Overall, it seems that Burns reported what was really going on in Iraq and he certainly wasn't a cheerleader like the war whores at FAUX News. This is significant because it falsifies the wingnut claim that Sanchez was talking about the dreaded liberal MSM, as we can see from the viciousness of AssRocket's remark.
Burns reported that the "killer drone" story by the criminal Bush regime may be false:
March 13, 2003 Thursday
Late Edition -
Final THREATS AND RESPONSES: IRAQI WEAPONS; Iraq Shows One of Its Drones, Recalling Wright Brothers
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section A; Column 3; Foreign Desk; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 1235 words
But viewed up close today by reporters hastened by Iraqi officials to the Ibn Firnas weapons plant outside Baghdad, the vehicle the Iraqis have code-named RPV-30A, for remotely piloted vehicle, looked more like something out of the Rube Goldberg museum of aeronautical design than anything that could threaten Iraq's foes. To the layman's eye, the public unveiling of the Iraqi prototype seemed to lend the crisis over Iraq's weapons an aura less of deadly threat than of farce.
Burns did report on the "shock and awe" tactic:
March 22, 2003 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
A NATION AT WAR: BAGHDAD;
A Staggering Blow Strikes at the Heart Of the Iraqi Capital
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section A; Column 5; Foreign Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1390 words
DATELINE: BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 21
The American war on Saddam Hussein exploded tonight in a ferocious display of precision bombing and cruise missile strikes that blasted the heart of the Iraqi ruler's power with a spectacular opening bulls-eye on his most forbidding palace and continued with at least 100 more devastating volleys in the first two hours.
Most of the strikes appeared aimed at the few square miles of the capital that have been the monumental showcase for Mr. Hussein's brutal form of authoritarian rule.
Perhaps 50 strikes came in a 10-minute volley of almost biblical power that followed the opening blast, which hit or came very close to the green ornamental dome atop the Republican Palace where some of the grimmest scenes of Mr. Hussein's rule have played out.
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.
Burns reports on the immediate aftermath:
April 10, 2003 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
A NATION AT WAR: TUMULT;
Cheers, Tears and Looting in Capital's Streets
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section A; Column 2; Foreign Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2082 words
DATELINE: BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 9
Saddam Hussein's rule collapsed in a matter of hours today across much of this capital city as ordinary Iraqis took to the streets in their thousands to topple Mr. Hussein's statues, loot government ministries and interrogation centers and to give a cheering, often tearful welcome to advancing American troops.
There's a gap in his reporting on Iraq from Oct. 8 to Nov. 10, 2003. This is the first hint Burns gives that we may not have been getting the truth from the criminal Bush regime.
November 12, 2003 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: MILITARY;
General Vows to Intensify U.S. Response to Attackers
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Foreign Desk; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 1373 words
DATELINE: BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 11
Stung by the deaths of nearly 40 American soldiers over the past 10 days, the top American military commander in Iraq spoke of a "turning point" in the conflict on Tuesday and outlined a new get-tough approach to combat operations in areas north and west of Baghdad, strongholds for loyalists of Saddam Hussein.
Dispensing with euphemisms favored by many Bush administration officials in recent months, General Sanchez, commander of the 130,000 American troops in Iraq, described what they were facing as a war.
Aides to General Sanchez said the choice of the word "war" was part of a conscious effort by senior military officers to inject realism into debates in Washington. American officials disclosed Tuesday that the chief American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, had left abruptly for talks in Washington.
A few days later, Burns reported that the post-war envisioned by the neo-cons was not coming to pass.
November 16, 2003 Sunday Late Edition -
Final Witness; The New Iraq Is Grim, Hopeful and Still Scary
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section 4; Column 1; Week in Review Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2150 words
DATELINE: BAGHDAD
TO return to Baghdad after six months is to encounter a country at once dispiriting and yet, in spite of all, still hopeful, if flaggingly so. ... With no metal chaff or magnesium flares to fool missile guidance systems, the pilots on the 600-mile flight from Amman pray they will outwit attempts to shoot down the aircraft...
It is a world upside down, or at least skewed, for anybody familiar with Mr. Hussein's Iraq, a world that challenges much that seemed sure in the days when the drums of war were sounding in Washington.
The Iraqis can be incandescent about the perceived failings of the occupation administration led by L. Paul Bremer III, so far short of the American efficiencies that were an Iraqi gospel before. They mock most of the hand-picked Iraqi leaders who form the transitional governing council, saying they spend most of their time abroad on expense-paid trips or maneuvering against one another in the time they are at home.
And Iraqis want an end to the "Ali Babas," the bandits who terrorize neighborhoods and the roads outside Baghdad. After a narrow escape of my own from six masked, Kalashnikov-brandishing Ali Babas who leapt on the highway about an hour north of Nasiriya on Tuesday night, I could see their point.
In this report, Burns lets us know that the Iraqis are not overjoyed at our presence and have some important unmet needs:
November 30, 2003 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
The World: The Talk of Iraq;
A Conversation on Tiptoes, Wary of Mines
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section 4; Column 1; Week in Review Desk; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1097 words
DATELINE: AMIRIYA, Iraq
The conversation involved Muhammad Jasim, 38, who described himself as a farmer but emerged from a modern stone-and-glass house of the kind that were the privilege of Hussein loyalists. He was joined by Muhammad al-Hussein, 60, a farmer with the weathered face of a man who works with animals and crops; by Saddoun Hussein Alawi, 45, yet another farmer; and by Salih Farhan, 29, who said he had been a guard at the battlefield testing site and was now unemployed.
Mr. Hussein: "Yes, it's true, Saddam is still there, and we count on him, every last man among us. The Americans promised us the world, but we have had nothing from them except their bullets and their bombs. In every way, our situation is getting worse."
Mr. Jasim: O.K., let us be honest here. Whatever we may say to foreigners like you, the truth is that we were never really with Saddam; in our hearts, we were always against him. But he is gone; what we are against now is America. It is different. We want the Americans to go home."
Mr. Hussein: "That's right. We wanted America to get rid of Saddam, but we didn't want Americans to trespass in our land. We didn't want the soldiers to come into our villages and break down our doors and defile the honor of our women."
Mr. Alawi: "Look, we really don't have anything against the Americans. We just don't want them in our homes, in our villages and towns and cities. Perhaps if they pulled back to their military bases, and just stayed to guarantee the peace, things would start to get better."
Mr. Jasim: "The truth is, if the Americans had stopped the looters right away, things would never have come to this, with people shooting and bombing them at every chance. Still today, the looting is continuing, and still the Americans do not stop it. But it would make things worse now if they were just to go away."
Mr. Jasim: "Tell the Americans everything depends on jobs. Look at us; not a single man among us has a job, not one of us can feed his family properly. . . . So tell the Americans to find us jobs, then everything will begin to improve."
Here are a few more examples that show Burns was NOT a cheerleader:
December 14, 2003 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
The World: The Word;
There Is No Crash Course In Democracy
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section 4; Column 1; Week in Review Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1657 words
DATELINE: HILLA, Iraq
AMERICANS have set out to teach Iraqis about democracy, and the way it is going says much about the differing cultures and histories and aspirations of the teachers and the students. It is another matter whether the American effort can succeed:
December 26, 2003 Friday
Correction Appended
Late Edition - Final
Soldiering On, Even as Spirits Ebb
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Foreign Desk; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 1351 words
DATELINE: CAMP ST.-MERE, Iraq, Dec. 25
In this war, soldiers here say, all pretense of honor is gone.
Along Highway 1, the expressway stretching westward past Falluja, shepherds wave at passing American convoys, then use doctored cellphones to detonate 122-millimeter artillery shells fashioned into crude bombs and buried in the median strip or under overpasses. Recently, troops at Camp St.-Mere said, a man sent his 8-year-old son to throw a grenade into the back of a Humvee, severely wounding an American soldier. The father and son were seized.
It is a conflict that saps at least some spirits.
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