Have you ever heard of the "friday dump?" That's the practice of putting out embarrassing press releases on friday, guaranteeing that the story is underreported. The friday news broadcasts have the lowest viewership and saturday newspapers have the lowest readership. If you want to bury a press release or an announcement, you do it on friday.
But sometimes, the news you want to bury is so stupid and crazy that not even friday is safe enough. What you need for these sorts of stories is some sort of prescheduled news event that will suck up every square inch of oxygen in every newsroom in the nation. Something really big, like -- say -- the Superbowl or Christmas or primaries in two states that have been pushed as "do or die" for the Democratic candidates for weeks on end.
So it is with plans for Baghdad's "Green Zone" -- the heavily fortified area that's the target of rocket and mortar attacks.
The Guardian:
Picture, if you will, a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad's International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel, which would not look out of place in Sydney harbour. Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.
Improbable though it all may seem, this is how some imaginative types in the US military are envisaging the future of Baghdad's Green Zone, the much-pummelled redoubt of the Iraqi capital where a bunker shot has until now had very different connotations.
How much coverage do you think that's going to get today?
The idea is to create a "zone of influence" around the $700 million US Embassy. An Embassy the size of Vatican City. When you dump that kind of money into a compound, you want to make sure it's in a nice neighborhood.
And it's not. The Associated Press lists the dominant features in the zone as "rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and no sewer system." Amazingly, Marriott International Inc. is said to have agreed to a deal to build a hotel. I can't imagine that they'll be breaking ground anytime soon...
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