Clamping down on news from Iraq

From MSNBC online 10/27 issue:

In Baghdad, official control over the news is getting tighter. Journalists used to walk freely into the city’s hospitals and the morgue to keep count of the day’s dead and wounded. Now the hospitals have been declared off-limits and morgue officials turn away reporters who aren’t accompanied by a Coalition escort. Iraqi police refer reporters’ questions to American forces; the Americans refer them back to the Iraqis.

In the fundamental rules department: When running a repressive regime, you need to control the news.

Take one potentially good news story: the arrival of new Iraqi bank notes last week, freshly minted, and minus Saddam’s haughty portrait. Administration officials crafted the media rollout for weeks. In theory it was a compelling story. The new bills were printed in five countries, including the U.K., Germany and Sri Lanka (the two Iraqi printing plants weren’t up to the job). Piles of old Saddam bank notes were burned, and the new currency was flown into Baghdad onboard 25 jumbo jets. Yet the event was barely covered. USA Today buried a wire story inside, on page 5, while its front page led with hard news: the death of three U.S. soldiers and the hunt for Saddam. “This was an enormous logistical effort that could never have happened in a country in chaos or without the cooperation of the Iraqis,” says one senior U.S. official. “Yet it barely breaks through the media.”

How totally disconnected from sensibility can these people get? We should see how positive and wonderful it is that pieces of Iraqi paper don't have a picture of Saddam on them? And this should be as important to us as the deaths of our soldiers and the chaos and killing?

These people have got a seriously unhealthy relationship to money.

In fact, I never could understand why we had to spend so much money of our own to overhaul the "look" of our own paper money (and coins). How expensive must that be? Very, I should think. To have a new look on our money? Since when did money become a fashion statement?

I'm paying people to redesign the image on my paper money - something that I only need to see a number on, really. How bizarre is that? And all my life I've been told I shouldn't be wasting my money. (Let Congress do it for me?)

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.