Thread by @DavidNorthWSWS

In today's climate of amnesia, journalists, historians and other professional framers of middle class public opinion - whose moral compass is set by the #NYTimes - seem to have forgotten the bloody days of "shock and awe," back in March 2003, when the US pulverized Baghdad. 1/

The page 1 article by the Times' reporter began: "In a blaze of heavy bombing, American air power devastated parts of Baghdad tonight, including several government buildings and palaces built by Saddam Hussein, as waves of fresh ground forces swarmed into Iraq from the south." 2/

The report continued: "The air battle was most visible in the capital, but military officials said it was only the beginning of an unfolding campaign that in the first 24 hours was expected to hit 1,500 targets all across Iraq." 3/

Another article by John F. Burns, who is still on the Times' payroll, reported: "The attacks turned the target area into a cauldron of fireballs and drifting smoke, with one huge building after another erupting in a fury of flame and obliterated granite, marble and steel." 4/

Burns continued: "Amid the staccato of the bomb blasts and the metallic whoosh of the cruise missiles as they roared low across the city before striking their targets with a deafening roar, only one ambulance siren could be heard, and then only briefly... 5/

"On the deserted roads, no fire engines could be seen. Any survivors in the buildings appeared to have been left to their fates." 6/

Burns reported on March 29, 2003: "Iraqi officials said Friday tonight that at least 35 people, possibly as many as 55, many of them women and small children, were killed when a missile or bomb struck a crowded marketplace in an impoverished district of Shiite Muslims..."7/

What the United States did to Iraq in 2003 (and the countless crimes it has committed in the wars of the last 30 years) does not justify Putin's assault on Kiev. But the historical record exposes the hypocrisy of present day denunciations of Russia by the United States. 8/8