Conflicting Reports

"Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspaper another."

    - G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English writer

Iraqi blogger Omar on his weblog Iraq The Model, tells us about his reaction to the recent farewell speech of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority leader, Paul Bremer in a post titled "Small Party and Great Hopes":

"The hall was busy and everyone was chatting and laughing loud. They had Al-Jazeera on...Then suddenly Mr. Bremer appeared on TV reading his last speech before he left Iraq. I approached the TV to listen carefully to the speech, as I expected it to be difficult in the midst of all that noise. To my surprise everyone stopped what they were doing and started watching as attentively as I was."

Omar describes the effect that Bremer's words had on his co-workers and friends who were watching the broadcast with him:

"I found that they were touched even more deeply than I was. I turned to one friend who was a committed She'at and who distrusted America all the way. He looked as if he was bewitched, and I asked him, 'So, what do you think of this man? Do you still consider him an invader?' My friend smiled, still touched and said, 'Absolutely not! He brought tears to my eyes, God bless him.'

Another friend approached me. This one was not religious but he was one of the conspiracy theory believers. He put his hands on my shoulders and said smiling, 'I must admit that I'm beginning to believe in what you've been telling us for months and I'm beginning to have faith in America."

Take a few minutes and read the whole thing, and when you're finished take a look at this post on the blog, The Ombudsgod, to see what the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post had to say about the Bremer speech that Omar and his friends liked so much.

Sad, really.