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08/12/2004:

"War? What war?"

Guardian UK
..."On June 28, my feeling was nothing was going to change because of the handover," says Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "There were still going to be car bombings and US soldiers being killed, and that's exactly what's happened. Nothing has changed."

But one thing did change: US press coverage of Iraq. The handover marked a turning point in the level and intensity of media interest, which sharply decreased, particularly on the 24-hour cable news channels.

"Clearly the volume in press coverage has gone way down," says Cook. "'Sleepy' is a good word to describe it. The coverage doesn't compare with anything we'd seen during the previous 12 months from Iraq. The drop-off has been noticeable. full article

The Withdrawal of Foreign Troops is the Only Solution:
The Media-hyped Fiction of a Handover of Power in Iraq is designed for US Voters by Tariq Ali commondreams.org
Most legends contain a small grain of truth, but none is to be found in the fraudulent images being presented each day by the BBC (and the US networks). The print media is not much better. Official propaganda is constantly repeated in sentences such as: "On June 28 the United States and its coalition partners transferred sovereign control of Iraq to an interim government headed by prime minister Ayad Allawi. The transfer of sovereignty ended more than a year of American-led occupation". Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies admit that the size of the resistance increases every day. If Moqtada al-Sadr were to be captured or killed in the fighting taking place in Najaf, the steady trickle of recruits could become a flood. In such a situation and with no official opposition to the occupation in the Commons it should be the responsibility of the media to ensure that some truth, at least, is regularly reported. full article