Pouring dehumanising scorn on a man who could get assassinated any minute for doing what he does. No objection to the substance of what he's saying, I notice, just the rhetorical flourish. Why even bother?

I remember friends passing around quotes and vids from that website, 'We love the Iraqi information minister', started by New Yorkers after the '03 invasion/occupation:

https://antville.org/static/sites/infam/files/WeLovetheIraqiInformationMinister.htm

Overblown & humorous in isolation, but given the context it made me feel quite uneasy. Like it's not enough to bomb, invade and murder these people wholesale, you have to mock and belittle them at the same time? I see he got the moniker Baghdad Bob as a callback to other mocked enemy spokespeople in previous US imperialist wars, suggesting it's part of a longstanding, deliberate strategy:

'Al-Sahhaf's colorful media appearances caused him to be nicknamed "Baghdad Bob"[6] (in the style of previous propagandists with geographical aliases—some of them alliterative, such as "Tokyo Rose" and "Hanoi Hannah" and "Seoul City Sue") by commentators in the United States. He was nicknamed "Comical Ali" and "Alì il Comico" by commentators in the United Kingdom and Italy respectively - both punning allusions to former Iraqi defence minister Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known by the nickname "Chemical Ali".[16] These nicknames were given because he made statements about the conflict that were wildly at odds with reality. Western media treated him as a laughingstock during the initial stages of the Iraq War.[17]' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf#Reactions

MT showing his colours again...

jeers,
I