Staying on the sunnyside
Instead of just forcing Iraqi newspapers to print good news about the occupation, the Bush administration has to pay them to do so. Score one for capitalism. The Los Angeles Times reports that feel-good articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of the Lincoln Group, a defense contractor. Since it's unlikely that Iraqis are going to believe the newspapers over the bombs going off right outside their windows, Body and Soul suggests the real aim is to than get the propaganda picked up by American news outlets that affect American opinion.
I'd like to take a page from the Bush administration's war book (though no one's paying me to be cheery), and look at the sunnyside of some current events:
Good news from Death Row: America still hasn't executed it's 1,000th human being ! It won't be Robin Leavitt, whose sentence was commuted today. But there's a good chance Kenneth Boyd, a 57-year-old from North Carolina, will be executed on friday.
Supreme Court Success!: While Samuel Alito has shown little interest in the rights of women, people of color, disabled folks, and those wrongly convicted of crimes, he has yet to weigh in on the rights of senior citizens. He may, in fact, support their rights (as long as they don't want any perscription drugs).
Some Guantanamo Inmates feeling okay!: While over 128 people held without charges at Guantanamo Bay have been on a hunger strike because of cruel conditions and lack of legal access, that's only one quarter of the detainees! The other three-quarters of the prisoners are likely quite content, after all, we haven't heard from them. And no news is good news, right?
