Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
A soldier who blogs from Iraq is upset that he didn't hear the country was on the brink of civil war until he happened to phone home to his parents. "That was the first I’d heard about the mosque getting blown up and this was two or three days after it happened," he writes. "I’m IN Iraq and have no idea what’s going on. A few months back I came to the conclusion that I’m fed nothing but propaganda and now it seems like my theory is dead on." He says that Stars and Stripes, the newspaper published for soldiers by the military, largely ignores reports on the fighting and instead talks about "how 'great' the Iraqi Army/Police are becoming, how we built some school or water plant and how Haji is so grateful for it, or how such and such a unit found the mother of all weapons caches in some garden in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere. ... I can tell you that this place isn’t Candy Land. Car bombs are going off killing civilians, people are blowing up mosques, the kidnapping and subsequently beheading of people, these fuckers don’t wear identifiable uniforms, and friends of friends are getting killed over here. I personally find it insulting that what little amount of news I’m given isn’t realistic. I feel like the main character in 'Clockwork Orange' with his eyelids held open while being brainwashed."
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