Ceasefire

'Peace' breaks out in a part of Iraq and Beiruit. Too late for a lot of people in Sadr city. As the BBC points out "Nearly 1,000 people are believed to have been killed in the fighting, many of them civilians." That ". . .many of them civilians" and "are believed to have been killed" do all the work in the article. The words are like a shroud on what the news story means. The separation of belief and knowledge, and the vagueness of the "many" is different to "Many civilians have been killed in the fighting." and that is before one considers the absence of the main reason for all the civilian death - the US bombing of the area. There is no news as to whether the US army is going to be forced to withdraw. The tone of the item is dour - the reality is the US has been defeated in its attempt to eradicate Sadr city of the resistance forces.

Lenin was right about the exageration about the fighting in Beiruit. Angry Arab is a mine of info about this. There's a viscious comment box.