May I stop right there, please? Oil Slick Dick has complimented Fox News for being the only news program to tell the truth. The U.S. military embedded reporters with the troops. There has been a concerted combined effort on the part of the government, military, and U.S. major media to control the news coming out of the Middle East operations. I find it a little bit difficult to believe that everybody was "duped" by Captain Jack. And the report that the U.S. military accepted prisoners from him makes it even more of a stretch.
As for how things are coming along on the twin front of turning the country into a fine democracy, well....
The presidential elections have already been delayed by four months. The parliamentary elections, commonly expected to cause factional bloodshed across the country, have been delayed even further. The central government, which claims to have registered 7 million voters, is widely believed to be inflating those figures. Last month, three female voter registration workers were killed by a bomb near Jalalabad. Many women, especially in rural districts, are not allowed to leave their compounds, and a debate has arisen about whether their husbands will be permitted to cast their votes for them. There is no mechanism to prevent people from registering multiple times at different sites, and warlords/aspiring politicians (who need to collect 10,000 registration cards to be included on the ballot) are reported to be purchasing registration cards for 10 afghanis each, about 20 cents.
So, they're just a little more open about election fraud than we are.
The pathos of hope...
I later met one of the underground heroes of Afghan free speech, Osman Akram, the founder of Zanbel-e-Gham (Wheelbarrow of Sorrows), a satirical magazine published secretly under the Taliban and among the first to publish openly after the Taliban fled the city in 2001. It is sort of a combination of Spy and Mad, with scathing political cartoons and articles mocking the Taliban, the U.S. forces, Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden, and just about everyone else. One cartoon criticizing the supposed new freedom of the press shows a woman in a burqa interviewing another woman in a burqa. Another shows George W. Bush standing behind a U.N. podium, his legs drawn as a Soviet hammer and sickle. Published in a mix of Dari, Pashto, and English, one editorial asked when Ghamistan (the land of sorrows) would become Afghanistan again.
As we here ask, "When will Fascistan become America again?"
...but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Cartoon from Zanbel-e-Gham
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