Page 130 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

120 Chapter 5

left in place by CPA head Paul Bremer 111.'~~ Many of the early anti-occupation
demonstrations were organized by the Union of Unemployed in Iraq, showing
that many Iraqi workers were disenfranchised under the U.S. neoliberalization
campaign.
While the media reported on various anti-occupation protests throughout
Iraq since the 2003 invasion, the context of such reports were limited. Reporters
and editors did frame such protests as part of the growing nonviolence move-
ment, but more as single incidents of protest and dissatisfaction. The idea of a
collective solidarity uniting Iraqis against the United States was lost in favor of
media promises, explicitly rejected by most Iraqis, that the U.S. was stabilizing
and democratizing Iraq.

A Civil War Begins:
Iraq's Militias and U.S. Involvement
The violent eruptions throughout Iraq in late February of 2006 were heralded as
evidence that the country was headed toward civil war, if it was not there al-
ready. The main catalysts for the growth in sectarian conflict that month were a
number of attacks, one of which was a suicide bombing on February 21 of a bus
in Baghdad that killed fourteen people and injured nine others. This bombing
was followed by another two attacks, one a car bombing on February 22 in a
crowded Shiite area in Baghdad, which killed twenty-two people and injured
another twenty-eight, and the other attack against the Askari Golden Dome
Shrine in Samarra on February 23. Thousands of Iraqi demonstrators assembled
near the shrine in protest of the bombing. The Associated Press explained that
the bombing was staged by "insurgents" dressed as police and likely members of
"Sunni extremist groups."'03 Others directly implicated Musab A1 Zarqawi and
A1 Qaeda with the bombing.Io4
Attacks against both Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis were seen not only in Samarra,
but throughout much of the country. In Baghdad, gunmen fired upon a funeral
procession of an Al-Arabiya reporter who was killed covering the Askari Golden
Shrine bombing. At least one security guard and two Iraqi soldiers who were
escorting the procession were killed after a car bomb struck their military patrol.
In Baqubah, at least forty-seven people were murdered after being pulled from
their vehicles, shot, and dumped in a nearby ditch. The dead, both Sunni and
Shiite, were on their way to attend a protest of the Askari bombing. Protests
exploded throughout the major cities of Basra and Baghdad. In Basra, Shiite
militia members fired their rifles and rocket propelled grenades at a number of
guards in front of the Iraqi Islamic Party office.
At least twenty-five ~unni mosques were attacked in Baghdad alone within
one week of the Askari bombing, three of which were completely burned to the
ground. Shiite protestors torched one Sunni Shrine that housed the seventh cen-
tury tomb of Talha bin Obeid-Allah, who had been a friend of the prophet
Mohammad. All told, 184 mosques were attacked, with estimates of at least
1,300 Iraqis dead within a week of the Askari bombing.Io5 These attacks repre-