VIDEO: SMALL TOWN AMERICA TURNS AGAINST IRAQ WAR (Sky News)

[redacted]

Support for the war in Iraq has been eroded by the growing list of casualties and public concern it is a conflict America could lose. Andrew Wilson has been to Paris, Illinois, to see what effect those losses are having on the people of America (5mins)

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,91134-iraq_p3654,00.html

[rodeodance]

1. so, we "could' lose?

[redacted]

2. . .

[unhappycamper]

3. The Heartland has been waking up over the last few years to the occupation.

As each day goes by, the occupation touches more and more families.

The silence from our 'mainstream' press on this issue is deafening.

[redacted]

4. Two reasons why this report is significant:

First, this report aired in the UK on Sky News, which like Fox News in the U.S. is a NewsCorp (Rupert Murdoch) property.

Second, Paris, Illinois (population 9000, downstate near the Indiana border, about an hour southeast of Champaign-Urbana and about 4 hours south of Chicago) as the report points out is so much of a stereotypical "God and country" small town it's almost a caricature. Support for the military in places like this is usually tremendous, and young people go through quite an indoctrination process in these isolated communities.

When you combine the normally pro-war bias of Murdoch-run news outlets, with the typically pro-war sentiment in small towns like these, and all the report focuses on is despair among the population about the body bags coming home, and all the injuries, and that the war has been dragging on for so long without any positive results, what does this suggest? The real story in thousands of small towns like this may well be an out-and-out hostility towards this Administration, for bearing the burden of casualties, that the U.S. media dares not report at all.

Message to the Administration: lose the support of towns like these, and you've lost it all.

[redacted]

5. .