasingly, the newscasts became irrelevant for Iraqis," one source told The Washington Post in May. "They're not really interested in the Laci Peterson [murder] case."

[ Well- no fucking shit, who *does* care about Laci Peterson, no offense? What is with this obsession over the deaths of these people?]

A page reserved for the project on the website of the US provisional authority in Iraq said Wednesday, "There is no information available at this time."

Three months into the project, Ahmad Rikabi, a highly-regarded Iraqi expatriate brought in to help manage the operation, abruptly quit, apparently frustrated at the lack of planning, resources and investment that SAIC put in the project and the hemorrhaging of his professional staff, some of whom had not been paid for weeks.

"Saddam Hussein is doing better at marketing himself, through al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya Gulf channels," Rikabi told reporters.

One of the project's principal trainers, Don North, who had worked with media in Afghanistan, has also quit, complaining to the New York Times that the Pentagon was not interested in professional journalism.

"Its role was envisioned to be an information conduit," he said, "and not just rubberstamp flacking for the CPA", the initials of the occupation authority run by L Paul Bremer.

The Pentagon itself has kept the project stumbling along on short-term contracts with SAIC, but, according to Jayasekera, is actively looking for an alternative. The fact that that SAIC was hired in the first place, however, "appears to have been a serious mistake".

(Inter Press Service)

(SAIC is another popular defense contractor with the Pentagon that seems to have gotten the contract more out of favoritism and ideology than any real skill- it says earlier in the article).

[Iceberg]

I don't care about the Laci Peterson case, why the hell should somebody who doesn't even live in the United States?

The only reason the Peterson case became national news is because Laci was young, beautiful, pregnant and white. If any of those factors hadn't been there, the news networks wouldn't have given a shit.

[Colonel Olrik]

Vieira de Mello is under the debris..

FUCK

I don't believe it.


HE DIED!

The man was a HERO



..............................................

I'm at a loss for words.

[NapoleonGH]

sorry i dont really know who that guy is, can someone inform me?

[MKSheppard]

sorry i dont really know who that guy is, can someone inform me?

Sergio Vieira de Mello

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

[Knife]

Bomb goes off in Jeresulem too.

[MKSheppard]

Bomb goes off in Jeresulem too.

Man busy day.....I hate to think what #3 is gonna be

[Montcalm]

Damn i`ve just the video from inside the UN conference seconds before the explosion,fucking idiots they`re free from Saddam and instead of thanking the Americans and the British,they go back to their old habit of killing people who don`t have the same religion.

Fuck-em all lets nuke islam off the face of the earth.

[Joe]

Well the Iraqi insurgents decided to car Bomb the UN building in Bagdad. Are they fucking stupid? They attack the one target that is garunteed to INCREASE support for the US led opperations.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/08/ ... index.html

Are you fucking kidding? No one's interested in supporting us, they'll just bitch about how Bush needed to have more security at the UN building.

[Colonel Olrik]

Are you fucking kidding? No one's interested in supporting us, they'll just bitch about how Bush needed to have more security at the UN building.

Apparently, that bitching would be entirely justified.

But you're wrong. Public opinion will shift from indiference towards the need of fixing the country (specially with Vieira de Mello dead), and many governments (and the UN) will be free (and more motivated) to send aid and troops to Iraq. See Putin's reaction.

[HemlockGrey]

Er, what was Putin's reaction?

[Colonel Olrik]

Er, what was Putin's reaction?

He put troops at the disposition of the U.N, among other things. Some guy from his government made an initial speech, a while ago, I don't recall the details.

[Alex Moon]

Are you fucking kidding? No one's interested in supporting us, they'll just bitch about how Bush needed to have more security at the UN building.

Apparently, that bitching would be entirely justified.

It looks as though the US tried to highten security at the UN compound.
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGACMJ1BKJD.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fearing deadly car bomb attacks, U.S. forces in Iraq just weeks ago began erecting more barriers around potentially "softer" nonmilitary targets.
But United Nations officials in Iraq decided on a lower level of security to provide a more welcoming image to Iraqis, American military officials said.

[Montcalm]

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fearing deadly car bomb attacks, U.S. forces in Iraq just weeks ago began erecting more barriers around potentially "softer" nonmilitary targets.
But United Nations officials in Iraq decided on a lower level of security to provide a more welcoming image to Iraqis, American military officials said.

[Sarcastic]Welcome Iraqis fundies kill us please[Sarcastic]

[EmperorSolo51]

It may not be Iraqis who are doing these attacks. There have suggesstions by the US military that foriegn filibusters are behind these attacks.

[MKSheppard]

From Red Imperator upon being told of the UN's more "welcoming"
attitude:

that's a great idea. maybe we could pre-set sticks of dynamite in the buildings and leave the little plungers out in the street as a symbol of trust

[phongn]

Idiots. If they want the Americans out faster, blowing up the UN compound will likely have the opposite effect.

[Pu-239]

Some heads at joe terrorist's HQ will fall for this.

[Sea Skimmer]

Idiots. If they want the Americans out faster, blowing up the UN compound will likely have the opposite effect.

Well if they actually believed the US would ever leave then the ideal strategy would be to do jack shit since the sooner the country is back together the sooner the US can pull out.

[weemadando]

Just pointing out that this is most likely NOT a religion-based attack, but probably another by resistance forces. And yes, someone will be getting the sack due to their bad target choice.

[phongn]

Just pointing out that this is most likely NOT a religion-based attack, but probably another by resistance forces. And yes, someone will be getting the sack due to their bad target choice.

I don't think anyone here was thinking that.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Just pointing out that this is most likely NOT a religion-based attack, but probably another by resistance forces. And yes, someone will be getting the sack due to their bad target choice.

Oh come off it, WMA. You know as well as I do that Saddam himself called for religious volunteers to enter his country, and it's not like they've all left. They're also the most likely people by far to have carried out this attack, precisely for the reason you state above. So speculation that it was for religious motivations is entirely legitimate.