Charlie Rose is having such a difficult time listening to his guests, because he has so obviously bought into the standard mainstream media view on the Iraq conflict (which is essentially the view developed by the Bush Administration). He appears simultaneously ignorant yet preachy as two men with genuine familiarity with the people of Iraq repeatedly burst his bubble.
This segment is well worth watching to hear the guests (Ali Fadhil and Sinan Antoon) uttering such an impressive stream of simple truths about Iraq. Lesson number one: what we call “Iraq” has little resemblance to the country the U.S. purportedly attempted to “liberate.” We’ve made a shambles of Iraq.
Speaking of Iraq, the news reported this past weekend that massive chaos erupted in Iraq, with dozens of people killed and hundreds injured. Amazingly, Bush used the incident to declare that his troop surge was working, because, he said, the violence was directed at Iraqis and not at the American occupation troops. I can't help but be astonished by Bush's rose-tinted glasses and the neo-con capacity for revisionist history.