The NY Times has really shitty puff pieces on Iraq

[ECH1969]

A Lot of the Muscle Flexing in Baghdad Isn't Political

Mr. Schwarzenegger may find himself politically embattled these days in his home state, but here he is still a major draw. Along Saddoun Street, one of the capital's main arteries, Mr. Talib has hung a black-and-white billboard showing a young Mr. Schwarzenegger in a formidable bicep-flexing pose.

"The first inspiration I had for bodybuilding was Arnold," Mr. Talib, a squat man built like a bulldozer, said in his back-room office as metal weights clanked outside. "Now I aspire to improve the sport in Iraq." Mr. Talib is in regular e-mail contact with Governor Schwarzenegger's office in Sacramento, apprising officials there of the state of bodybuilding in Iraq. The Iraqi Olympic Committee recently appointed him as an adviser.

Arnold Classic now has about 400 people coming in each month, Mr. Talib said. There are special hours for women. Because the gym is near several foreigners' compounds and hotels, a few of those who work out there are Westerners.

One regular lifter was Nicholas Berg, the American businessman who was kidnapped and beheaded last year by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant. (Mr. Zarqawi also has a penchant for weight lifting).

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/30/international/middleeast/30gym.html
------------------------------------------------

How cool Nick Berg liked to work out at the gym and so does Zarqawi, and Iraqis like the Gropenfuror. Big News, thanks NY Times for informing the sheeple on Iraq.

[madrchsod]

1. now ziggy is lifting weights?

dam this guy is superman!

[Psephos]

2. I don't have a problem with this article

No offense to you intended, but I think we need more, not fewer, accounts of daily life there. I was mildly surprised to find the article stayed on topic (and away from the war) for its full length.

Meanwhile, my guess is that Zarqawi finds it harder to life weights these days with a missing leg, a torso riddled with bullets, and all his other accumulated mortal injuries.

Peace.

[LeftyMom]

3. So Zarqawi's regenerating really buff limbs now?

My god, who makes this shit up and just how high are they?

[Malikshah]

4. Don't tell me...Judy "Run Amock" Miller is writing under a pseudonym

right?

[ECH1969]

8. probably

[necso]

5. Many of the powerful

cannot bring themselves to see what a hopeless, horrific mess Iraq is.

And it isn't a far step from deluding themselves to trying to delude the rest of us -- and just a'wishin' and a'hopin' that something turns up. Of course, from whence this something might come they have no substantial idea.

The real problem with this picture is that there'll most likely be few repercussions for all this idiocy and treachery, no real self-examination (this is bad apparently) or post-mortems -- and the same hopeless, unseeing and delusional stupidity will be reproduced in new forms.

[MisterP]

6. wasn't that a BoostMobile ad?

[madmark]

7. Is Judy Miller ghost writing?