[mediacare] As The Turkish Army Storms Into Iraq, CNN Is Stupider Than Usual

[T Chandra]

June 7, 2007 by Huffington Post   As The Turkish Army Storms Into Iraq, CNN Is 
Stupider Than Usual  by Paul Reickhoff
    Yesterday, when I heard that thousands of Turkish troops may have crossed 
the border into Iraq, I was extremely concerned. Turkey has been building up 
its military forces on the Iraqi border for some time. There has been intense 
debate in Ankara among political and military leaders about whether to attack 
separatist rebels of the PKK. When I heard of Turkey’s latest move, I feared 
that the Iraq war was quickly spilling into a larger regional conflict, so I 
turned on CNN for the latest. And here’s what I saw:
  
  That’s right, CNN’s headline: “Teen, Sex, Prison.” I guess the producers 
couldn’t find an excuse for “Live XXX Girls.”
  This story, about a teenager imprisoned for statutory rape, repeated 
throughout the morning. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that CNN provided any 
substantive coverage of the situation in northern Iraq. The coverage lasted for 
maybe five minutes - before CNN returned to footage of…yet another missing 
teenager.
  It was just as bad at CNN.com. There I found a brief story on the incursion 
between headlines including “Man tries to jump onto popemobile,” “Jumbo squid 
swarming off California coast,” and “Jericho’ fans assail CBS with 25 tons of 
peanuts.” I really, really wish I were kidding.
  Of course, Turkey has sent limited numbers of troops into Kurdistan before, 
as a part of its anti-terrorist policies. And, since reports are conflicted, 
it’s not clear how many Turkish troops are in Iraq right now. But the possible 
consequences of foreign forces in Iraq are dire, according to the Iraq Study 
Group Report:
  • “A broader regional war.”
• “Humanitarian catastrophe… as more refugees are forced to relocate across the 
country and the region.”
• “Ethnic cleansing”
• “A Pandora’s box of problems–including the radicalization of populations, 
mass movements of populations, and regime changes–that might take decades to 
play out. If the instability in Iraq spreads to the other Gulf States, a drop 
in oil production and exports could lead to a sharp increase in the price of 
oil and thus could harm the global economy.”
  I can only hope that if these terrible (and increasingly likely) events do 
occur, CNN will break away from the intense coverage of issues like the judge 
who fixed divorce cases for cigars, and Paris Hilton’s latest shenanigans. And 
I don’t even want to know what will be on Fox.

Paul Rieckhoff is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Executive 
Director and Founder of IAVA (Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America), the 
country’s first and largest Iraq Veterans group. IAVA is a non-partisan, 
non-profit organization headquartered in New York City.


       
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