I just love the drab irony of the
Chalabi affair. Love the way the US administration so clumsily mops up its own idiotic nepotism. Conveniently forgets the mass of criticism and disdain over hiring him from the start. Oops, there's a problem after all. It's a decidedly anti-intellectual or anti-expert administration, what. Now, enlarge this to what’s going on in Iraq as a whole…
I'm pissed with the image culture because we (the televisual west) question the authenticity or intent of prisoner photos before we consider the abuse of humanity. We let stretch the gory reality of the invasion along spin lines sympathetic to the US, to adopt the fave line of reasoning of the Bush pack (criticising us = supporting trrism). It's hardly about the top brass who systemised this, never about the army intelligence units that ordered it. Never about the abuse of geneva rights and conventions. Maybe a questioning of 'how could (some of us) be this bad' or the possibility of one bad soldier put on showtrial: token guff. And finally, an image culture which allows the brutal arrogance of an administration that can act with impunity, which can push its cause in such hawkish denial that it doesn't see any problems in Iraq, which ignores the broad import of the imagery to the extent that soon it cannot deny things are not what they seem, that cronyism and massive blind force are the order of the day, that spin and thumbs up are a cruel insult to the daily deaths and tortures. When your executives can prance around culpability for so long, something's gotta give... The image reality should be the humane consideration of the systematic abuse, the consideration of what the people of Iraq are undergoing; but for us, it's mostly about the way this will affect the war effort, will it hurt the election consequently, all thumbs up. Which is really a framing of debate along channels safe for america generally. But which could burst like a soapbubble.
Wait for the showtrail of Saddam when the election comes around. I think Chalabi &co was in charge of that one.
