One of the most annoying things about this administration is that they have been so wildly successful at slowing the flow of information. Mike McCurry and company would have loved to have had this amount of success. The problwm with this isthat it leaves the rest of us in the dark, and no one knows what the hell is going on. Take for example, this article:
The sudden shift in postwar strategy in favor of an American and British occupation authority has visibly deflated the Iraqi political scene, which earlier this month was bustling with grass-roots politicking and high expectations for an all-Iraqi provisional government.
This week Kurdish leaders are clearing out of Baghdad to return to the north to consult with their constituents about a course of action. They have asked the new American civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, to visit northern Iraq to confront the popular disenchantment.
Will this story be like the previuos 500 that have come out of Iraq, and in two weeks be throroughly discredited? I don’t know- no one knows what the hell is really going on, and that is a problem, whether the Administration recognizes it or not. If the public is unaware of the situation, accidents, setbacks, and military deaths can be portrayed and spun by the press as abysmal failures. We need to know what is going on, and I am hard pressed to say that we are getting the information we deserve.
*** Update ***
The more I think about it, the more of a problem this is for the administration. The main outcry in Gitmo with the detainees was the secrecy PRIOR to their being viewed by outside sources. Once it was known how they were treated, most of the catcalling and international accusations died off.
MommaBear
If you want babble-of-the-day from the current administration, probably won’t happen. It may well be that there really is not anything that can be stated, since a great many activities really don’t have “important things” happening every 24 hours…some things may take 48-72-96 hours to be completed. No sense just repeating: we’re making progress, just to say something to a microphone.
roublen vesseau
I think even their warmest supporters would have to acknowledge the Bushies are firm believers in the maxim “if nobody knows what you’re doing, nobody knows what you’re doing wrong.”