FOX NEWS' JENNIFER GRIFFIN AVOIDS REPORTING ON WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING IN IRAQ

FOX NEWS, which everyone knows by now is the propaganda branch of the Bush White House and the Department of Defense, dispatched reporter Jennifer Griffin to Iraq to try and "sell" the American public on how well things are going in Iraq.

During Brit Hume's FOX NEWS "Special Report" show on Monday, Griffin presented the first of her reports from Ramadi, Iraq. The report, as would be expected, painted a rosy scenario of life in Ramadi including an interview with a GI who talked about how a year before one of his buddies lost several limbs in a roadside bomb explosion.

The second part of Griffin's propaganda piece is expected to air Tuesday night on Brit Hume's FOX NEWS "Special Report" http://www.foxnews.com/specialreport/index.html
Griffin purposefully avoided mentioning anything about the suicide bombings, chaos, killings and death of American GIs that is REALLY taking place in Iraq as indicated in our report which combines news sources from all across the Middle East.

The Jennifer Griffin "report" is just another indication what lengths FOX NEWS will go to in trying to cover up what is really taking place in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq.

From our point of view, we feel FOX NEWS is not only doing a disservice to their viewers, but it is an insult to the 160,000 brave young men and women deployed to Iraq who are facing a growing threat of violence everyday.

Commentary by Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE, http://corksphere.blogspot.com/, the blog that tells the TRUTH about the violence and chaos that continues in Iraq and not Bush Administration "spin" aided and abetted by FOX NEWS, the mouthpiece for the Bush Administration.
Here is just a small portion of what is taking place in Iraq which FOX NEWS' Jennifer Griffin failed to report on.

DEATH AND MAYHEM SWEEP ACROSS IRAQ

Sunday: 2 US Soldiers, 75 Iraqis Killed
Monday: 26 Iraqis Killed, 31 Wounded
Blast Kills at Least 63 Shiite Pilgrims in Iraq
Mass grave of women found in Diala
A mass grave containing eight unidentified women was found in al-Khalis district, Diala, on Monday, a security source said. "The mass grave was found in the Harujah village, al-Khalis district, 15 km south of Baaquba," the source, who requested anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
U.S. expects 140,000 troops in Iraq after drawdown
[And god only knows how many mercenaries. – dancewater]

Oil giants poised to move into Basra
Western oil giants are poised to enter southern Iraq to tap the country's vast reserves, despite the ongoing threat of violence, according to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's business emissary to the country. Michael Wareing, who heads the new Basra Development Commission, acknowledged that there would be concerns among Iraqis about multinationals exploiting natural resources. …. "If you look at many other economies in the world, particularly the oil-rich economies, many of these places are quite challenging countries in which to do business," he said. "Frankly, if you can successfully operate in the Niger Delta, that is a very different benchmark from imagining that Basra needs to be like London or Paris."

See a map of proposed or actual permanent US bases in Iraq.

Americans: 43 Percent of Your 2007 Taxes Go to War

The Calm Before the Conflagration
The United States is funding and in many cases arming the three ethnic factions in Iraq-the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunni Arabs. These factions rule over partitioned patches of Iraqi territory and brutally purge rival ethnic groups from their midst. Iraq no longer exists as a unified state. It is a series of heavily armed fiefdoms run by thugs, gangs, militias, radical Islamists and warlords who are often paid wages of $300 a month by the U.S. military. Iraq is Yugoslavia before the storm. It is a caldron of weapons, lawlessness, hate and criminality that is destined to implode. And the current U.S. policy, born of desperation and defeat, means that when Iraq goes up, the U.S. military will have to scurry like rats for cover.


Quote of the day: With the Iraqi Security Volunteers in place, the Americans are now arming both sides in the civil war. "Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems," as U.S. strategists like to say. David Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. Petraeus, calls it "balancing competing armed interest groups." ~ from the article “The Myth of the Surge” by Nir Rosen
Security incidents:

Baghdad:#1: Also Monday, a roadside bomb exploded in the middle of a crowd of Shiite Muslims in southeastern Baghdad on Monday, killing three and wounding 15, an Interior Ministry official told CNN. The strike, in the Zafaraniya district, is the latest in a flurry of attacks against pilgrims trekking to Karbala for al-Arbaeen, one of the holiest days of the Shiite religious calendar. It falls on Wednesday this year.

#2: An Iraqi militant group has posted a video on the internet showing the killings of 12 Nepalese men who worked for a Nepalese company with a US contract. In 2004, an Iraqi militant group killed 12 Nepali hostages who had gone to Iraq to work as cooks and cleaners for a Jordanian firm. It showed pictures of one being beheaded and the others with bullet wounds to the head and back.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has dismissed news reports of killing of 12 Nepali workers in Iraq by Islamic insurgents. MoFA spokesperson Hira Bahadur Thapa told Nepalnews that Nepali embassies in Islamabad and Saudi Arabia reported to the ministry, after being asked to find out the truth, that so far no proof had been found to corroborate the news.

#2: A traffic policeman was wounded when two improvised explosive devices went off simultaneously in downtown Baghdad, Baghdad operations command said on Monday. "Two roadside explosive charges detonated simultaneously on Muhammad al-Qasim highway while an Iraqi police patrol was passing the location, wounding a traffic cop who was close to the scene of the blast," a spokesman for the operations command, Major General Qassim Ata, told Aswat al-Iraq, Voices of Iraq,Around 12:30 p.m., two roadside bombs exploded at the Qasim highway near the Shaab stadium (east Baghdad). Two people were injured in that incident.#3: Around 7:30 a.m., a roadside bomb exploded at Zafaraniyah neighborhood (east Baghdad) near Al-Noor mosque. No casualties recorded

#4: The mayor of al-Aazamiya, central Baghdad, on Monday escaped a kidnapping by unknown gunmen in al-Kazemiya neighborhood in northern Baghdad because local residents saved him.Hussein al-Juburi told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq - (VOI) over the phone "Unidentified gunmen stopped his car after leaving a funeral in al-Kazemiya neighborhood in northern Baghdad, forced him to exit his car, and disarmed his bodyguards.""I tried to escape but they caught me, but some persons arrived from the funeral and saved my life along with two of my bodyguards," the mayor added.

#5: Around 2p.m., a roadside bomb exploded near Al-Dayer church .No casualties or damage reported.

#6: Around 4 p.m., mortars hit Qadisiyah neighborhood..No casualties recorded.

#7: Around 5:30 p.m., gunmen using Toyota sedan car opened fire on an army check point near the Um Al-Tibul mosque and ran away. No casualties recorded.

#8: Police found three dead bodies in Baghdad today. Two of them in Risafa bank : 1 in Ubaidi and 1 in Zafaraniyah while the third was found in Amil in Karkh bank.Diyala Prv:Baquba:#1: Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms stormed a house and killed a woman near Baquba, police said.

#2: Police found the decomposing bodies of eight women who had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in the head, in a grave in a town just north of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

#3: "Unidentified gunmen killed two persons near a garage in central Baaquba," the source, who declined to reveal his name, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq

#4: Five Iraqi soldiers, including their commanding officer, were killed when al Qaeda militants ambushed their patrol south of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, said Major-General Abdul Kareem al-Rubaie, leader of Iraqi security forces in Diyala province.Around 2:30 p.m., gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol at Buhrz (6km south of Baquba) and killed all the eight patrol members including a major.

#5: Around noon, a roadside bomb targeted a civilian car on the way between Qara taba and Khanaqeen in the north east of Baquba .Both passengers of the vehicle were killed in that incident. Iskandariya:#1: (update) The death toll from Sunday's suicide bomb attack on Iraqi pilgrims heading to a Shi'ite festival south of Baghdad has risen to 63, a health official said on Monday.Basra:

#1: This morning, gunmen opened fire on three oil company guards at Bahadriya of Abu Al-Khaseeb, southeast of Basra. One guard was killed and the other two were seriously injured.#2: Police found the body of the engineer Ali Mahmoud at Hamdan neighborhood in south Basra. Ali was kidnapped a month ago from his house at a residential compound by gunmen who were wearing police uniforms.Samarra:

#1: A disabled, wheelchair-bound man blew himself up on Monday in a northern Iraqi police station, killing a top police official and wounding six police officers, police told CNN. The attack, which occurred in Samarra in Salaheddin province. A high-ranking official with Samarra police said that the man came to meet with Brig. Gen. Abdul Jabbar Rabei Muttar, the deputy commander of security, at the security operations building in the city. The pair met last week as well. The man was searched when he entered the building, but police didn't look under his wheelchair seat, where the explosives had been placed. The man detonated the explosives when Muttar approached him.In a separate attack on Monday, a handicapped man in a wheel chair wearing an explosives vest blew himself up inside a police building in the central city of Samarra, killing three policemen, including a general, officials said.Hawija:

#1: A civilian was killed and nine people were wounded (6 of them are Sahwa members including the leader of Sahwa Colonel Hussein Khalaf Ali and a commander of battalion in Sahwa) when a car bomb exploded targeting Sahwa members in Hawija town south of Kirkuk on Monday morning.Kirkuk:

#1: In the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a police commander, General Sarhad Qadir, escaped an assassination attempt, according to security officials. A bomb went off as the general's motorcade was driving by the main hospital in central Kirkuk.In Kirkuk, police chief Brigadier Sarhad Qader escaped injury when a roadside explosive device detonated as his convoy passed, KUNA reported.

#2: A civilian was injured on Monday in a bomb blast in southern Kirkuk, a police source said. "An improvised explosive device went off in al-Khadraa neighborhood in southern Kirkuk, targeting a police vehicle patrol, wounding a civilian," the source, who asked to remain anonymous, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of IraqMosul:

#1: In the northern city of Mosul, three people from the same family including a child, and four women were injured in a blast. An object fell on a house in the Tal al-Roman area, in western Mosul, causing the blast, security sources told VOI.A mortar shell killed three and wounded four civilians.

#2: Also in Mosul, four policemen were killed in an attack by gunmen on their patrol in the eastern Muarid district, VOI reported.

#3: A boy was killed when insurgents opened fire on a U.S. patrol in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The boy, who was playing with children in the street, was hit by a stray bullet fired by the insurgents.

It will be interesting to see if FOX NEWS' Jennifer Griffin reports on any of these developments in Iraq in her next report on the Brit Hume FOX NEWS "Special Report" show on Tuesday, Feburary 26