PROPAGANDA WATCH

Salon: POSTER BOY FOR WAR
Just when you thought American TV couldn't stoop any lower, now we
have the plight of Ali Abbas, a 12-year-old Iraqi boy who lost both
of his arms, along with his parents, three siblings and ten other
relatives, in a missile strike on Baghdad. Now he has become "a
redemption story, the kind we like," muses Joan Walsh. The U.S.
military has flown him to Kuwait, where reporters are breathlessly
following his medical treatment. "But some of the stories have
tried to deal with an uncomfortable fact. Ali is, um, well, he's
angry at the U.S. for killing his family," Walsh writes. "And
American journalists have been flummoxed by how to report on his
feelings." CNN hit bottom Wednesday morning, when anchor Kyra
Phillips asked Ali's physician, "Doctor, does he understand why
this war took place? Has he talked about Operation Iraqi Freedom
and the meaning? Does he understand it?"