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Someone needs to chuck a cold bucket of ice water at Aaron Brown. Wake the listless bastard up! You know the one, Aaron Brown, anchors that Newsnight program on CNN, the Cakewalk News Network. Unfortunately listening to Brown is often like listening to pondwater evaporate. And Brown isn't even the worst offender. Compared to that robotic ciper, and Likud Party embed Wolf Blitzer, Brown at least, when hes conscious, exhibits actual signs of sentient life.

Unfortunately, that too often is not the case. Just listen to this horseshit: Brown gets a visit from American Enterprise Institute hustler Michael Rubin, "an adviser to the Pentagon on Iraq and Iran." - who - "...recently returned from a long stretch in Iraq working for the CPA." So the story goes.

CNN NEWSNIGHT AARON BROWN - May 4, 2004

[...]...It's nice to see you, Michael. Thank you.

MICHAEL RUBIN, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Thanks for having me here.

BROWN: Let me start with the hanging curve and then we'll go to a few fast balls here and there. But take 30 seconds and tell me what we're missing, what we don't see.

RUBIN: One of the things which I always looked at when I was in Baghdad is what people were investing in. If people are willing to put down tens of thousands of dollars into a new house, for example, that shows they have some confidence in the future.

Oh sure, its a regular Chamber of Commerce weekend over there. What fun, lets go real estate hunting honey! One might suppose, considering the vast numbers of homes that have been turned into smoking holes and heaps of grilled rubble, some people who can still actually afford to invest in a roof over their head might feel compelled to do so regardless of forward looking statements. They might also be willing to purchase food and water. Assuming the have "confidence" in the good times just around the bend.

In one area, Jolan - the scene of the fiercest fighting - I saw houses that had been completely flattened by American bombs. There was a lot of anger there. I spoke to one man who said he was just locking up his door, and had just got his family out of the house, when a bomb hit. It destroyed his house - and he was injured in the leg. He told me the bombing was everywhere - it was random. He said he had nothing to do with the resistance, he had no weapons. [...] Another witness told me he had seen an American sniper shoot a taxi driver in the head as he was trying to take a wounded man to hospital. At another house I was taken to, I was told that 36 people - members of one extended family - had been killed when two rockets went through their roof. ~ Eyewitness: Falluja's grief and defiance, By Caroline Hawley - BBC Baghdad correspondent in Falluja

Rubin cheerily jabbers on:

RUBIN: When I got to Baghdad back in July there were very few women on the streets and those that were, were fully veiled. People said it wasn't out of religious conviction. It was more because they were worried about security.

But by the time I left in March you had teenage girls walking without escort down the streets in Baghdad and Nasiriyah in Iraqi Kurdistan basically enjoying the nightlife, window shopping into the new boutiques and everything like that. It did show some improvement.

There ya go. Happy days are here again. At least the last time Michael Rubin checked up on the matter. Shopping, "nightlife", "new boutiques", why its like a carefree evening stroll through Georgetown. God bless the American Enterprise Institute and "everything like that."

Saturday, March 06, 2004.
Today was a mess. It feels like half of Baghdad was off-limits. We were trying to get from one end to the other to visit a relative and my cousin kept having to take an alternate route. There's a huge section cut off to accomodate the "Green Zone" which seems to be expanding. We joke sometimes saying that they're just going to put a huge wall around Baghdad, kick out the inhabitants and call it the "Green City". It is incredibly annoying to know that parts of your city are inaccessible in order to accomodate an occupation army. Riverbend / Sistani and the Green Zone...

BROWN: Would you say it's fair to say that what you have is a very complicated picture in Iraq that on the one hand clearly things are better, whether it be newspapers and satellite dishes and Internet cafes and all the rest that's going on and, ......

[...]

RUBIN: ... When you actually go down the streets, you see electrical appliances stacked on the sidewalks. The age of looting and the age of just random violence is over but Iraqis are still worried about terrorism and we need to be worried about force protection.

The "age" of looting...? Who does Rubin think he is, Will Durant?

Friday, April 9, 2004 | One Year Later.
The south isn't much better… the casualties are rising and there's looting and chaos. There's an almost palpable anger in Baghdad. The faces are grim and sad all at once and there's a feeling of helplessness that can't be described in words. It's like being held under water and struggling for the unattainable surface- seeing all this destruction and devastation. [Baghdad Burning / Riverbend]

[...]

BROWN: Michael, it's very good to have you on the program. I hope you'll come back from time to time. It helps, I think, paint the broadest picture which is good for all of us. Thank you.

RUBIN: Thank you for having me.

Well, there ya have it. Count the fast balls in that fat mans softball game. This is the kind of opiated bullshit that drives me absolutely nuts. And what does this mean: "It helps, I think, [to] paint the broadest picture which is good for all of us". Someone slap this guy.

Why does it help? Help who? Help what? The problem, Aaron Brown, is that CNN paints a broad picture of everything. CNN doesn't dabble in details. CNN is by calculated design a big broad blur. Any attempt to closely emphasize details, examine demonstratable evidence, draw actual conclusions and actually answer questions honestly is swept away with a big wash brush of muddied think tank policy crank, official White House publicity stunts, corporate press releases disguised as news items, unsourced rumor, consumer product news-o-mercials, and any number of simple minded in-house produced sentimentalist claptrap come-ons delivered with a sniff and a giggle. All spoon fed into the gullible gaping maw of Americanus moronicus. And while we're on the subject isn't that big broad happy-brush paint-job precisely the technique employed by the frosting lickers at CNN to color the entire Cakewalk War from the git go?

Hey Aaron Brown, here's some more of "what we're missing," some more of "what we don't see." Aaron -- Aaron! Wake up and pay attention!

One Year Later | April 9, 2004
Over 300 are dead in Falloojeh and they have taken to burying the dead in the town football field because they aren't allowed near the cemetery. The bodies are decomposing in the heat and the people are struggling to bury them as quickly as they arrive. The football field that once supported running, youthful feet and cheering fans has turned into a mass grave holding men, women and children. [Baghdad Burning/Riverbend]

[...]

The American and European news stations don't show the dying Iraqis… they don't show the women and children bandaged and bleeding- the mother looking for some sign of her son in the middle of a puddle of blood and dismembered arms and legs… they don't show you the hospitals overflowing with the dead and dying because they don't want to hurt American feelings… but people *should* see it. You should see the price of your war and occupation- it's unfair that the Americans are fighting a war thousands of kilometers from home. They get their dead in neat, tidy caskets draped with a flag and we have to gather and scrape our dead off of the floors and hope the American shrapnel and bullets left enough to make a definite identification… [Baghdad Burning/Riverbend]

Maybe Michael Rubin will take all the widows and orphans window shopping at the new boutique. As for CNN -- Eat your fucking cake. You helped decorate it.

Source reference: "One Year Later", blockquotes cited above / LINK:Baghdad Burning | Riverbend