November 9, 2008
Affleck Parodies Olbermann
Ben Affleck captures Keith Olbermann perfectly in this SNL skit. Wherever you are on the political spectrum I think you'll find it hilarious. What's ironic is that Affleck probably agrees with him on most of the issues.
Posted by Tom at 9:22 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 19, 2008
Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle, and When a Gaffe is not a Gaffe
Oct 20: Updated at bottom with today's Biden gaffe
And to think that they crucified Dan Quayle because he spelled "potato" wrong.
Unless they do the same to Joe Biden, the media and late night talk-show hosts who made so much fun Dan Quayle need to send him a letter of apology.
Anyone who follows politics knows that Senator Biden is a walking gaffe machine. Consider this small collection of his wit and wisdom:
If you're not sure, Roosevelt was not president when the stock market crashed and TV hadn't been invented in 1929.
And then we have his debate with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin:
" When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel."
Huh?
"Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons. Pakistan's weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean."
Pakistani missiles barely have the range to get halfway to Israel, much less hit anything in the Mediterranean.
We could go on and on listing Biden's gaffes, see here and here for material. Joe Biden says stupid things every single week. The man is an absolute walking gaffe machine. But listing them is not my purpose, and would take too long.
The True Story of the Potato
Did you know that the reporters who were in the room with Quayle when he misspelled "potato" didn't know how it was spelled either? It's true. Not only that, but the school had prepared flash cards with the words that were used in the spelling exercise, and the one for the word in question had it spelled as "potatoe"
Bet you didn't know that, either.
In fact, when Quayle noticed the discrepancy between the flash card and the way the student spelled it, he showed the card to the other adults standing with him, and they nodded in agreement that the student had spelled it wrong.
That little fact wasn't reported by the media either.
The true story of what happened can be found in many places, but perhaps the most comprehensive is by Quayle himself in his 1994 memoir Standing Firm. He devotes an entire chapter to the incident.
I'm not going to do a book review here, but suffice it to say that if you think that Quayle uses the book as an opportunity to settle scores, lash out at the media, or engage in bitter "I didn't deserve it," you'll be disappointed. Quayle is the opposite of the stereotypical politician; humble, candid, and amazingly hard on himself.
When Is a Gaffe not a Gaffe?
So why is it that Joe Biden does not suffer the same fate as Dan Quayle? Why is it that Sarah Palin is seemingly held to a higher standard than other Biden? These are not easy questions to answer, but let me take a shot at it.
One is simply how you look and come across. Joe Biden looks and sounds like a senator or professor. He also looks his age. Dan Quayle has a boyish look that chronological age will never wear away. Sarah Palin sounds like a midwestern "everywoman," and makes no attempt to act or talk Washingtonese.
Another is how you handle the aftermath. Quayle admits that he screwed up the press briefing that immediately followed the incident. At this point neither Quayle or anyone in his entourage knew anything was amis (recall that no one in the room challenged the "e" and many thought it correct). When a reporter slyly asked "so how do you spell "potato" again?" he should have realized his earlier mistake and made a joke about it. Unfortunately, he was caught off guard and unsure what the reporter was talking about. It was this "deer in the headlights" part of the incident that made a small mistake into a career defining event more than the incident itself.
All this, remember, according to Quayle himself. I told you he was hard on himself in the book.
The media is on the lookout for anything Sarah Palin might say that is slightly wrong. Rest assured that if she said that "jobs" was a three letter word it would be the subject of late-night jokes for the rest of her life.
Biden, on the other hand, seems to skate along making gaffe after gaffe without anyone other than us nasty right-wing bloggers seeming to care. There is no aftermath for him to deal with because most of the press simply ignore his gaffes.
Therefore, another part of the reason for the disparity of treatment is that Joe Biden is a liberal and Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin are conservatives. The media and comics are overwhelmingly liberal and use their platforms to push their cause, and this means highlighting gaffes by people they don't like and ignoring those of people they do like.
So in the end, I conclude that there are three reasons for the disparity in treatment. Not in order of importance, they are: Image and how you present yourself, how you handle the aftermath, and media bias.
Monday Evening Update
No sooner do I write the above post than Senator Biden proves the case. Via ABC News (H/T NRO)
"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee said at a Seattle fundraiser Sunday, "it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
Wait a second. I thought that with the ascendancy of The One the rest of the world would all like us again? Isn't that why we are supposed to elect him?
But now "the world" will test Obama with an "international crisis, a generated crisis"? Why would they generate a crisis, if he's the one we've all been waiting for?
But wait, it gets better. Biden continues:
"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said, including the Middle East and Russia as possibilities, "and he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."
What in the world does that "not gonna be apparent initially...that we're right" bit mean? That he's going to screw it up initially?
Don't leave me yet, there's more:
"Gird your loins," Biden told the crowd. "We're gonna win with your help, God willing, we're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride."
Do what?
The garrulous Biden...
or rather, "The blithering idiot"
...said that he's "forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I'm not being falsely humble with you."
Oh yes that was certainly humble of you.
"I think I can be value added, but this guy(Obama) has it. This guy has it. But he's gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, 'Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?' We're gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I'm asking you now, I'm asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you're going to have to reinforce us.""
Or maybe he'll be down in the polls because people will come to their senses and realize that he has no idea how to handle international crises, and that his blithering idiot of a vice president is of no help whatsoever.
Posted by Tom at 8:45 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 2, 2008
Rush at Twenty
Today marks twenty years of Rush Limbaugh's radio show. I offer him my sincere and heartfelt congratulations.
I remember the first time I heard of Rush. It was a few months before the Gulf War, and I was driving to a sales call. I heard another commentator on a radio show remark that WMAL 630AM had started to carry this revolutionary broadcaster, someone whose style was completely at odds with the type of programming normally heard on the station. I heard mention that this new guy was a - gasp - conservative.
Intrigued, the next day (or later that day, I forget) I tuned in and got my first taste of Limbaugh. I was immediately hooked and have listened to him when I can ever since.
I am not the one to write the history of AM or talk radio, but it's no news to anyone that Rush revolutionized the dial. AM was said to be a dying medium. A few years earlier, while working at Radio Shack, for a short time we carried an AM stereo receiver, as there were tentative plans to save that spectrum by introducing stereo. It didn't take any great genius to figure out that static in stereo was no great benefit, but I guess they were desperate.
Then along came Rush and everything changed.
I remember reading William F Buckley Jr's account of when he first heard Rush; "I couldn't believe that such a thing was allowed." After years of either bland or left-leaning radio, that a such a talented conservative could go on the air and mock liberals in such an entertaining way was almost too much to believe.
Liberals were stunned. They didn't know how to handle this new phenomenon.
Many others have followed Rush, but none have been able to match his popularity. It is a tribute to his skill and talent that after so many years he has consistently maintained the number one position among radio talk show hosts. Often it is that the pioneer is eclipsed by someone who arrives on the scene a short time later. Not so with Rush.
His detractors in the media try to dismiss him by saying that he is simply an entertainer, while they, sniff, are journalists. What they miss is that Rush Limbaugh and other radio talk show hosts are neither journalists nor entertainers; they are something new under the sun. It speaks to their narrow thinking that they are unable to conceive of anything other than "journalist" or "entertainer."
Again and again the left has thought it has found its own Rush Limbaugh. Their list of failures is long; Mario Cuomo, Jim Bohanon, and Al Franken, just to name a few. Air America fails while Rush continues to enjoy stratospheric ratings.
It is the very success of "el Rushbo" that has driven liberals to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine, which is not called the "hush Rush" bill for nothing. Liberal hosts fail time and again, and driven to fits of rage, the only thing they can think of is to change the rules.
That they want to do this is no big surprise. The left has tried to get him off the air from day one. The liberal group Media Matters apparently spends much of its time monitoring all conservative talk show hosts in an attempt to catch them saying something that they deem inappropriate, and then create a media campaign to have that person removed from the airwaves. If you can't join 'em, beat 'em down.
I wish Rush Limbaugh the very best in all that he does. I'm sure he'll remain #1 on the radio.
Update: President George W Bush just called in to congratulate Rush! Also on the line were George H.W. Bush and Jeb Bush. While it's hard to call any of the Bush's true conservatives, it speaks to his influence that the President of the United States, an ex-President, and an ex-Governor would call him at the start of his show.
Posted by Tom at 12:15 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
December 20, 2007
Person of the Year - General David Petraeus
Since TIME did the wrong thing by awarding it's Person of the Year to Vladimir Putin, I'm going to do my small part to make up for it.
The Redhunter hereby awards it's first Person of the Year award to
General David Petraeus
At least TIME made him a runner-up. And, to be fair, the jury is still out on whether his new strategy will ultimately succeed, something Petraeus admits in the story.
Further, in my attempt to give TIME every benefit of the doubt, they do make it clear that
Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest. At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse. It is ultimately about leadership—bold, earth-changing leadership
That's fine. I just don't agree that Putin was the most influential person of the year. At least they didn't sucumb to the narcissism of last year, when they made "you" the winner.
Certainly by October of last year, with the failure of General Casey's Baghdad Security Plan (Operation Together Forward), it was ever more painfully clear that what we were doing was failing. By December, even I was calling for Generals Abizaid and Casey to be replaced. Like our president, I'd stuck with them for far too long.
The political situation at home had seriously deteriorated. The elections had dealt the Republicans a huge loss, with both houses of Congress going to the Democrats. While the war was only one of several issues, it was an important one, and Bush finally got the message.
The new plan for Iraq was drafted by a variety of people, and I'm not sure I have the entire story straight, but in the end the best plan will not work unless the right person is in charge.
Then Lt Gen Petraeus had spent most of 2006 editing the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. This book has been the "bible" of our troops who are charged with executing what was termed the "surge" plan.
It took almost six months to get the 5 new "surge" brigades into place, but kinetic operations kicked off June 15 with the start of Operation Phantom Thunder.
We have since seen a dramatic turnaround in Iraq. Violence is down throughout the country. Al Qaeda, the greatest threat to stability, is on the ropes.
Much remains to be done, and even the most optimistic generals caution that "the progress that we've made thus far is fragile and not guaranteed."
True enough, but it is also accurate, I think, to say that without Petraeus and the new plan we'd only be talking about pulling out of Iraq today. By late 2006 the situation was untenable, and the public at the end of it's rope. General David Petraeus has given Iraq a chance for success.
It's more than that, though. Failure in Iraq would have had been devastating to all people around the world who care about liberty. Anti-war types delude themselves by thinking that it would only be a defeat for the Bush/neo-con/Republicans. It is vital that we win, and as such must pursue victory until all reasonable hope is lost.
For all these reasons and more, General David Petraeus is my Person of the Year.
Posted by Tom at 7:50 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 29, 2007
Quote of the Century
Michael Ledeen says this is the quote of the century, and it's hard to disagree with him other than to ask why we should limit it to one century
It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the cause by writing editorials - after the fact.Robert E. Lee, 1863
Posted by Tom at 8:25 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
March 25, 2007
When All Else Fails, Blame American Capitalism
This morning I'm flipping through the paper, and come across an AP article titled "Youngsters in Britain Seen as Menace to Society". Ok, I think, another article about how the country is going to pot. More about crime, juvenile delinquency, and the general decay of manners.
And that's pretty much how the story started out. Pretty soon, however, the political correctness started in. The Institute for Public Policy Research, described as "center-left", decided that it's all the fault of the complainers, terming it all "pedophobia". "There has always been a culture in Britain that's a bit anti-children," said one of the researchers.
Standard stuff, however regrettable. Then came this:
Britain's poor performance may be one of the downsides of the country's embrace of American-style free-market competition -- a move that has unleashed enormous economic energy since the 1980s, but widened inequalities and left many without a safety net.
I had another drink of coffee to make sure I wasn't dreaming.
So it's American-style capitalism then, that has caused all these poor "youths" go commit crimes? A lack of welfare checks causes them to join gangs?
You don't have to have all of the figures in front of you to know that Western countries have been spending more and more on the social welfare "safety net" and less and less on the military. I recall some figures recently published in the Washington Times in which during most of the Cold War the United States spent 8-10% of GDP on its military, and the UK over 5%. Today the US is at 4% and the UK 2.3%. During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 60s 50% of the Federal budget went to the military. Today it's 19%. I'm sure the figures are similar for the UK.
No safety net? What do people like Jill Lawless and the people at the Institute for Public Policy Research think the rest of the money was spent on?
Posted by Tom at 9:10 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 29, 2006
Correcting The Record
Stung by what they believe to be factually inaccurate reporting in the media, the Department of Defense is fighting back. There is a new section on the Defenselink website called For The Record devoted to challenging press accounts of recent events.
Here is a recent entry:
The New York Times on “Real Terrorists” A “lighthearted” matter?Oct. 27, 2006 —This week’s exchange with the New York Times isn’t the first time the Department of Defense has expressed concern about inaccuracies in a Times editorial.
A September 7 editorial (“A Sudden Sense of Urgency”) asserted that, with the transfer of 14 high-value terrorist suspects to Cuba, “President Bush finally has some real terrorists in Guantánamo Bay.” In fact, those held prior to the transfer included personal bodyguards of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda recruiters, trainers, and facilitators. Another individual held at Guantánamo was Mohamed al-Kahtani, believed to be the intended 20th hijacker on September 11th.The Times declined to issue a correction, noting that “the phrase in question was meant to be somewhat lighthearted in tone and not literal.”
Read the full exchange here.
I say good for the Department of Defense. We're in an information war, and unfortunaly many in the press have acted quite irresponsibly and deserve to be challenged.
Posted by Tom at 8:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 28, 2006
Hanson Demolishes the Washington Punditry
Via Instupundit, here's Victor Davis Hanson on the chattering class:
Watching and reading the recent Washington punditry, whether in print or on television, is a depressing spectacle. Almost all—Charles Krauthammer is the most notable exception—have somehow triangulated on the war, not mentioning why and how in the B.C. days they sort of, kinda, not really called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. For some the Road to Damascus was the looting or Abu Ghraib, for others the increasing violence. Still more now say the absence of WMD did the trick.But almost none of the firebrands of 2003 speaks the truth behind the facade: They supported the war when it looked like few casualties and a quick reconstruction and thus confirmation of their own muscular humanitarianism—and then bailed along the way when they realized that wasn’t going to happen and the unpopular war might instead brand them as “war mongers”, “chicken-hawks” or just fools.
Instead of that honest admission, we get instead either cardboard cut-out villains of the “my perfect three-week war, your screwed-up three-year occupation” type—a Douglas Feith, Gen. Sanchez, or Paul Bremmer—or all sorts of unappreciated and untapped brilliance: from trisecting the country to “redeploying” to Kurdistan, or Kuwait, or Okinawa?
Exactly right.
Posted by Tom at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2006
Flag Officers Conference on Iraq at Ft Carson CO
C R Mountjoy, author of the The Neo Con Blogger, has a fascinating post about a Rear Admiral (unnamed) who attended a flag officer conference at Fort Carson, Colorado. Mountjoy received his report via email from a retired US Army Colonel.
The conference took place last Saturday, June 10. . The conference was hosted by Major General Bob Mixon, Commanding General of Seventh Infantry Division, and " featured a panel of officers who had either very recently returned from commands in the combat zone or were about to deploy there in the next two months. Three of the recent returnees (and panelists) were Colonel H.R. McMaster, Colonel Rick S., and Captain Walter Szpak.." Some 54 generals and admirals were in the audience.
Col McMaster is famous for retaking Tal Afar back from the insurgents last September. At a press conference after the operation, when a reporter accused him of painting too rosy a picture, he responded that "Nothing's rosy in Iraq, okay?" but that "the enemy's on the run." That the operation was a success was attested to by the Mayor of Tal Afar who wrote an amazing letter that he addressed "to the Courageous Men and Women of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who have changed the city of Tall’ Afar from a ghost town, in which terrorists spread death and destruction, to a secure city flourishing with life."
"Colonel S" was with the Special Forces, this his anonimity. He is described as having "headed up all of the 31 special forces A-teams that are integrated with the populace and the Iraqi Army and national police."
Captain Szpak was the head of all the Army explosive ordnance teams in Iraq. His team studied the IEDs the enemy planted, and devised ways to disarm them before they went off. They also trained combat teams in recognizing and avoiding IEDs.
Although the obective of the conference was to discuss the modular brigade concept, it turned into a discussion on Iraq. The panelists held a Q & A with the audience members, and according to the Rear Admiral who sent the email, a summary of the discussion is as follows
· All returnees agreed that “we are clearly winning the fight against the insurgents but we are losing the public relations battle both in the war zone and in the States”. (I’ll go into more detail on each topic below.)· All agreed that it will be necessary for us to have forces in Iraq for at least ten more years, though by no means in the numbers that are there now.
· They opined that 80% to 90% of the Iraqi people want to have us there and do not want us to leave before “the job is done”.
· The morale and combat capability of the troops is the highest that the senior officers have ever seen in the 20-30 years that each has served.
· The Iraqi armed forces and police are probably better trained right now than they were under Saddam, but our standards are much higher and they lack officer leadership.
· They don’t need more troops in the combat zone but they need considerably more Arab linguists and civil affairs experts.
· The IEDs and EFPs continue to be the principal problem that they face and they are becoming more sophisticated as time passes.
You'll want to go to the Neo Con Blogger and read the whole thing, but here is an important excerpt on the issue of Public Affairs:
We are losing the public affairs battle for a variety of reasons. First, in Iraq, the terrorists provide Al Jazeera with footage of their more spectacular attacks and they are on TV to the whole Arab world within minutes of the event. By contrast it takes four to six days for a story generated by Army Public Affairs to gain clearance by Combined Forces Command, two or three more days to get Pentagon clearance, and after all that, the public media may or may not run the story.Second, the U.S. mainstream media (MSM) who send reporters to the combat zone do not like to have their people embedded with our troops. They claim that the reporters get “less objective” when they live with the soldiers and marines – they come to see the world through the eyes of the troops. As a consequence, a majority of the reporters stay in hotels in the “Green Zone” and send out native stringers to call in stories to them by cell phone which they later write up and file. No effort is made to verify any of these stories or the credibility of the stringers. The recent serious injuries to Bob Woodruff of ABC and Kimberly Dozier of CBS makes the likelihood of the use of local stringers even higher.
Third, the stories that are filed by reporters in the field very seldom reach the American public as written. An anecdote from Col. McMaster illustrates this dramatically. TIME magazine recently sent a reporter to spend six weeks with the 3rd ACR as they were in the battle of Tal Afar. When the battle was over, the reporter filed his story and also included close to 100 pictures that the accompanying photographer took. TIME published a cover story on the battle a week later, allegedly using the story sent in by their reporter. When the issue came out, the guts had been edited out of their reporter’s story and none of the pictures he submitted were used. Instead they showed a weeping child on the cover, taken from stock photos. When the reporter questioned why his story was eviscerated, his editors in New York responded that the story and pi ctures were “too heroic”. McMaster had read both and told me that the editors had completely changed the thrust and context of the material their reporter had submitted.
Two conclusions from this. First, while it is tempting to blame the whole thing on the liberal msm, we can't do that. Part of the problem is on our side. Second, if true it is disgraceful that stories are being changed because they are "too heroic".
The question now is one of time. The point that Col Nagl made in his 2005 book Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, we screwed up in our first two years in Iraq but we've got it right now. Whether the troops will be allowed to complete their mission before political circumstances force a pullout remains to be seen.
Posted by Tom at 12:19 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 5, 2006
Paul Ray Smith and the Shame of Hollywood
Does the name "Paul Smith" ring any bells with you?
How about "Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith"?
He should be a household name, but of course isn't.
The shame is on Hollywood and our mass media.
If you want to know why, go here.
If you didn't already, now you know that Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith was awarded the Medal of Honor for valor in Iraq.
They don't hand out Congressional Medals of Honor to anyone. As the US Army website explains, "Medals of Honor are awarded sparingly and are bestowed only to the bravest of the brave; and that valor must be well documented." Since Vietnam, only two have been awarded, those to Army Master Sgt. Gary I. Gordon and Army Sgt. 1st Class Randall D. Shughart for valor in Somalia in 1993. Most, like those to Sgt's Gordon and Shughard, are awarded posthumously.
Sgt Paul Smith is no exception; he gave his life in defense of his country while fighting in Iraq. He rests at Arlington National Cemetary.
Go and read the citation for his actions.
And make sure you view the interactive feature which details his valor.
Of course, Sgt Smith isn't the only one who has received honors for valor in the War on Terror. The Centcom website has entire section devoted to all of them. There are other websites as well dedicated to telling their stories.
And in a larger sense every single one of our troops fighting the War on Terror, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa or elsewher is a hero.
The Shame of Hollywood
There should have been at least a few movies about Sgt Paul Smith by now. A few of those "made for TV" insta-movies should have come out in late 2003. And a full-length feature movie could have been in the theaters by 2004 or 2005 at the latest.
But unless I am severly mistaken, Hollywood has produced nothing about Sgt Smith.
Yet they claim that they "support the troops".
I don't think so.
Posted by Tom at 8:32 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
March 14, 2006
Media Memes of the War on Terror
Chester posts on his blog some media memes of the War on Terror and asks how they might be categorized or classified. The ones he came up with are
-the US is disrespectful of Islam (the Newsweek story)-the US routinely violates human rights (Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib)
-the Iraq war is analogous to the Vietnam war
-Iraq is perpetually on the brink of civil war
-extreme Islam should be tolerated (the refusal to publish cartoons)
-Iraq grows more violent by the day
Commenter El Jefe Maximo adds a few more
The US has driven Iran to build a bomb.The Islamicist movement is a defensive response to US led globalization.
The Iraqi "resistance" is a legitimate response to foreign occupation.
The Iraqi government has no legitimacy because it was planted by a foreign occupation.
Saddam governed Iraq in the only way possible.
Al Sadr is a true Iraqi nationalist: he's uniting Sunni and Shia Iraqis against the Americans.
Islam good, Neocons bad.
Our overreaction to 9/11 feeds violence and Al Qaeda.
Peace only when we bring the troops home.
Violence in Iraq result of too few troops.
Pro US government in Iraq oppresses women and minorities.
Pro US government in Iraq tortures its opponents.
Dangerous if Iraqi government succeeds, because US may try this kind of intervention again.
Bush responsible for Katrina, Rita, Wilma and for too much/little rain and the crops not growing (okay, that was a joke...I think).
All this illustrates perfectly why I watch virtually no TV news anymore(including Fox). Newspapers are better, and readers of this blog know that I quote both the Washington Times and Washington Post regularly. But for the most part if you want to find out what's going on you'll have to visit the blogosphere, especially the sites I link to at right.
Chester is an Iraq war vet and his blog is a must-read. You'll find it as "The Adventures of Chester" at right under "War on Terror Analysis"
I'd send him a trackback but in order to try and get a handle on spam he's turned them (and comments) off for now.
Posted by Tom at 9:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 1, 2006
The Washington Post Goes Too Far
Everyone knows that the Washington Post is a left-of-center newspaper, just as we know that the Washington Times is right-of-center.
But there's the loyal opposition, and then there's this:
I don't know which is worse, the cartoon of the little guy at bottom making his oh-so-clever reference to the issue of how we interrogate terrorist suspects.
But don't think this is just me and other right-wing bloggers upset at the latest stupid cartoon.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff are mad as well. And they've written a letter to the Post expressing their dissatisfaction (Hat tip Michelle Malkin)
Here's their letter:
You can download the letter as a pdf here:
Download file
Thursday Morning Update
The letter from the Joint Chiefs of Staff is in today's Post.
The Post has an article up about the controversy, but it's not really an editorial response. Here's an excerpt:
In an interview, Toles called the letter "an understandable response" but said he did not regret what he drew. In thinking about Rumsfeld's remarks, he said, "what came soon to mind was the catastrophic level of injuries the Army and members of the armed services have sustained . . . I thought my portrayal of it was a fair depiction of the reality of the situation."I certainly never intended it to be in any way a personal attack on, or a derogatory comment on, the service or sacrifice of American soldiers."
As for the Joint Chiefs' letter, he said: "I think it's a little bit unfair in their reading of the cartoon to imply that is what it's about."
Oh please.
Amy Ridenour posts on her blog an email from a person who says that no, the cartoon isn't making fun of the soldiers, that "It's very clearly pointing out how disgusting it is that the military neglects soldiers once they're damaged goods"
Amy responds that "it seems that the Post cartoon is criticizing the Administration's Iraq war policy." I think she's right.
Besides, people who say that the military "neglects" the wounded simply do not know what they're talking about. People who make this claim are using wounded troops to advance their political agendas.
Posted by Tom at 9:16 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
December 29, 2005
Will the Real Journalist Please Stand Up?
It has become a staple of conservatives that "you can't trust the msm and the best information about Iraq is on the Internet". I keep looking for something to prove that proposition wrong, but the harder I look the more it is confirmed.
Last month a blogger by the name of Bill Roggio went to Iraq to report on the war as an imbed with the US Marines. Most readers are, or should be, familiar with Roggio, who's work initially appeared on his site The Fourth Rail and now appears at ThreatsWatch.
Roggio isn't just any blogger, however, for his daily reporting on the details of our operations in Iraq far surpasses anything I've seen elsewhere. He became a must-read for me last spring when I was looking for information about the war, and simply could not find such reporting elsewhere. His work has attracted much attention, and his website(s) receives a far amount of traffic, as he well deserves.
Roggio's articles, or posts, describe the various campaigns and battles in a matter-of-fact way. Analysis is done only after facts are presented, and the tone of his prose is measured, never shrill or harsh. He believes that we are winning the war, but is no chearleader for the administration.
Because Roggio does not make his money from writing, but does this as a hobby, taking time off work, and paying the expenses necessary to travel to Iraq, was quite an undertaking. To help raise the $30,000 necessary for the venture, he asked his readers to help. Like so many others, I contributed a few dollars.
The good news is that the msm noticed Roggio. The bad news is that they decided to attack him.
The title of Monday's Washington Post story on Roggio sets the tone for the rest of the article:
Bloggers, Money Now Weapons in Information WarU.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage
In other words, Roggio is a propagandist, and what he does is no different than the US Military paying Iraqi TV stations to run certain stories. To the Post it's all part of a larger propaganda war, and apparently only they count as objective observers.
To be fair, they do give Roggio his due, quoting him on why he went to Iraq:
"I was disenchanted with the reporting on the war in Iraq and the greater war on terror and felt there was much to the conflict that was missed," Roggio, who is currently stationed with Marines along the Syrian border, wrote in an e-mail response to written questions. "What is often seen as an attempt at balanced reporting results in underreporting of the military's success and strategy and an overemphasis on the strategically minor success of the jihadists or insurgents."
Unfortunately, the article got many of it's facts wrong on Roggio, which he subsequently pointed out in a response posted on ThreatsWatch:
There are three problems with this article which require a response: the use iof incorrect facts which could have been easily checked; the portrayal of my embed as an information operation; and equating U.S. military information operations with al-Qaeda propaganda efforts.
Readers should go to both the Post article and Roggio's response as I cannot recap the entire debate. However, he did contact the Post writer to set the record straight:
In an email to Mr. Finer expressing my displeasure with being labeled a military information operation, Mr. Finer suggested I read the entire article. I assured him I did. The title and subtitle are not meaningless to the context of the article; it is implied I was a tool of the military, when in fact the military had no influence whatsoever in what I said from Iraq.The details of my embed are then followed with a discussion on military information operations, the Lincoln Group’s activities in paying for positive articles to be published in Iraqi publications, and the military funding Iraqi radio stations. The implication is clear: a blogger embedding in Iraq must be part of a nefarious scheme by the military to influence the perceptions on Iraq.
The truth is far more mundane. I wasn’t paid a dime to report from Iraq by the Marines, nor was I influenced in any way in what I could or could not write about. I had full control over the where and when of my embeds. Never once was my work subject to the approval or review of the military. I wrote what I experienced, both the good and the bad.
Interviewed by Hugh Hewett on his radio show, Roggio said that in other conversations with Mr Finer, the latter said that he couldn't understand why Roggio "might be upset" with the Post article. Talk about a difference in perspectives.
Journalism in America
The other day Belmont Club posted excerpts from an opinion piece that appeared in the Louisville KY Courier-Journal last May.
In the unsigned editorial, the journalist "urges Americans to search for truth, freedom." He or she spent 10 months in Iraq, and would like to share what he believes are some "revelations" about the United States. Excerpts follow:
Lesson One: Many journalists in Iraq could not, or would not, check their nationality or their own perspective at the door.One of the hardest things about working on this story for me personally, and as a journalist, was to set my "American self" and perspective aside. It was an ongoing challenge to listen open-mindedly to a group of people whose foundation of belief is significantly different from mine, and one I found I often strongly disagreed with.
Lesson Two: Our behavior as journalists has taught us very little. Just as in the lead up to the war in Iraq, questioning our government's decisions and claims and what it seeks to achieve is criticized as unpatriotic.
Along these lines, the other thing I found difficult was the realization that, while I was out doing what I believe is solid journalism, there were many (journalists and normal folks alike) who would question my patriotism, or wonder how I could even think hearing and relating the perspective "from the other side" was important.
Certainly, over the last three years I've had to acquire the discipline of overriding my emotional attachment to my country, and remember my sense of human values that transcend frontiers and ethnicity.
Lesson Three: To seek to understand and represent to an American audience the reasons behind the Iraqi opposition is practically treasonous.
Every one of the people involved in the resistance that we spoke to held us individually responsible for their security. If something happened to them -- never mind that they were legitimate targets for the U.S. military -- they would blame us. And kill us.
And many American journalists often refer to those attacking Americans or Iraqi troops and policemen as "terrorists." Some are indeed using terrorist tactics, but calling them "terrorists" simply shuts down any sense of need or interest to look beyond that word, to understand why indeed human beings might be willing to die in a violent struggle to achieve their goal.
Lesson Four: The gatekeepers -- by which I mean the editors, publishers and business sides of the media -- don't want their paper or their outlet to reveal that compelling narrative of why anyone would oppose the presence of American troops on their soil. Why would anyone refuse democracy? Why would anyone not want the helping hand of America in overthrowing their terrible dictator?
Wouldn't we as women be joining with them in any way we could? Wouldn't the divisions between us -- how we feel about President Bush, whether we're Republican or Democrat -- be put aside as we resisted a common enemy?
Lesson Five: What it's like to be afraid of your own country.
Once the story was finished and set to come out on the street, I was rushing back to the States -- mostly because we could no longer work once the story was published -- and I found I was scared returning to my own country. And that was an amazingly strange and awful feeling to have.
We need to begin to be able to look again at our government, our leadership and ourselves critically.
Unbelieveable.
The Courier-Journal piece contains so much moral relativism, is just so...horrible, that to disect it is not even necessary. It is almost at the level of self-parody, a caricature of the most gross and insulting sort. Yet somebody wrote it, a reporter hoping to influence our opinion of the war in Iraq.
To be sure, it would be an error to automatically assign the views of the Courier-Journal reporter to all journalists, including Mr Finer at the Washington Post. Yet who can really doubt that such thinking is all too common among members of the Fourth Estate?
And this is exactly why people such as Bill Roggio and Michael Yon are so valuable. While I would never issue a blanket statement like "you can never trust anything in the mainstream media", I will certainly say that between Bill Roggio and the Washington Post, Roggio is the real journalist. And he stands tall indeed.
Posted by Tom at 4:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 15, 2005
What we Don't Hear
Is it just me? Am I the only one who does not see this type of reporting on the TV or in the newspapers?
July 14, 2005: A senior aide to Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Abu Abd al Aziz, was captured. Interestingly, no details of the capture were released. Al Aziz is second in command of al Qaeda forces in Baghdad, and a key organizer of terrorist attacks. For many Iraqi police, shutting down al Qaeda has become something of an obsession. Iraqi television and radio cover this battle with the terrorists intensely. The deaths of Iraqi civilians and security troops are given front page coverage, as are the operations against the terrorists. Much to the dismay of Iraqi Sunni Arabs, the media keeps pointing out that nearly all the Iraqi supporters of the al Qaeda terrorists are Sunni Arabs. The leaders of the Iraqi Sunni Arab community are working hard to prove their loyalty, before popular opinion against Iraqi Sunni Arabs gets out of control, and widespread attacks on Sunni Arabs begins.
Iraqi police obsessed with shutting down Al Qaeda? I thought they all turned and ran. Television and radio covering the battle? "Deaths of Iraqi civilians and security troops ... given front page coverage, as are the operations against the terrorists"? I didn't even know they had newspapers, radio or TV over there (joke...).
I swear I have not seen this stuff in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Fox News, CNN, or any of the other places I look.
Now maybe it's been there and I've missed it. But I doubt it.
I got the above from the daily briefing over at StrategyPage. Without it, Belmont Club, Chrenkoff, and three of four other sites I wouldn't know what was going on at all in Iraq.
Just thought I'd share that with you. Now have a good evening.
Posted by Tom at 9:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 5, 2005
If you're not Making them Mad....
There comes a certain point where if you're not driving the liberals nuts you're not doing your job.
For example, if President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court does not generate howls of rage from NOW, the People for the American Way, and all the other assorted leftie groups, we'll know it was a bad choice.
Likewise with the media. If the guardians of the traditional media aren't mad at us, we're doing something wrong.
For the fact is that the reporting on the War on Terror in general and Iraq in particular is abysmal. You are simply not going to find out what is going on if you limit yourself to the TV news channels (Fox News included, the newspapers, and especially newsmagazines. What passes for analysis there is pathetic.
I set up a sidebar link with some sites that I think are particularly useful in understanding what is going on. They're not all neoconservative, btw. But I'm getting off topic.
You see, several of the dreaded radio talk show hosts are making a trip to Iraq to find out what is going on. They are calling it a "truth tour" and will be live-blogging it at VoicesOfSoldiers.com You'll want to bookmark it.
The talk-show hosts will be broadcasting their shows from Baghdad, and will be traveling with the troops daily. In addition, two writers from David Horowitz' FrontPage Magazine are going, which is guaranteed to drive the left to fits of apoplexy.
I heard about this will scanning the Fox News website, and then while listening to Michael Graham, a local talk show host (Washington DC area) will is going on the trip.
So how have the liberals in the press reacted? Predictably, that's how.
Let's just observe a sampling of their reaction:
"This is the most pathetic thing I've heard in a long time. They should be ashamed of themselves," Peter Beinart, editor of left-leaning The New Republic magazine, said."They have no idea what journalism is, and to pretend they are journalists is laughable," Beinart said. "You do not achieve victory by not facing reality. I think these are the kinds of people that will lead us to lose there."
..."I think they are going to discover very quickly that Iraq is an extremely dangerous place," Joe Conason, editor for American Prospect magazine and author of "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth," said. "The realities of the war zone are likely to intrude on whatever ideological disposition they have going in there."
...
one of them even pulled out the "Arstrong Williams" canard:
Steve Rendall, senior analyst for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting and author of "The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error," said with an attitude like that, the trip will probably be useless in terms of real news-making.
...
Rendall noted it "bears comparison to the Armstrong Williams and the other instances" of government payment for good news, referring to conservative talk show host Williams, who was paid by the Department of Education to pump up school choice on his radio show in 2004.
(Just for the record, the talk-show hosts are paying their own way)
But we know the drill: "How dare these, these radio talk show hosts attempt to report on their own! Why, they didn't go to the right school! They don't have the right degrees! They didn't worship er, sit, at the feet of Bob Woodward!"
The parody is too easy. And I'll leave the humor to sites that are a lot better at it.
So much is wrong with what Beinart and Rendall say that it's hard to know where to start. I'll just point out what has become obvious, and that is to the liberals who make up most of the mainstream press, if you're not anti-Bush and against the war in Iraq you're not "objective"
And the reason for this is simple. People like Beinart and Rendall want to bring back the glory days of Vietnam.
Melanie Morgain, a talk-show host who is going on the trip, countered the liberal criticism:
Morgan, a former television reporter, said she and the others are tired of "hotel journalists" from "the mainstream media" who "sit around in a hotel bar" cribbing other writers' quotes and clips "so they don’t have to go out and cover the war.""We are not going to engage in hotel journalism," she said.
Oh, and if you want the scoop on Beinart (and more info on the trip), Michelle Malkin has it all.
Stay tuned. I've added Voices of Soldiers my blogroll and will try and follow their reports as best I can.
Posted by Tom at 8:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 22, 2005
"It's Not Just Newsweek"
As Michelle Malkin says in her latest column, "It's not Just Newsweek".
Michelle rocks, of course. Her TV career has taken off, too. She guest-hosted O'Reilly (again) on Friday and did an excellent job. Of course the fact that she's awefully darn cute has nothing to do with my admiration of her. But I digress.
Back to her column:
If you want to hear an earful, ask an American soldier how he feels about our news media. You will invariably hear an outpouring of dismay and outrage over antagonistic and reckless reporting. I have stacks of letters and e-mails from soldiers and their families sharing those frustrations. During the Vietnam War, such sentiments would get packed away private hurts to be silently borne for decades.
But today the Internet has allowed soldiers on the front to disseminate their viewsbreaking through the media's entrenched anti-military bias— in unprecedented ways. In the wake of Newsweek's publication of its unsourced, mayhem-inducing, and now-retracted item about Koran desecration by U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, a sergeant in Saudi Arabia immediately responded on a blog called The Anchoress (theanchoressonline.com):
I have placed my life and the life of my fellow soldiers in danger in order to achieve a measure of the freedoms we enjoy at home for the Iraqi and Afghani people. As soldiers, we all understand that we may be asked to participate in wars (actions) that we (or our countrymen) don't agree with. The irresponsible journalism being practiced by organizations such as Newsweek, however, [is] just inexcusable. At this point, because of their actions and failure to follow up on a claim of that magnitude, they've set the process back in Afghanistan immensely…
I don't regret serving my country, not one bit, but to have everything I'm doing here undermined by irresponsible journalists leaves me disgusted and disappointed.
Here, here.
There was an airshow this weekend at Andrews Air Force Base (which is just outside of Washington DC). They hold it every year, and I've been maybe fifteen times in the past twenty years. I'd have gone yesterday or today (the weather was great so it was tempting) but I just had too much else to do. Besides the pure thrill of seeing high-performance aircraft do their stuff (which like a hockey game is quite different live than on TV) I figure it's a way to show the military that I care enough and respect what they do. The pilots love to answer your questions, too. But again here I go off on a tangent.
Who's Side Are They On?
Malkin reminds us of all the lies, distortions, and misrepresentations we've had to put up with over the past few years from the mainstream media.
The members of our military are more than just an expedient means to a titillating magazine cover or juicy scoop or Peabody Award. Too often since the "War on Terror" was declared, eager Bush-bashing journalists have forgotten that the troops are real people who face real threats and real bloodshed as a consequence of loose lips and keyboards.
She then (on her regular blog) provides links to some of the other media misrepresentations. Remember these?
We heard that the military stood by while thousands of priceless Iraqi artifacts were stolen from museums. Then, oops, it wasn't really that way.
They tried to tell us that there was this big problem with desertions. But the photo that they used wasn't of any deserters.
Eight days before our presidential election they tried to tell us the we let insurgent terrorists loot a big cache of explosives because dumb 'ol Rumsfeld didn't send enough troops to invade Iraq. It wasn't true, of course. But hey, the timing was coincence, right?
Most don't even have the decency to call the bastards what they are; TERRORISTS.
Some are even more creative, they lie outright and fabricate stories about how we are targeting journalists.
Another big-name newspaper was so eager to smear the military that it fell for fake gang-rape photos.
And don't even make me bring up that windbag from CBS.
Posted by Tom at 9:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
They Shoot Reporters, don't They?
Check out The Fourth Rail for the link they posted to a Powerpoint presentation that the insurgent terrorists in Iraq made for their snipers.
They, uh, target reporters. Get that, Eason Jordan and Linda Foley?
Posted by Tom at 9:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Headline You'll Never See
Here's a headline from the NY Times (I don't really care about the story, the thoroughly obnoxious headline says it all for me):
"Guantánamo Comes to Define U.S. to Muslims"
Here is a headline I would like to see:
"Beheadings and Insanely Violent Behavior Define Islam to Americans"
Do you think we will ever see that? No, I don't either.
Posted by Tom at 9:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 19, 2005
Press Irresponsibility
It's bad enough that Newsweek Magazine printed an inflamatory story using shoddy research, and does either not realize the damage they have done or do not care. Their sort-of apology isn't much.
But predictably many other pressies do not get it either. Take this exchange between White House reporters and presidential spokesman Scott McClellan (Drudge report, originally, hat tip Wretchard).
These reporters know no shame. They don't get it. They think that the only two options are to report "how great the U.S. military is", or completely trash it. How about the truth, guys?Q With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage them to help --
Q You're pressuring them.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm saying that we would encourage them --
Q It's not pressure?
MR. McCLELLAN: Look, this report caused serious damage to the image of the United States abroad. And Newsweek has said that they got it wrong. I think Newsweek recognizes the responsibility they have. We appreciate the step that they took by retracting the story. Now we would encourage them to move forward and do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done by this report. And that's all I'm saying. But, no, you're absolutely right, it's not my position to get into telling people what they can and cannot report....
Q Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American military is; is that what you're saying here?
MR. McCLELLAN: Elisabeth, let me finish my sentence. Our military --
Q You've already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm coming to your question, and you're not letting me have a chance to respond. But our military goes out of their way to handle the Koran with care and respect. There are policies and practices that are in place. This report was wrong. Newsweek, itself, stated that it was wrong. And so now I think it's incumbent and -- incumbent upon Newsweek to do their part to help repair the damage. And they can do that through ways that they see best, but one way that would be good would be to point out what the policies and practices are in that part of the world, because it's in that region where this report has been exploited and used to cause lasting damage to the image of the United States of America. It has had serious consequences. And so that's all I'm saying, is that we would encourage them to take steps to help repair the damage. And I think that they recognize the importance of doing that. That's all I'm saying.
Q As far as the Newsweek article is concerned, first, how and where the story came from? And do you think somebody can investigate if it really happened at the base, and who told Newsweek? Because somebody wrote a story.
That one of their own is responsible for undermining the United States in one of the most vital regions of the world through shoddy reporting concerns them not at all. And they wonder why newspaper circulation is dropping off (except with the Washington Times, where it is going up!).
Then we have this in this morning's Washington Times:
(well I was going to copy the whole thing but their links are all screwed up)
Essentially the story in the Times (look under "Inside Politics" and maybe the link is fixed) is that "...Linda Foley, international president of the Newspaper Guild, has accused the U.S. military of targeting journalists for death 'in places like Iraq'"
"Journalists, by the way, are not just being targeted verbally or politically," Miss Foley said Friday in St. Louis. "They are also being targeted for real, in places like Iraq. What outrages me as a representatrive of journalists is that their is not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq."
Yeah well what outrages me, Miss Foley, is that we have to put up with whackos like you who make wildly irresponsible charges. I don't have time this morning to research this Newspaper Guild group, and if anyone has any info please send it to me.
Don't you think that this war would be a bit easier if we had more of the press on our side? One cause, I think, is moral confusion caused by a misunderstanding of "neutrality" versus "objectivity" in reporting. I did a post on this subject on my other blog site, take a look if you have time.
Evening Update
Sometime today the Times fixed the link, so you can get to the entire story here.
Friday Update
LaShawn Barber has details on Linda Foley (hat tip Michelle Malkin). She's even nuttier than I thought. How do people like this get to be president of anything?
Worldnet Daily has the text of Foley's remarks:
According to a tape of her remarks, Foley said: “Journalists, by the way, are not just being targeted verbally or … ah, or … ah, politically. They are also being targeted for real, um … in places like Iraq. What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there’s not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq.”
Foley continued, “They target and kill journalists … uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al -, like Arab news services like al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity. …”
Posted by Tom at 7:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 2, 2005
Casualties of War
Yesterday I caught Liz Trotta for a few minutes on Fox News during their 10-12am show. The issue being discussed was war casualties. (I can't find a link to the show on the Fox site so if someone can send it to me I'd be obliged)
The question was whether the war was being "sanitized" by the mainstream media. The charge is that by not showing "enough" U.S. casualties Americans are developing a "video game" mentality towards war.
Liz thought the charge to be utter nonsense and so do I, for two reasons.
First, I think that if anything, American's have a more realistic view of war than ever before. There are several trends in our culture that I believe support this view.
Movies and Television are more violent and realistic. Movies such as Saving Private Ryan went to lengths never before imagined in showing war. Not just the "blood and guts" aspect, but the general view that from a soldier's perspective fighting is not all about patriotism and glory. It is a terrible, dirty, frightening business. Soldiers fight for their buddies.
The culture in general has "accepted" a higher level of violence. This is a bad thing, and one can argue that we have been "desensitized", and perhaps so. However the fact remains that violence per se is not unknown to Americans.
There is also my own general anecdotal experience. I just do not get the impression that Americans in general "don't know what really goes on in war." I think higher of us. I think they do.
So what about the "video game" mentality? It certainly exists. One problem with movies and TV is that they are a step or two ahead of what real show weaponry and technology can actually do. And of course it rarely shows "collateral damage". One of the most egregious examples is when people fire multiple rounds in closed environments (in a house for example) with no apparent effect on their hearing. Anyone who has actually fired a gun knows how incredibly loud they really are.
Of course, when I speak of "Americans" I generalize. Yes there are always exceptions.
Problems of the Past
I've read many times of guys who joined the military in the 50's or 60's who admitted that they had a "John Wayne" view of warfare. Then came Vietnam.
A quick perusal of the war movies of the time quickly demonstrates how such views came into being. While a few showed the horrors of war most, as I recall, really did not. Titles do not quickly come to mind, and I don't have time right now to research, but I think my statement stands up.
The Real Motive
Some who complain that our media does not show "enough" American body bags have good intentions. I'm not going to tar everyone.
There are some, however, with more sinister motives.
They want to demoralize us. They want us to call it quits in Iraq and pull the troops out. They are part of the Fifth Column that I have written about and we need to call them what they are.
These people claim that we are "hiding" our casualties. This commentary, by one Gail Vida Hamburg, linked to on antiwar.com is typical. The author claims that Italy properly honors its war dead while American "pays little attention to its war dead":
America, on the other hand, with 1,516 U.S. fatalities in Iraq as of March 16, 2005, pays little public attention to its war dead. Indeed, aside from the printed obituaries in metro sections of dailies, there is little acknowledgment by the government or substantial reporting in the media of the soldiers who perish in Iraq and the families they leave behind. We do not see or hear them. They die alone on the hot sands of Iraq and their survivors grieve privately on American soil.
The Pentagon does not allow photographs of coffins, something that bothers the author. She also condems the President for not attending the funerals of soldiers killed in action:
If he believes our military is fighting for noble ideals, if he admires, as he says, their valor and sacrifice, why must he absent himself from their funerals or prevent our witness of their final return? Why must our war dead come home like thieves in the night?
Besides the fact that she is utterly wrong in her assertion that we "pay little attention to (our) war dead", there is the question of motivation.
They couldn't care less about the sacrifices made by our military. Too many photos and reports of anti-war protestors have dispelled that notion.
No, they want to demoralize us and change public opinion. They want us to call it quits in Iraq and bring the troops home (or better yet, disband the whole military). As shown by the inaction during the mass murders committed by the communists in south-east Asia after their take-over in 1975, they also couldn't care less about the people involved. Whether the Iraqis live in freedom and prosperity or under the heal of a dictator of whatever stripe concerns them not at all.
So What Should We do?
Continue current policies.
The left wants to make a spectacle of solumn funeral services, as they do with arrivals of caskets from Iraq. They will not be allowed to succeed.
The reality is that innumerable weblogs and news reports (I see these on Fox and other msm outlets) honor our troops who have fought bravely and made the ultimate sacrifice. The idea that all this is somehow "hidden" is B.S. of the first degree.
The idea that the president should attend all funerals is also nonsense. Besides the fact that he does not have time, it would really accomplish nothing. No one in their right mind believes that President Bush (or any past president, for that matter) does not care. Of course, leftists who make these charges are not in their right mind, but we knew that already.
Posted by Tom at 10:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 7, 2005
"Non-Fake, but Inaccurate"
It turns out that the Schiavo "talking points" memo was not a fake, but was in fact drafted by a GOP staffer. However, it was not the "GOP talking points memo" that so many in the media told us it was.
In the words of Mickey Kaus, it is "Non-Fake, but Inaccurate"; this in Slate, not exactly a bastion of right-wing opinion:
WaPo's Mike Allen reports that the now-famous Schiavo "talking points" memo came from freshman GOP senator Mel Martinez's office. So that mystery is cleared up. The memo wasn't a fake. But Allen doesn't come off looking too good in this latest account. a) The memo was apparently not "distributed to Republican Senators by party leaders," as Allen's initial story, sent out through the Post news service to other papers, reported. It was--at least judging from today's account--handed to one Democratic senator, Tom Harkin, by one freshman Republican senator (who isn't in the party leadership); b) Allen doesn't explain why he told Howie Kurtz he "did not call them talking points or a Republican memo" when he had in fact done just that in the news service draft; c) Even the later, more "carefully worded" account Allen published in the Post itself was apparently wrong. Allen wroteThe whole thing was suspicious from the beginning. You had the fact that the memo wasn't on official letterhead and was rife with spelling errors. It was "unsourced". Yet many seemed to take it for granted that it was an official memo distributed to all Republican Senators. In fact, as the Washington Times has reported, not a single GOP Senator had seen the memo.In a memo distributed only to Republican senators, the Schiavo case was characterized as "a great political issue" ...
This is almost the reverse of what Allen now reports. We know the memo was distributed to at least one Democratic senator. We don't know whether it was distributed to any Republican senator other then the senator whose staffer wrote it (although it's hard to believe it wasn't given to at least some other GOP lawmakers). Allen's story left the now-unsupported impression that Republican senators were conspiratorially reading the memo amongst themselves; d) The whole "memo" fuss, as played up by WaPo and ABC's Linda Douglass, was wildly overdone even if the memo was a GOP leadership document--as if senators never consider what is a good political issue, as if that's a no-no in a democracy.
Did these people learn nothing from Rathergate? "Trust us" is not acceptable from major news organizations.
And, once again, it took bloggers to set the MSM straight. As Mick Wright puts it
As I said during Rathergate, what stories over the past thirty or forty years do we "know" to be true that aren't?I should note that we would know nothing more about this if not for the blogs. As we find in today’s WaPo story, the Senate investigation had turned up nothing. The media was stonewalling. Little came of individual calls to Senate offices and emails to reporters.
If not for a handful of blogs, a few rightwing pundits and some media watchdogs, the Washington Times probably would not have published their article, in turn putting the pressure back on the Senators and the reporters who first reported on this.
If not for the blogs, we would still be under the impression that GOP party leaders drafted that ridiculous memo and that all the Republican Senators received, read and approved of it.
Michelle Malkin has a great roundup on the issue, as does Powerline, here and here.
Posted by Tom at 9:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 21, 2004
More Media Bias
Today we have this revealing conversation between CNN's Howard Kurtz and Newsweek's Evan Thomas, first sent to me courtesy of a friend in NJ.
CNN's HOWARD KURTZ: "It is a tight race. Do you believe that most reporters want John Kerry to win?"
NEWSWEEK'S EVAN THOMAS: "Yeah, absolutely."
KURTZ: "Do you think they're deliberately tilting their coverage to help John Kerry and John Edwards?"
THOMAS: "Not really."
KURTZ:"Subconsciously tilting their coverage?"
THOMAS:"Maybe."
KURTZ:"Maybe."
THOMAS:"Maybe."
KURTZ:"Including at Newsweek?"
THOMAS:"Yeah."
KURTZ:"You've said on the program 'Inside Washington' that because of the portrayal of Kerry and Edwards as young and optimistic, that's worth maybe 15 points. That would suggest."
THOMAS:"Stupid thing to say. It was completely wrong. I do think that the mainstream press, I'm not talking about the blogs and Rush and all that, but the mainstream press favors Kerry. I don't thin k it's worth 15 points. That was just a stupid thing to say."
KURTZ:"Is it worth five?"
THOMAS:"Maybe, maybe."
(CNN's Reliable Sources, October 17, 2004)
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