Guests:

Hannah Gurman on Iraq

Norman Solomon on Afghanistan/Petraeus

 Welcome to CounterSpin, your weekly look behind the headlines of the mainstream news. I’m Peter Hart. This week on CounterSpin: one war is ending, while the other is the subject of a major PR blitz. Right on schedule, we’re told, Operation Iraqi Freedom is winding down, with live TV coverage relaying the images of the final U.S. combat brigades leaving the country. The caveats to the story of the ‘end’ of the war are abundant—tens of thousands of troops and private contractors remain, and some are already suggesting they’ll be there longer than we’ve been told. So how does a war that isn’t really ending actually end? Hannah Gurman wrote about the Orwellian state of the Iraq War for Salon.com, and she’ll join us to talk about it.

Also on CounterSpin today, the Afghanistan War is another matter altogether—public support continues to plummet, and recent scandals regarding the leaking of classified documents and the removal of General Stanley McChrystal haven’t helped matters. McChrystal’s successor David Petraeus has been making the rounds in the media, trying to put a new face on the war and re-define what it is the U.S. military expects to accomplish there. We’ll talk about the Petraeus media blitz with author and FAIR associate Norman Solomon.

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