UPDATED - ColdType

although we never met. It was his broadcasts
that turned me on to journalism. As kid, I memorized
one of his I CAN HEAR IT NOW records.
Hear them if you can. ●
APRIL 18: NETWORKS DECIDE
TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT
SOMEONE in network-land has decreed that
people have had enough of Iraq. Having contributed
for eons to cultivating the incredibly
short attention span that characterizes so many
Americans, it seems as if the word has gone out
to wean us off the breaking news parade, and
shift us back into a more tranquilized state. And
so CNN led this morning with the death of Dr.
Atkins, of health diet fame (He never said that
eating no carbs means you live forever), the
stroke suffered by musical great Luther Vandross
and then the Iraq aftermath. They later
featured U.S. POWs invoking the God Bless
America mantra.
Welcome and go home
TONY KARON leads his weblog this week with
these words: “Welcome to Baghdad, Now Fuck
Off.” He writes: “Less than a week after the
momentous toppling of a Saddam statue outside
Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel, Iraq’s self-styled liberators
appear to have become the address for
all manner of Iraqi grievances. Whether the
issue is the looting of Mesopotamian antiquities,
the prevailing anarchy in many parts of the
country (even the capital) or the demand to be
included in the decision-making over the future,
SO, THIS IS VICTORY
207
there’s suddenly a torrent of anti-American rhetoric
pouring out of the mouths of Iraqis.”
Moneyline
SOME real news is trickling out. First, there is
the report that that politically connected Bechtel
Corporation, which serves as the construction
arm of Pentagon planners on many continents,
has been pressed into action once again with the
juicy contract to rebuild what we have just
destroyed. Reports The New York Times on its
front page: “The award will initially pay the
Bechtel Group $34.6 million and could go up to
$680 million over 18 months.”
Ah yes, the coalition for the drilling of many a
dollar is just being put together. In other lands,
this news is greeted, shall we say, with more
skepticism since irony seems to have become a
casualty of this conflict, at least in the press.
It takes a humorist like Terry Jones of Monty
Python to cut through the ‘coalition’ chatter as
he did in the pages of London’s Observer: “Well,
the war has been a huge success, and I guess it’s
time for congratulations all round. And wow! It’s
hard to know where to begin.
“First, I’d like to congratulate Kellogg Brown &
Root (KBR) and the Bechtel Corporation, which
are the construction companies most likely to
benefit from the reconstruction of Iraq. Contracts
in the region of $1 billion should soon
come your way, chaps. Well done! And what with
the U.S. dropping 15,000 precision-guided munitions,
7,500 unguided bombs and 750 cruise missiles
on Iraq so far and with more to come,
there’s going to be a lot of reconstruction. It
looks like it could be a bonanza year.
“Congratulations, too, to former Secretary of