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Iraq - 2014




What is happening in Iraq clearly isn't the remotest bit funny, but the ever-sharp Andy Borowitz, who writes for The New Yorker, makes a punchy and valid point....

"President George W. Bush unveiled his latest offering as an artist today—a painting of what he imagines Iraq looks like now.

Talking to reporters at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas, the President said he did not read the news before composing his latest work. “I was never big on that,” he said.

Pronouncing himself pleased with his painting of Iraq, Mr. Bush said he was getting to work on a new painting entitled, “The World’s Really Nice Climate.”

Meanwhile, an excellent op-ed piece in The Guardian rightly asks why it is - as it has been all along - that we don't ever hear, or see, Iraqi voices on what is happening in their worn-torn country or what the people think or feel.

"Since last week’s victories by the militant group Isis against a weak, US-backed, Iraqi government, the same, failed protagonists from the 2003 invasion have come out of the woodwork to advocate another military intervention.

Although some journalists, like The Independent’s prescient Patrick Cockburn, have been warning about the growing power of Isis, voices on the ground are few and far between in western media. Mostly we get the same old neo-cons who took us to Iraq in the first place.

That's a shame, because local reporters and bloggers have a unique perspective. Instead of listening to think-tanks pushing to bomb, a tour through the internet turns up plenty of thoughts from those suffering the direct consequences of the carnage in Iraq."



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