Monday, July 7, 2003
This is sad, but not unexpected. Bizarre conspiracy-theories take hold in many places, especially among dis-enfranchised, suspicious people, even here in the US. It sounds like the Iraq Administration is doing the right thing in going directly to the papers publishing this stuff and setting the record straight as soon as the stories pop up. What else can you do?
The Salt Lake Tribune -- Lies take hold on Iraqis
Lies and half-truths -- readily believed by a nation of people who learned long ago to be skeptical of rulers' motives -- are complicating America's mission in Iraq, fueling anti-U.S. sentiment as troops struggle to quell a growing uprising.
"They want to destabilize Iraq," said Ali Mohammed Said, a 26-year-old law school graduate who blamed U.S. soldiers for a blast on Saturday that targeted a graduation parade of U.S.-trained police cadets in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. Seven were killed.
"They want to drive a wedge between us so we fight each other while they stand by and watch," he said.
U.S. officials dismiss such claims as absurd. The Ramadi blast, they say, was the work of pro-Saddam insurgents. The American-led provisional administration is using radio waves, newsletters and a planned TV station to try to dispel the rumors.
After an Iraqi newspaper claimed U.S. Marines raped a young girl and left her for dead, U.S. officials persuaded the publisher to run a retraction and fire the offending reporter.
When a newspaper reported that American night vision equipment can be used to see through women's clothing, U.S. civil affairs troops visited the editors personally to let them look through the goggles. [...]
