Quote:So what was your intended point on the last page where you allege us "turkeys.. are being jerked around by" our "chain"?
You are at the receiving end of a sophisticated marketing operation. The marketed product in this case is the war in Iraq, more broadly the "war on terror", or presently in the specific, progress in the war.
Consider Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch, Cindy Sheehan or Jack Abramoff. All these stories packed a whallop in great part because they personalize and simplify the abstract or the complex.
Conversely, when something goes bad or wrong, you will want to flip this over and depersonalize - make the personal into the abstract and complex. You don't see caskets because that personalizes soldier deaths...bad for marketing the product. You don't see photos of blown up people because that personalizes those Iraqis or Americans. Abramoff becomes a depersonalized abstraction - everyone is corrupt.
Your administration is not dumb about this stuff (the first TV marketing guru was brought into the Eisenhower administration to manipulate perceptions). Consider the instances where an individual or family or a mother etc is brought forward into the PR limelight. Consider the instances where they are kept out. Fox has done how many interviews with Sheehan or the Tillman family?
So, Zarqawi becomes a handy personalized demon to replace Sadaam and kids. The real complexity of the insurgency falls out of view.
And that's why the cheers here are probably more significant for what they tell us about the marketing of the war and the credulity of you folks rather than about any positive change - which will be suggested ("turning a corner") but which is predictable fascade worked out in a multi-million dollar media center.
