The Command Post Op-Ed Page

Washington Post's anti-American propaganda

Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post offers “A Deportation Tragedy” which, among other things, promotes Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)'s Dream Act. That Act is an illegal alien amnesty plan that would also let illegal aliens pay for college at the reduced, in-state rate. Meanwhile, U.S. citizens who want to attend a college in another state would continue to pay the full rate.

Leaving aside its amnesty provisions, here's a chart summarizing the Dream Act:

some illegal aliens: discount
some U.S. citizens: full price

In other words, the Dream Act is explicitly anti-American: we should not be giving citizens of other countries a better deal than our own citizens. (Thankfully, a similar state law in Kansas is currently being challenged: “Suit challenges in-state tuition for illegal immigrants”. The Dream Act would be a national version of state laws in Kansas, California, and other states.)

What makes Meyerson's bleeding heart screed interesting is that articles like this are hardly unique. Newspapers large and small from one end of the country to the other have published what amount to advertisements for the Act, and all of them seem to follow the same formula.

Here are just a few examples:
“Best & brightest in bind” (NY Daily News)
Dozens rally to support proposed immigration law (Lincoln Neb. JournalStar)
“Behind Top Student's Heartbreak, Illegal Immigrants' Nightmare” (NY Times)
Group rallies in support of Dream Act (Brownsville Tex. Herald)
(other examples in my pro-illegal immigration puff piece category)

For an example of how formulaic these tales are, here's a quote from Meyerson:

next Tuesday Marie and her parents will move to a country she doesn't know.

A search for country “dream act” “hardly know” reveals 53 hits, and a similar search brings up 27.

To my knowledge, no newspaper has yet looked for the story behind the story and reported on the source(s) for all these barely-concealed advertisements. If you'd like to suggest that the WaPo does some real reporting rather than just propagandizing, (or if you'd like to suggest that they might want to start a private fund to pay for illegal aliens' college educations), please contact:
meyersonh at washpost.com
ombudsman at washpost.com

UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this, the student mentioned in Meyerson's ad got a reprieve. However, her parents are still due to be deported: “Teen Wins 1-Year Delay in Deportation”.

Newsweek's Malfeasance & Media Bias

[Robin Burk's assistance and additions to this article are appreciated]

Reader SAO writes in to ask why we aren't covering the Newsweek story, which incited the deaths of at least 15 people over a poorly-checked, irresponsible report that the magazine itself now admits is probably false. Me, I'm wondering why no-one on Newsweek's staff saw the potential problems with this report at the time, as Glenn Reynolds and others did. Immediately:

“The press is exquisitely sensitive to the risks posed by, say, racial insensitivity in reporting. It's too bad they're not so careful with regard to things that might get American troops killed.”

If they did see the problems, why didn't that stop the story, an act that would have carried zero consequences? And if they didn't see those obvious problems, we've got to ask - why not?

Veteran journalist Joe Gandelman has a roundup of reactions left and right, and specifically notes that making these kinds of allegations is part of the al-Qaeda training manual; this makes apologists' references to “similar allegations from other prisoners” rather rich, IMO. Greyhawk adds an excellent post on similar but debunked allegations in the past and the possible origins of Newsweek's story. In the aftermath, Jeff Jarvis has a fine point to make about Newsweek's mischievous CBS-style non-retraction - which is likely to get even more people killed now. Satirist Scott “Scrappleface” Ott is funny as always, and Glenn's post-“retraction” roundup offers a fine back and forth getting at the issues and responsibility. Responsibility that includes religious sects who see incitement to violence and murder as an acceptable response in such situations (not in Iraq, says Omar).

Media double standards and malfeasance? Ya think? But those double-standards matter. They go to the heart of the reason why nobody said 'wait a minute' at Newsweek, why the subsequent insincere “apology” bordered on malice - and why that liberal media continues to be surprised at surveys like this one from UConn:

Read the Rest…

Los Angeles Times: Covering for Commies

The Los Angeles Times has a tradition of lying about the true ideologies and affiliations of far-left groups and individuals. The latest example is particularly odious.

The Save Our State organization held a protest on Saturday at the monument in Baldwin Park CA discussed here (Note that the monument is on public property).

From SOS's report:

...Numerous times we were told that this land is Mexico and that they were taking it back. Numerous times racists epithets were hurled away. One person even hurled a full water bottle at our side and sent one of our activists to the hospital with bleeding in the brain. Unfortunately, she is now in the intensive care unit and we are all praying and hoping for the best.

What started as a rather peaceful and uneventful protest on our side ended in sheer hostility. The counter demonstrators were supposed to rally at the other end of the metrolink station, but proceeded to outflank the Baldwin Park Police Department and traveled through a local neighborhood so that they could formally confront us at the intersection allocated to us for our protest.

In waves they came. Soon outnumbered 500-50 in a community that is 85% Hispanic, crowd control soon became an issue. Rants, chants and Mexican flags filled the air. Their spit and a dragged and kicked American flag covered the ground. It is imperative to note that that was the only American flag displayed by our opponents...

Several links about this event, including pictures and video, are here, here, here, and here. You'll note the signs from the Los Angeles branch of ANSWER, the San Gabriel Valley Neighbors for Peace and Justice, and the International Socialist Organization. ANSWER's announcement of the protest is here and here.

In case you think SOS's report might be overstated, here's a report from one of the protesters:

How did the counter-demo go? We vastly out numbered them and succeeded in driving them away. We won and won big.

After an opening demo with the Aztec Dancers and the City Council, we marched to near where SOS was. The police had barricaded the areas between us. After an hour or so, we went down side streets and confronted SOS directly. They were on one corner, maybe fifteen left, down from a maximum of about fifty. We were on the other three corners, several hundred strong. with 40 police in between. We moved into the intersection. I wasn't sure what the cops would do, so I scanned the side streets for approaching phalanxes of police. But none appeared. We began chanting 'we won't leave until they leave.' And then, to great cheers, the police ordered SOS to leave.

We won! They won't be back to Baldwin Park. I expect this type of confrontation will escalate dramatically in size during the coming summer. People get ready. ( polizeros.com/2005/05/15.html#a5412 )

How did the Los Angeles Times cover this? Read "Protest Over Art Forces Police to Draw the Line" to see their take. The report from David Pierson and Patricia Ward Biederman mentions the confrontation, but only devotes one sentence to a 66 year old woman getting hit in the forehead with a full bottle of water. Further, if you hadn't seen the pictures, videos, and read the other reports you might think it was just one big party for peace and justice:

...Opponents of Save Our State consisted mainly of young adults who said they sent e-mails to Latino and immigrant worker advocacy groups. Many were politically active teenagers and college students who skateboarded to the scene...

David Pierson and Patricia Ward Biederman even describe ANSWER LA as an "antiwar and anti-racism group" without any quotes or hedging. Here's a description of International ANSWER, ANSWER LA's parent group:

International A.N.S.W.E.R. (often, simply ANSWER) is a front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party (WWP), which uses the anti-war movement as the vehicle by which it promotes Communist ideals and condemns American society, American foreign policy, and capitalism...

Read what lefties David Corn and Marc Cooper have to say about International ANSWER.

The L.A. Times report appears to be the source for an AP report ("Baldwin Park public artwork angers group opposed to illegal immigration") that's appeared in several dozen newspapers since the incident, some even today. All those reports incorrectly state that no one was injured.

There's more on the L.A. Times' report and on the groups involved here.

Please contact readers.rep *at* latimes.com and feedback *at* ap.org with your thoughts on their coverage.

UPDATE: The LAT published a blurb from "a Times Staff Writer" stating that the victim had been observed overnight in an ICU. It also says that police are investigating the attack as an assault with a deadly weapon.

Also, the second paragraph of the main LAT article says that the protest was announced on the John and Ken Show (KFI 640AM Los Angeles). On their show, John and Ken say that that's false. The protest and the monument were discussed on two other KFI shows, but not theirs. They contacted one of the reporters and were told that a correction would be printed. Apparently the reporter was told that by one of the SOS protesters and didn't confirm it.

5/23/05 UPDATE: This page has more photos and video. "Antiwar and anti-racism group" indeed.

Annoy The Guardian - Vote for Harry's Place!

The PRO-liberation left-wing bloggers at Harry's Place are in the running for The Guardian's political commentary blog awards. Here's where you can vote, and return the favour to The Guardian for Operation Clark County during the 2004 U.S. elections.

UAS LTC Slams Mainstream Media

From the World Tribune :

All right, I've had enough. I am tired of reading distorted and grossly exaggerated stories from major news organizations about the “failures” in the war in Iraq. “The most trusted name in news” and a long list of others continue to misrepresent the scale of events in Iraq. Print and video journalists are covering only a fraction of the events in Iraq and, more often than not, the events they cover are only negative.

The inaccurate picture they paint has distorted the world view of the daily realities in Iraq. The result is a further erosion of international support for the United States' efforts there, and a strengthening of the insurgents' resolve and recruiting efforts while weakening our own. Through their incomplete, uninformed and unbalanced reporting, many members of the media covering the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy.

Read the whole thing.

Citizens' Media in 2005: A Year to Dream Big

How about a little kerosene for the fire? Consider this post as a counterpoint to A.L's On Blogs and Media. Joe's Why 2004 Was the Year of the Blog also covered this subject on Dec. 31st. A.L's article and the ensuing discussion might be considered normative: 'What should be'. Here I'm putting on my Venture Capital Analyst and Futurist hats to go more in-depth and take a descriptive stance: 'What is and might be'.

• The Power Law of Individuation and “The Long Tail”
• The War of Media Attrition
• Probing the Lines: Where Are the Weak Spots?

So Much For Supporting Our Troops

Liberals' Veneer of Patriotism Collapses Again

You all know the story. A Marine was in Fallujah in a room with dead and wounded terrorists. He shot one to death. It looks like—“looks like”—the terrorist was unarmed. And the liberal establishment media response? “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” The coverage is almost universally unfavorable, as was the premature airing of the video.

Val Prieto has a great collection of links you can click, if you want to see the blogdom response. He linked to blogs of soldiers and veterans, which was a good idea. You know. Blackfive, Sgt. Hook, Baldilocks, and so on.

Now, here is my simple question: what ever happened to “WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!”?

Hmm…here we have a grunt in the field. Not Donald Rumsfeld. Not Paul Wolfowitz. Not George Bush. And he made a split-second decision to kill an enemy combatant, in an environment where terrorists have been pretending to be dead so they could ambush and kill coalition soldiers. Isn't he…part of our “TROOPS”?

No, I guess not. I guess he's a BABY-KILLER! Come on, say it, liberals! You know you want to! BABY-KILLER! I mean, granted, the guy he killed was a dirty old terrorist, but “DIRTY-OLD-TERRORIST-KILLER” just doesn't roll off the tongue, especially after a few dozen puffs of the herb.

People, the left does not support our troops. They don't really see the troops as helpless, uneducated dupes who can't see through George Bush's magical screen of smoke and mirrors. They know perfectly well that soldiers and sailors are overwhelmingly conservative, and the smarter leftists also know that without military votes, George Bush would never have been elected President. That's why Bill Clinton and Al Gore worked so hard to prevent military personnel from voting and from having their cast votes counted.

I have to tell you—and I am truly sorry I didn't write about this earlier, because I wanted to, and I have no excuse—I am floored by the selflessness and courage of our troops in Fallujah and Mosul. I'm always awed by the courage of our soldiers at war, but in my mind, these troops are even more impressive. We are taking dozens of casualties, and we expected that beforehand, and by all accounts, our fighting men and women were not just willing but eager to get in there and get started.

God bless every one of them. Quite simply, they are better people than I am.

How do you thank people with hearts like that? The thought of it actually brings tears to my eyes. How do you thank someone who accepts low pay and unbearable working conditions in exchange for marching into hell's very mouth?

The very idea that spoiled liberal brats are condemning this brave soldier before they know the facts—it makes me wish we could flog them.

In the video of the incident, it's clear the Marine feared for his life. He shouted that the terrorist was faking death. To any sane, reasonable person, that is prima facie evidence that the shooting was justified. If you love our troops so much, why won't you let this man make his case before you air the video and condemn him? You'd do that for the Fedayeen Saddam, you America-hating morons. Implicitly, you're doing it for the dead terrorist in this story. Why can't you do that for for a man who is risking his life so you can have the right to sit here on your fat, comfortable asses and criticize him?

And what exactly is the brain deformity that caused NBC reporter Kevin Sites to air this video in the first place? He was in the room when it happened, depending on the accused Marine to keep him alive. Is this liberal gratitude? If you hired a brain trust and had them sit down for a month with nothing else to do, could they imagine a more egregious example of biting the hand that feeds you?

In World War Two, to name but one example, journalists witnessed military errors and misdeeds all the time. But they understood that war is not peacetime, and that a certain degree of wartime self-censorship was necessary, morally correct, and patriotic. Our modern liberal press has no such understanding. They sniff that journalists are supposed to be “above” patriotism. And so we end up with G.I.'s losing their lives because our treacherous press insists on airing items like the shooting video and the Abu Ghraib photos.

Don't perpetuate the lie that news has to be reported quickly. If that's true, why did Dan Rather wait until fall of an election year to unveil his bogus anti-Bush documents? That story was in the work for months. There was no reason to air the Fallujah video before the facts were known. In truth, there was no reason to air it at all. NBC could have reported the story using objective speech instead of an inflammatory video our enemies will use as a recruiting tool.

Remember how furious MSM flunkeys were back in 2001, when American flags started appearing on the lapels of newsreaders and analysts? That should have told us something. That should have told us these people had the moral fiber of babies with wet diapers.

If there is a silver lining to this story, which will needlessly subject our country and our troops to more violence, it is that it will serve to expose and irreversibly confirm the left's hatred of our men and women in uniform.

Blog it all you can. We whipped Dan Rather's ass, and we'll whip NBC's, too.

The PC Media on the Battlefield

This OpEd was written by Jay Bagley and originally appeared here. It is reprinted with permission of the author.

Recent military battles have been party to unprecedented media coverage. I believe that while this media coverage has been great for television ratings, media has in fact hindered the military operations that it has been covering.

William Tecumseh Sherman once said “War is hell” and quite often the acts of man fighting in wars are hellish. That hellish side of war is at times a necessary evil.

Recently an embedded pool reporter witnessed a Marine in Fallujah, Iraq shoot an apparently unarmed and wounded terrorist without cause.

Why would someone commit such an apparent atrocity without reason, other than finding pleasure in killing the enemy? I will give one possible explanation.

There were recent reports of insurgents’ booby-trapping corpses of the fallen. It is possible that the Marine, most likely was aware of this new tactic, was acting in self defense against the possibility of the wounded terrorist detonating some type of explosive device. This would go a long way to explain the Marine shouting “He’s faking he’s dead!” before shooting him.

I believe that what the media, whether intentionally or not, has portrayed is a callous soldier murdering an unarmed enemy purely for the joy of the kill. They reported that the previous day the same Marine was shot in the face by the very terrorists he encountered a day later.

Why is this story even being told?

The U.S. military has always allowed journalists to go to the front lines of battle to cover the bravery and valor of our fighting men. Yet, recently the media has become increasingly biased in their reporting of the battlefield, foregoing the stories of bravery for stories of barbary.

Where are the stories of the heroic acts that these men are performing on a daily basis? Where are the heart-warming stories of the good that these men are doing? Those stories don’t get reporters noticed, they don’t get ratings. The media plays to an American society that has become so overly sensitive to being politically and morally correct that they are beginning to hinder the operations and safety of the very troops they are reporting on.

Maybe that Marine did just shoot him for the hell of it, but by creating such a ruckus over it, he has endangered the lives of others serving our country. What happens when the next Marine or Soldier comes across a booby-trapped body of a terrorist and hesitates for a split second because he doesn’t want to go through the bureaucracy of justifying his actions, and in that split second the booby trap goes off killing him and others around him. What will the reporter report then?

I believe that reports like this are causing the military to fight a politically correct war, a war that puts the lives of our young men and women at risk from being overly cautious.

The media, in my opinion, is doing a great disservice to our servicemen and women, by constantly reporting on the atrocities of war, and not on how they are attempting to better the lives of the people they are fighting for both home and abroad.

These men and women aren’t savages; they are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fighting to survive in a savage environment. The savages are the media exploiting the environment in search of nothing more than to make a name for themselves as the one who broke the big story.

——

Jay Bagley writes at Bagley Familiar.

In Death, no dignity

From their profile page of Yasser Arafat:

Born in Gaza in 1929 to a relatively well-to-do merchant family, he was given the name Muhammad, which has since been almost completely eclipsed by the nickname Yasir.

He was born in Cairo, not Gaza. Keep an eye out for Gaza and Jerusalem claims over the coming days.

Just in case you didn't realize that Al-Jazeerra was propaganda first, news second.

Media Watch: Sept. 30/04

Sigh. The mainstream media doesn't appear to be learning much.

• Maybe that should be C-BS? They're caught, again, producing a “news” segment involving bogus documents, little to no fact-chacking, and the deliberate misrepresentation of an activist's affiliations. CBS has now admitted as much re: the activist. This cartoon about sums up the issue.

• INDC has a couple of interviews with CBS personnel about the latest scandal.

• The Justice Department has charged that a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office - potentially endangering the lives of federal agents. Ace of Spades also links to some background re: this reporter. Note that the Times denies the charges. We'll see.

• There seems to be one expert on the other side in the Rathergate expert scorecard now. Joseph M. Newcomer, one of the pioneers of electric typesetting, has what's generally considered to be the definitive analysis but David E. Hailey, Jr., Ph.D says no, this can be produced on a typewriter. AllahPundit has more re: the latter. I'd like to see Hailey and Newcomer go head to head, myself… but I suspect he'll hear from the blogosphere's experts first.

Read The Rest…

CBS' Non-Apology & Rathergate Update

Allahpundit has an update for you. As for Rather, he still continues to offer evasions about the documents' authenticity, confident in his ability to get away with it while many major media outlets still speak of documents that are merely 'controversial,' rather than the definitive forgeries they so clearly are.

Memo to bloggers and readers: keep the pressure on. I think a strong campaign to your local media is also called for, to get the word out. You're bloggers, which makes you interesting to your local press right now. Write them and volunteer to put the background materials together - the links in this very post will give you all you need. See also this outstanding example by Winds community member AMac, as he guest-blogs a magisterial summation of the evidence and the Baltimore Sun's coverage.

Meanwhile, guess where this quote comes from:

“Several journalism analysts said CBS News producer Mary Mapes' phone call to Kerry senior advisor Joe Lockhart amounts to at least a potential conflict of interest - giving the appearance that the network had assisted a candidate in the presidential race.”

Read The Rest…

PajamaBloggers.com

The disparaging reference to bloggers as people in pajamas has spurred me into actionover at Winds of Change.NET. I've just finished registering the domain Pajamabloggers.com - and will cheerfully work with the person who has the best proposal for how they want to use it.

FYI, I have also reserved cbsmemogate.com, and pajamasrevenge.com. I'm thinking that we need a site to aggregate the information coming in pro and con, which is currently quite fragmented. I have some ideas about that, but I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts and proposals as well (use Winds' comments or email “joe” here @windsofchange.net).

Issues. Please. The 60s are dead - and so are the 80s

Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Kesher Talk's 2003 9/11 Roundup:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We cannot escape history. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

We are beginning to think anew, and act anew, but it is not enough. I have commented before here on Winds of Change.NET re: the uselessness and foolishness of the current Vietnam debate in America's campaign, and find Ara Rubyan's similarly frustrated voice on the other side of the spectrum. Michael Totten, in the center, is of the same mind.

CBS' Ra^thergate shows that step 1 of the rethink needs to happen in America's media, which covered itself in shame after shame last week. Maybe if they had more people in pyjamas instead of the “professional” twits they currently employ, we'd be hearing more about real issues as Iran prepares to go nuclear and a 3 Conjectures future ticks nearer and nearer. Among other minor problems that obviously weigh less heavily than rehashes of a 30 year old war.

But the winds and waves of change will not stop with the media. For the Class 5 storm that began on Sept. 11 will wash away the certitudes of both parties before it has run its full course.

The Democratic Party's certitudes stem from the 1960s. Like an interstellar hitch-hiker facing the ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, they have thrown a towel over their heads; if they can't see the threat, perhaps it will believe that it can't see them, either. They sit now in spiteful denial, shouting the same tired slogans, oblivious to their growing irrelevance. As Totten so memorably put it:

“Lefty Boomers seriously need to stop and ask themselves if they want to be today's Bob Dole.”

Ouch. Owwwwch! Now, here's the second half of the joke. The 1980s are dead too - and the news hasn't even reached the GOP's consciousness yet. But it will:

“If the Sixties are dead, then surely the Eighties are not far behind in the funerary procession. The Reagan years ensconced in the American psyche the notion that we can be strong on defense while frolicking on the beach at home. In Reagan’s time, this was a reasonable expectation with the Cold War as a backdrop. As a society, we were partially mobilized to fight the Soviets; our military was largely transparent. It was the era of parity with our enemy, brought about by mutual nuclear blackmail—-Pax Nuclea. And so the 1980s supposition that America can be militarized without being mobilized has added to our false sense of security in dealing with today’s dark threats.”

I'll leave the final summation to “Marcus Tacitus” of Between Hope and Fear, an exceptionally promising new blogger:

“This war, to date, is Sitzkrieg. The real battle has yet to be joined. Both parties of our political system equally tow the line that we can go on living exactly as we are accustomed to. And yet the briefest study of past wars always reveals huge sociopolitical and cultural transformations that equally overtake opposing sides regardless of who the victor and vanquished are. We have yet to admit that we are on the threshold to an unknown destiny. We live as though it were the 20th Century, because we still can, not because it is.”

CBS Documentary

“OutFoxed” has gotten a lot of coverage. Is it time for a CBS documentary? Here's a possible poster:

Finally, the right term

KUDOS TO THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR for using the right term when defining ETA, in an unusually balanced article today, considering the precedents in the foreign media:

Compared with the ruinous attacks that struck Spain in March, the bombings over the past 14 days in the northern provinces might be expected to attract little notice: Seven weak explosives, wrapped in plastic bags, and weighing less than 300 grams, caused only slight injuries and minor property damage.

But in Spain, a country that has suffered domestic terrorism for the past 30 years, the explosions were an unnerving reminder that ETA, the Basque terrorist group, was still a threat.

(emphasis mine)

I have complained in the past that the foreign media still uses the stupidly incorrect “separatist group” as the label for a group guilty of more than 800 murders. And there hasn't been a Franco to resist against for almost 30 years now.

(Crossposted at Barcepundit)

Perfectly timed...!

While Democratic delegates were conventioning in Boston, video store owners across the country were receiving promotional materials from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment regarding a documentary titled The Hunting of the President, featuring footage of the Clintons, Susan McDougal, Jerry Falwell, James Carville, Robert Bennett, and others. (More information about this film is posted at IMDB.)

Directed by Harry Thomason, a friend of the Clintons and known for his work on television's Designing Women, and based on a best-selling book, this 90-minute unrated documentary examines “a coordinated effort to discredit [Clinton's] presidency,” and is targeted at women aged 35-54, adults aged 55+, and registered Democrats.

One of the key marketing points touted in the promotional material is that the release — slated for September 28 — is “perfectly timed to coincide with the November presidential elections.” A separate bullet point notes that the DVD ought to appeal to the nation's 85.4 million registered Democrats.

Whenever people wax lyrical about campaign finance reform, they always talk about curtailing the undue influence of “big money” vis a vis “the individual voter.” Practically speaking, the actual laws do little to thwart the efforts of sharp thinkers (on both sides of the aisle) to get around such laws, while managing to do a fairly good job of keeping any actual local grass roots efforts in check.

Not that I expect this documentary (a word that means little in a post-Bowling-for-Columbine world) will do any sort of huge business, but coming on the heels of Michael Riefenstahl-Moore's Farenheit 9/11 fantasy, it does seem a bit… peculiarly timed.

But I must be mistaken. Only Republicans are capable of timing, right?

(Cross posted here.)

Are Bloggers At Conventions Deluding Themselves?

Are bloggers at conventions deluding themselves into thinking they're “real” journalists because they'll be out in the fray, reporting from the field?

Are they in fact “the sizzle, not the steak” and nothing but glorified “Internet gossips,” journalistic wannabes who use dirty language, name call, don't care about accuracy and in some cases even take money to express certain opinions?

To hear Alex S. Jones explain the bloggers' unique role in the two upcoming conventions that is indeed the case. Jones is director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. And he seemingly doesn't think much of bloggers.

But before we get to his truly remarkable and strangely disdainful commentary in the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed section — revealingly titled “Bloggers Are the Sizzle, Not the Steak
Convention seats do not turn Internet gossips into journalists” — here's a view of what is really at the heart of his criticisms:

In every profession there is a certain amount of dues paying. As someone who worked in the news media as a freelance, a fulltime contributor overseas, and on the staffs of two chain-owned newspapers, I can attest that there are certain hoops the journalistic establishment expects those who will be blessed with a forum to comment must jump through.

I always tell people about when, a few years after I left journalism school, I was in Spain writing for the Chicago Daily News, the Christian Science Monitor and other publications. A major news magazine hired me to help them out on legwork and sidebars on the last few months of the Franco regime. By then I had written for some two years in India and five months in Spain. One of the magazine's big correspondents looked at me and said: “That's a good story you wrote. But you can't cover this if you haven't covered City Hall.”

I almost said “What do you mean I can't cover this? I AM COVERING IT NOW..” (Today I would say it). But he was resentful that I hadn't gone through “the system” yet. That's what Jones is basically suggesting about bloggers at conventions:

Bloggers will be covering the conventions WITHOUT jumping through the hoops. Without the editors (for better or for worse). Without being under the corporate pecking order which may entail advancing through layers of political gamesmanship. Without having gone through the organizational advancement required to be given a prominent forum to comment on big issues. And with freedom — and an instant audience not provided for by a big corporation.

So there's lots of RESENTMENT on the part of some because bloggers (perceived as nobodies without journalistic status) are doing it, not through the normal channels…and they will HAVE AN AUDIENCE. Writes Jones:

The Democrats and the Republicans are inviting a limited number of bloggers — those witty, candid, irreverent, passionate, shrewd and outrageous Internet chroniclers — to their 2004 conventions. It's a gesture of respect for the growing influence of the blogosphere, and if ever there were events ideally suited to bloggers, the heavily scripted and tensionless conventions top the list.

But make no mistake, this moment of blogging legitimization — and temporary press credentials — doesn't turn bloggers into journalists.

Political conventions have become festivals of faux harmony and candidate image-building, which makes them marvelous targets for blogging's candor, intelligence and righteous wrath.

However, bloggers, with few exceptions, don't add reporting to the personal views they post online, and they see journalism as bound by norms and standards that they reject. That encourages these common attributes of the blogosphere: vulgarity, scorching insults, bitter denunciations, one-sided arguments, erroneous assertions and the array of qualities that might be expected from a blustering know-it-all in a bar.

He notes that the “mainstream media” has cut back on its coverage and that there could actually be a big audience for blog provided convention news, then adds:

Presumably many Americans, especially young ones, will look for something with more spice and feistiness, which means they may well be looking at blogs and no doubt adding their own kibitzing via the medium's famed interactivity. This can be fun, and it can also be important. It was political bloggers and their fans who insulted and harassed and eventually embarrassed the major media into paying attention to the comments suggesting racism that Mississippi's Sen. Trent Lott made at South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. Media coverage forced Lott's resignation as Republican leader in the Senate, but it was bloggers who badgered the media until they did their job.

Journalists increasingly read blogs to pick up tips. Blogs have become a network of capillaries that feed the nation's veins of information. For that reason, blogging's freewheeling, unfettered style makes it a juicy target for manipulation.

In these early days, blogging still has the charm of guileless transparency, which in the blogosphere means that everyone — no matter how cranky or hysterical — is presumed to be speaking his or her mind with sincerity. It is this air of conviction that makes bloggers such potent advocates.

However, if history is any indicator, such earnestness will attract those who would exploit it, and they include some canny, inventive people. There is already talk of bloggers who would consider publishing items for cash and commercial blogs that tout products.

Oh really??? Where has THAT been a widespread practice? How many bloggers are taking money from parties or candidates for tailor-made posts? Is there an isolated case? Is this a practice that is widespread or even moderately-spread? Baloney.

That statement suggests Jones basically does not like to see bloggers getting the status of journalists who had to jump through the hoops of journalism schools, go through the “dues paying” at the tiny newspapers and magazines, and work (or brown nose) their way up the corporate ladder to get a shot at covering the conventions — and expressing opinions, whether they be of the right or the left.

Indeed, he increases his criticism of bloggers as his piece progresses:

Blogging is especially amenable to introducing negative information into the news stream and for circulating rumors as fact. Blogging's fact-checking apparatus is just the built-in truth squad of those who read the blog and howl loudly if they wish to dispute some assertion. It is, in a sense, a place where everyone has his own truth.
With the status conferred by convention credentials, blogging has arrived as an engaging, important new player in the information carnival. But should blogging displace traditional reporting and journalism, as some in the blogosphere predict it will, then the steak will have been swapped for the sizzle. It's better to have both.

That's a cop-out ending that is supposed to ease the bite of previous assertions. But it certainly appears as if Jones is annoyed that bloggers are being given the status of “mainstream” journalists at the convention — and that he wants to make sure that a distinction is clearly maintained.

In one sense he's right: the rules of journalistic confirmation, printing of rumors, etc. don't apply to and are basically not followed by some bloggers. But the diversity of perspective, the infusion of non-group-think-media reporting (there's LESS DANGER of Pack Blogging at the convention than Pack Journalism), and writers who have not been whipped into shape by corporate organizations (of the left and right) will be a welcome development.

The same as degree-holding, corporate journalists? No. Deserving of the same attentive reading? Most assuredly YES.

FOOTNOTE: I'm not writing this because I'm covering the conventions. I won't (I'll be doing family shows in Wyoming during the Democratic convention and probably be in Connecticut during the Republican one).

Bias in Boston Globe

Media Research Center has a great bias alert today regarding the coverage of the Sandy Berger investigation, particularly regarding the shift of coverage from what Berger did and what the investigation reveals to the timing of the leak.

This article in this morning's Boston Globe caught my eye:

The article is subtitled “Kerry tries to deflect Republican attacks” where it might just as easily subtitled “Republicans try to deflect Kerry attacks” or “Republicans and Democrats trade attacks.”

The author consistantly spins the language of the article to imply that Kerry and his advisors are innocents being baraged by Republican attacks, while a careful reader might pick up on the fact that many of the attacks by Republicans are responses to attacks on the President by Kerry or Kerry advisors and surrogates.

The article begins by repeating a Kerry claim that the White House leaked the Berger investigation. The author doesn't mention until the tenth paragraph that Kerry has offered no proof at all for his allegation, apart from the fact that several high-level Repubicans had lunch together beforehand. I've heard several high-level Democrats will meet next week in Boston. Will the author consider that meeting “proof” that every attack by every person who attends the DNC is part of a coordinated effort conceived by Kerry, for which Kerry is responsible?

It continues: “President Bush, meanwhile, used the White House bully pulpit yesterday to elevate the Berger controversy to 'a very serious matter,' prompting Democratic outcry that the president was hyping an ongoing criminal inquiry into Berger's actions to deflect attention from an independent commission's report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which is expected to be released today.”

Without having the context, you might think the President went out of his way to make a statement about the investigation, and that this statement was part of some action on the part of Bush playing up this scandal. In fact, Bush did not bring this topic up — it was the first question asked by a reporter at an unrelated, routine press availablity with a foreign leader:

“Q Thank you, Mr. President. President Clinton suggested that perhaps politics was behind the disclosure of the Sandy Berger investigation. Do you have anything to say about that? And, also, when did you learn about this probe?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I'm not going to comment on this matter. This is a serious matter, and it will be fully investigated by the Justice Department.

Q When did you learn, sir, if I may?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I'm not going to comment on it. It's a very serious matter. It will be fully investigated by the Justice Department.”

The author might easily have rewritten the paragraph to reflect that Democrats has already begun making allegations of a political timing to the leak, and Bush, when asked about the Democrat attacks, said “This is a serious matter, and it will be fully investigated…” rather than implying that attacks began with Republicans and Democrats were merely answering these attacks. The author never mentions that Bush didn't initiate the topic. It hardly seems like use of the “bully pulpit” to promote a story.

The article goes on to recap and quote Kerry campaign advisors attacking Republicans for allegedly attacking Kerry campaign advisors. For example, there is a laughable paragraph from Joe Wilson:

“'The Republicans are trying to tar me as a surrogate to John Kerry, just like they're trying to tar Sandy Berger, because they can't beat Kerry on the issues,' said former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who is involved in a dispute with the Senate Intelligence Committee about his investigation of Iraq's prewar nuclear weapons program. 'Right now, I'm a member of Kerry's foreign policy advisory group, but I'm spending most of my time fighting against the Bush camp.'”

No mention is made of the unanimous, bi-partisan findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, or the Bulter Report, both of which would put Wilson's allegations in their proper light. If Wilson was “tarred”, it was a bi-partisan, even international, effort.

The author later states: “Another chief target is a close Kerry friend and campaign surrogate, former senator Max Cleland, who drew Republican attacks Monday. Cleland said President Bush had 'flat out lied' about why he the United States went to war in Iraq and argued that Bush chose to topple Hussein 'because he concluded his daddy was a failed president' for not ousting Hussein in the first Gulf War.”

The author doesn't even bother to mention what attacks the White House or Republicans allegedly made on Cleland, even though he details Cleland's allegations. Do these attacks even exist? How can the reader weigh those attacks against Cleland's attacks without knowing what they are? Despite the wording of the intro sentence, it's fairly clear that whatever “attacks” on Cleland are being made are in response to Cleland calling Bush a liar, something one might reasonable be expected to respond to. The paragraph would more properly state that Republicans are responding to Cleland's attacks, and if it were trying to be fair, restate or quote Cleland's attacks and the Republican counterattack.

The author repeats his Republicans-are-the-agressors theme in the next paragraph:

“The Bush campaign shifted into full attack mode against Whoopi Goldberg, Chevy Chase, and other performers after a Kerry fund-raiser this month at which Bush was attacked as a 'thug' and Goldberg made a sexual pun about the president. Republicans have been pressing cable talk-show hosts, newspaper columnists, and other members of the media to hold Kerry accountable for the words and actions of surrogates.”

Really? It's deeply shocking that the White House might respond when the President is called a killer or a liar? The author might have stated that Kerry supporters made a number of crude, vicious, and inflammatory statements, and that the Republicans pressed the media to hold Kerry responsible for statements made by his supporters at a fundraiser in his honor. Readers could judge for themselves whether Kerry ought to be held accountable for the language used if he choses not to condemn them. Alas, it would not have perpetuated the author's attempt to prove that an Kerry is under an unprovoked assault, but it would have had the virtue of being the truth.

News Styling of the Fourth Estate - now with 75% fewer facts!

Events of the last few days are a prime example of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story. And they also serve up some great examples of pushing a thinly desguised agenda behind the fig leaf of 'news coverage'.

Yeah, a lot of folks recognize this as the bleached bones of a horse that died quite some time ago - but it's good to check in every now and again to do a progress check. And the report would have to be that a few news organizations out there are even paying scant attention to the pretext of objectivity in their 'hard news' pieces by labelling them as 'news analysis'.

Coverage of the President's remarks at Oak Ridge, and Senator Kerry's remarks on the same day, are a perfect case in point.

Out of four major news outlets, CNN, MSNBC, The NY Times, and The Washington Post, none of them do little with the news except to piecemeal it for maximum juxtaposition value. Of the four, only one gives a link to the full text of the President's remarks (pause)

The full text of the President's remarks at Oak Ridge

(play)One gives the opportunity for you to pay them so you can watch the video of the speech (CNN), the other two just skip it entirely. None of them extract a listing of the instances the President uses to support his statements.

All four go out of their way to present the remarks as defensive of 'damage' - done either to the White House, or the CIA. All four float disembodied claims from both Bush and Kerry, virtually side by side, lending equal credence to both - despite the citation of the President to numerous specifics as a prelude to his conclusions.

A couple of the organizations throw in additional material from experts that question the free standing quotations picked from the President's speech. There is no such examination provided of Senator Kerry's remarks.

A more detailed look at this 'coverage' can be found here, and a closer examination of Senator Kerry's statements on the issue of nuclear security may be found here. Yes, both articles draw conclusions - but they also provide you with some material to indicate where those conclusions come from.

Michael Moore: you're no Ray Bradbury

Plus: the many lies of Fahrenheit 911.

Just a few of the Fahrenheit 911 big lies - big lies #1, #2, and #3 - are provided here.

And I even saw poor old Ray Bradbury on TV the other night complaining that low-life Michael Moore didn't even get Bradbury's permission before he ripped-off the title of Bradbury's classic book, Fahrenheit 451.

Indeed, Moore's movie cruelly mocks Bradbury's classic work. Bradbury's novel warned of a future world where censorship (book burning) is common-place. Moore uses the prestige of this classic title to spread lies - to mock freedom of speech itself - for his stark, narrow partisan propoganda. Disgusting.

I hope Ray Bradbury sues the obese jerk.

Even Richard Cohen - no mouthpiece for the right - says Moore's movie is rubbish:

- - - - - - -

Moore's depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories. But nothing is said about multiple U.N. resolutions violated by Iraq or the depredations of Saddam Hussein. In fact, prewar Iraq is depicted as some sort of Arab folk festival — lots of happy, smiling, indigenous people. Was there no footage of a Kurdish village that had been gassed? This is obscenity by omission.

- - - - - - -

Skip the movie. Read the book. Or this one (I like their new term for Moore's genre: “crockumentary”).

This is a duplicate of the original post on the nikita demosthenes website.

Don't Gift Christopher Hitchens Any Michael Moore DVDs

Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens has reviewed Michael Moore's new anti-Bush film Farenheight 911 in Slate and here's part of what he says:

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.

Hey! It sounds like he's writing about my blog!

He then launches into a painstaking examination of the film, it's assumptions and contradictions.

Whether you're a Moore fan or foe or just someone who feels they must see the movie before they can genuinely defend or denounce it, you need to read this whole piece. From the standpoint of writing, it's brilliant (and whether you like Moore or not, it's FUN to read). Here's his final point:

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

Those last two lines: HEY! He IS talking about my blog!

UPDATE: Michael Moore is being Michael Moored via a new book, as Greg Piper notes here.

Is Media Coverage Too Biased or Too Narrow

So what's the real story about the coverage of what's going on Iraq? We see the scary stories, the burned out cars, the bodies, etc. but is it telling the whole story? And if you raise that question does it mean you're media-bashing and trying to purge negative news from newspapers and TV screens?

These issues are being raised thoughtfully on several fronts today. Most notably, by Greg Piper and by Fringe, both of whom use an article by Jay Rosen as a takeoff point. At issue is too biased versus what Rosen calls too “narrow” reporting.

And there is an issue to be addressed here: as someone who worked for the news media and in the news media for many years, many folks would be amazed how on major stories where there is indeed thoughtful planning regarding news mix, story selection, and staffing there may be a glitch: the story may become too compartmentalized, with too many parochial departments involved in too many aspects with poor coordination despite bigwig marching orders.

There is also the unmentionable issue of office politics — where one editor may want to get a piece of a story with one of “their” reporters and good-faith cooperation with another department or reporter suffers (careers are made by page one stories).

It's also a fact of life that a positive story usually gets placed inside the paper (or at the end of a broadcast), or is done as a feature or, if it can really hold up, saved as canned product for a “slower” day. The stated reason for this is the size of the news hole (or amount of broadcast time sans commercials).

In other words, in many cases inept, incomplete, or seemingly biased coverage isn't a matter of planning it that way. Like something we won't spell out here, it happens.

The New York Times Defines Torture

Excerpt from paragraph 14 of a June 8th New York Times article (registration required) describing Pentagon memos [from 2002] prepared as part of a review of interrogation techniques approved for use on a Saudi detainee, Mohamed al-Kahtani, who was believed to be the planned 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 terror plot:

Mr. Rumsfeld suspended the harsher techniques, including serving the detainee cold, prepackaged food instead of hot rations and shaving off his facial hair, on Jan. 12, pending the outcome of the working group's review.

I just shaved and made myself some cold, prepackaged food for dinner. Guess I'm into self-torture.

Military Blindness in the Media - And Beyond

Writing in Reason Online, Chris Bray pens an excellent article full of telling bon mots. From the journalist who is awed by the fact that Army Rangers carry machine guns and grenade launchers, to the Wall St. Journal colleague who asked if the Marines fought in WW2, Bray's article is worthy for its anecdotes alone. But he also has a serious point, and it's one worth paying close attention to:

bq.. “Schneider’s piece is symptomatic of news media that often don’t have the foggiest idea how the military works, and don't really appear to care…. “To many young reporters these days,” said longtime journalist James Perry in a 1997 lecture at Washington College, “wars and soldiers and serving your country are vague concepts….

Reporters who cover the military without understanding it don’t just muff a few basic facts about what kind of soldier carries what kind of gun, or which service does what. They also fail to apply the right skepticism in the right places, or even the right credulity in the right places, and so end up swinging in a wild arc between breathless adulation and naive condemnation. They surrender many of the necessary tools for questioning the authority of the armed forces, and render nearly useless the check and the balance of the Fourth Estate on a major power of government. They create confidence where there should be wariness, and fear where there should be strength.

They get it wrong, and it counts.”

They do, often - and it does. Dale Franks of QandO has the links. It seems like a simple problem that could be cured by some basic diligence, research; and professional standards that demand real subject expertise to the same level as, say, sports journalism. But that doesn't seem to be happening, which leads one to wonder why not.

So it's doubly interesting to note that this problem may extend beyond the media. Former Clinton NSC staffer Heather Hurlburt leveled an eerily similar criticism at the Democratic Party back in November of 2001:

Read The Rest….

CBS' Mike Wallace uses WWII Memorial dedication for Bush-bashing

Big surprise: CBS “60 Minutes” star Mike Wallace and USA Today founder Al Neuharth used the WWII Memorial dedication as an opportunity to engage in Bush-bashing.

The U.S. and its Coalition partners have liberated over 20 million people in Iraq, but Mike Wallace says it's not a “noble enterprise.” Per NewsMax:

- - - - - - -

Square One Media Network's Kathryn Serkes was on hand and she tells NewsMax that at least 50 attendees got up and stormed out because of Wallace and Neuharth's partisan antics.

- - - - - - -

The mainstream media isn't liberal at all. Yeah right.

The Democrats have an actual foreign policy other then all-Bush-bashing, all-the-time. Yeah right.

Via NewsMax.

This is a duplicate of the original post on the nikita demosthenes website.

An Antidote for the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism in the American Mainstream Media

Finally: an antidote for the nattering nabobs of negativism in the American mainstream media: an interview with the no-nonsense Jon Schaffer of the band “Iced Earth.” As posted on the “Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles” website:

- - - - - - -

BW&BK: “This next question is controversial so I'm letting you know before we proceed. Some political analysts have articulated the view that what happened on September 11 was justified due to America's presence in the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia. Some political analysts view it as retaliation for what the US has done in the Middle East in the past. As a Canadian, I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about this view that's been put forth by analysts.”

JS: “No, it wasn't justified. Not at all. And anybody who says so needs to have their fuckin' head examined.”

BW&BK: “Do you think 9/11 will be viewed as the first event in the US empire's decline and fall?”

JS: “No. This is not an empire, first of all. If the United States was an empire, your country would be our 51st state.”

BW&BK: “I understand.”

JS: “Let's get real. We don't do that. It's not our thing. Colin Powell did an interview and the interviewer called the United States an empire and used this bullshit fuckin' socialist language and his response was, 'The only land we've ever asked for is enough for the kids who don't come home. In all the countries we've gone and liberated as far back as WWII, the only land we've asked for is for our soldiers that died.' There's an over-whelming amount of jealousy and resentment out there. When you're the leader, everyone comes to you when they need help. But then they shit on you every chance they get. You can never please everybody all the time. No matter what you do. You can try to do the best things, and no matter what someone is out to get you and tear you down. It's in that way in any scale of leadership. I don't care if it's a personal thing or a country or a commander of a battalion. It's human nature, it's unfortunate. But it's the way it is.”

- - - - - - -

- - - - - - -

BW&BK: “I've got one more question here.”

JS: “Ok.”

BW&BK: “Do you think the Democrats or a leftist government would do some good in the US? Because, like I said, I'm from Canada and we've always had a left-of-centre government. And we don't seem to have a lot of the problems the US has — crime and poverty aren't as rampant here. Do you think a leftist government could do something positive for the States?”

JS: “No. There have been times throughout the history of the country where it's happened. But the whole idea of this country is not to have a government tit. We don't stand for that. There are people who would probably like that, and they should probably move to Canada. I don't want a Big Brother dictating my life. It's a lack of drive. The people who want that stuff are the people who never really got their hands dirty and busted their asses to achieve something. There's a big difference. It's the difference between us and a lot of places. If I live on the streets as a teenager to make my goals a reality or I pay my dues or if I'm a student who's gone to school for 12 years to attain some career and then I get out of school and work my way up through a certain business or whatever, I don't feel like I should be taxed to death to pay for all these government programs that the leftists want. I'm an independent person, the smaller the government the better. Government should not be ruling people's lives. It's bullshit and that's not what we're about. I know the ultra-liberal thing is let's throw a bunch of money at something and that'll fix it. Well, I think the facts prove that's horseshit. The Republicans — the party of Lincoln — but in the last 30 or 40 years the black voters have been voting big-time…”

BW&BK: “Democrat.”

JS: “Democrat, yeah! But where have the Democrats gotten the blacks? Look at it for what it is. You guys have a whole different way of looking at things up there. That's fine, but it's not our thing.”

BW&BK: “I understand.”

JS: “The majority of the people here would rather — and I'm talking about the doers, not the people who want the hand-outs, or are the victims, or blame all their troubles on others — don't want government in their lives dictating what they should do. People like me who bust their asses to achieve something and a specific goal, we don't want to be taxed to death. We want to be in control of our lives. And that's the American way. If it's too hard for you, well then leave it. What else can you say? I've never said the United States is an easy place to live. But the reality is that you can come from absolutely nothing and accomplish anything. And that's worth a lot.”

BW&BK: “I agree. So, that's pretty much it for the interview. I want to thank you for doing this interview because I know how these controversial interviews can sometimes go. But you were really insightful, and that was really cool.”

JS: “The thing is, you're going to spin this however you want and I have no control over that. That's what most of the guys in the press do. I'll give an interview, and then they'll edit out certain things. It's like CNN, the Communist News Network. You deliver a story a certain way and try to get people to think a certain way. So, it's basically in your hands. You or your editor can make it look however you guys want it to. At the end of the day, I don't really give a fuck what people think. And you're more than welcome to print this. I am who I am. I don't have to answer to anybody. I'm not ashamed of anything I've done to get where I am. I'm an honest guy and I'm a straight shooter. And you can print all that. I won't be judged by another human being, especially some snot-nosed kid who's never had to work a day in his life for anything. You know how it is, man. A lot of people think they are a wealth of knowledge. I have real-world education. I left high school when I was 16, but I graduated from the school of hard knocks.”

BW&BK: “And you know what? That's valuable. There's a lot of shit you learn on the streets you can't learn in a classroom.”

JS: “Totally, man! I know several people who were in college for six years and are now making 30 grand a year. It's all about attitude, man. And that's what I love about my country. That I was able to split at 16 and just work towards a specific goal. But, I didn't make excuses either. If I failed, I took responsibility for it, I learned from it and I picked myself up and moved on. It's the people who always say, 'Man, my girlfriend didn't want me to go to practice.' Whatever, I've heard a million excuses. They'll blame it on some other deal. Those are the ones who never make it. It doesn't matter whether it's being in a band or any other goal. Unless you take responsibility for your own actions and you're hard on yourself and you push yourself and you take responsibility for your own actions and you're honest with yourself.”

BW&BK: “I'm glad you ended it on that note. I'm as proud to be Canadian as you are to be American. Your words speak for themselves, and I don't know how I could spin this story.”

JS: “Well, that's cool. But the way you asked your questions, you were asking biased questions. Calling our president the Bush regime? That's a tainted thing, dude. That's not like saying, 'How do you feel about President Bush?' Saying 'Bush Regime' is a bullshit way of saying it. That's spin, alright? But you can say it however you want. It's in your hands. You're the one who has to live with it, not me. Because I'm cool with who I am. I'm doing an interview for the DVD tomorrow.”

BW&BK: “Oh yeah?”

JS: “Yeah, so the fans can actually hear direct and see me and hear me talking and saying it. And they'll know who I am. They won't have to go through the dickheads at Blabbermouth who take things out of context and spread lies and innuendo.”

BW&BK: “(chuckles) I understand, man.”

JS: “The fans will see the real deal with the DVD.”

BW&BK: “Well, thanks a lot for the interview, I really appreciate it like I said.”

JS: “You got it, man.”

BW&BK: “Alright, see you on tour, dude!”

JS: “See ya! Bye.”

- - - - - - -

Via Andrew Sullivan (under “HARD ROCK VS. CHOMSKY”).

Here's the website for Iced Earth. I think I'll go buy one of their CD's. Good job, mate!

And, while I'm one the topic, there's something that's really been bothering me lately. I'm sick and tired of everyone (including way too many conservatives) saying President Bush and the Administration did a good job of waging the war, but have done a bad job of “managing the peace.” I think this is utter, laughable, inane bullshit.

We took a country that has never known democracy or individual liberties - and which was in a state of utter disrepair with regard to its public services and infrastructure. We've taken this basket-case country and we're on the verge of an interim Iraqi government leading to free elections.

We've put down brutal insurgency after brutal insurgency and we've brought basic services to the people (schools, hospitals, power, water, food, telephones, internet access, etc.).

In short, I THINK WE'VE DONE AN AWESOME JOB OF MANAGING THE PEACE! And in my humble opinion, anyone who doesn't think so is a gutless-wonder arm-chair quarterback. If we listened to these gutless wonders we'd never do anything - we'd just wring our hands over the “complexity of the situation” and leave blood-stained brutes like Saddam Hussein in power forever.

The anti-war whiners around the world have no credibility. If they'd gotten their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power - filling mass graves - and Uday Hussein would still be picking women off the streets of Baghdad to rape and kill them. Nice morality you have there, anti-war lefties.

Don't listen to them, troops. Most of us know the truth: you've done an outstanding job at winning the war and you've done an outstanding job of managing the peace!

God bless you and keep up the good work!

And President Bush: you've done a great job too. I may be one of the few to come right out and say it (in even the conservative blogosphere). Great job. Here's hoping for four more years.

This is a duplicate of the original post on the nikita demosthenes website.

Media Bias On Iraq Criticism and Praise

Every time John McCain or Chuck Hagel make some criticism of the President, on the war or any other topic, the mainstream media echo chamber replay the tape 'til it's worn. But Joe Lieberman's supportive remarks regarding the war seem to dissipate into the ether. For example, Lieberman made some great comments last night on “Paula Zahn Now,” but I don't see a trace of them in the papers or on tv, even though he's a sitting Senator and former presidential/vp candidate:

ZAHN: Senator lieberman, will the plan in place work? We just had Secretary Albright on who more or less suggested that it is unrealistic.

LIEBERMAN: There are obviously no guarantees here. But I do think tonight the President did what he has to do in this speech and in the ones that will follow in the next weeks, which is to shore up American support, to remind the American people why we must win this battle against the terrorists and the Saddam loyalists. And to remind them that he has done some of the things that his critics asked him to do, including me. He has now gone to the United Nations. He has now increased the number of American troops there and is prepare to send more to keep the security so that democracy can take hold. So, I hope that all of us in both parties who have said that we have to stay in Iraq and finish the job in pursuit of our own values and of our own security will pull together and make it happen, and not be part of a chorus of doubters that will undermine the support of the American people more. We’ve to stay united here as best we can to support our troops, but to support our cause. In my opinion, this is the test of our generation. And if we don't win it in Iraq, we're going to face it much closer to home in the years ahead.

. . . ZAHN: And yet Senator Lieberman, there are obviously three disparate factions that this government has to worry about uniting: the Shias, Kurds, and Sunnis. Do you have concerns about that? Short-term and long-term?

LIEBERMAN: It is a democracy is not easy. It is sometimes messy, you know? But the folks in Iraq, thanks to the courage and skill of the American military have options before them that they never would have dreamed they would have today and that's because Saddam, that brutal dictator is gone. And we have the United Nations in there now, through Ambassador Brahimi, trying to negotiate an agreement between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. I believe he can do it. But what is most important is that before long the Iraqi people are going to get to do it. They will get to vote. And I think if the American people don't lose — if we don't lose our will, we're going to look back with real pride at what our troops have done and what we can do together for the Iraqis, but also to secure our values and our security.

CNN Math

CNN demonstrates its true colors yet again… a shameful red.

MAARIV: CNN deliberately disseminating disinformation

CNN has deliberately played fast and loose with UN figures to create a false impression as to the impact of IDF operations in Gaza on the Palerstinian civilian population.

During the 6 pm (Israel time) news broadcast, while reporting on IDF operations in Rafah, the red flashing news strip mentioned 11,00 Palestinans as having being made homeless. The clear inference was that this was a result of the current operation.

Later on during the news broadcast Jim Clancy quoted “updated UN figures” as 13,00 homeless Palestinians, while airing a piece called “sounds and sights of Gaza”, in which IDF tanks were shown in action in Rafah.

UNRWA spokesperson Paul McCann told Maariv International that the 13,000 figure refers to Palestinians who have lost their homes since the outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000.

CNN's Jerusalem bureau stood by their version, saying that the 13,000 referred to Palestinians made homeless “either in the last 24 hours or the past week”.

Maybe Eason “Dollars For Dictators” Jordan should take a break from boffing Danny Pearl's widow and spend some of his budget on calculators and history books?

A Mini Tet Offensive?

Can media bias affect the outcome of world events - even of wars?

Apparently so, based on the below article by Arnaud de Borchgrave:

- - - - - - -

Any seasoned reporter covering the Tet offensive in Vietnam 36 years ago is well over 60 and presumably retired or teaching journalism at one of America's 4,200 colleges and universities. Before plunging into an orgy of erroneous and invidious historical parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, a reminder about what led to the U.S. defeat in Southeast Asia is timely.

Iraq will only be another Vietnam if the home front collapses, as it did following the Tet offensive that began on the eve of the Chinese New Year, Jan. 31, 1968. The surprise attack was designed to overwhelm some 70 cities and towns and 30 other strategic objectives simultaneously. By breaking a previously agreed-upon truce for Tet festivities, master strategist Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap in Hanoi calculated that South Vietnamese troops would be caught with defenses down.

After the first few hours of panic, the South Vietnamese troops reacted fiercely. They did the bulk of the fighting and took some 6,000 casualties. Viet Cong units not only did not reach a single one of their objectives - except when they arrived by taxi at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, blew their way through the wall into the compound and, guns blazing, made it into the lobby before they were wiped out by U.S. Marines. But they lost some 50,000 killed and at least as many wounded.

Gen. Giap had thrown some 70,000 troops into a strategic gamble that was also designed to overwhelm 13 of the 16 provincial capitals and trigger a popular uprising. But Tet was an unmitigated military disaster for Hanoi and its Viet Cong troops in South Vietnam. Yet that was not the way it was reported in U.S. and other media around the world.

It was television's first war. And some 50 million Americans at home saw the carnage of dead bodies in the rubble and dazed Americans running around.

As the late veteran war reporter Peter Braestrup documented in “Big Story,” a massive, two-volume study of how Tet was covered by American reporters, the Viet Cong offensive was depicted as a military disaster for the United States. By the time the facts emerged a week or two later from Rand Corp. interrogations of prisoners and defectors, the damage had been done. Conventional media wisdom had been set in concrete. U.S. public opinion perceptions changed accordingly.

- - - - - - -

America's most trusted newsman, CBS' Walter Cronkite, appeared for a standup piece with distant fires as a backdrop.

Donning helmet, Mr. Cronkite declared the war lost.

It was this now famous television news piece that persuaded President Lyndon Johnson six weeks later, on March 31, not to run for re-election. His ratings had plummeted from 80 percent when he assumed the presidency upon John F. Kennedy's death to 30 percent after Tet. Approval of his handling of the war dropped to 20 percent, his credibility shot to pieces.

Until Tet, a majority of Americans agreed with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson that failure was not an option. It was Kennedy who changed the status of U.S. military personnel from advisers to South Vietnamese troops to full-fledged fighting men. By the time of Kennedy's Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, 16,500 U.S. troops had been committed to the war. Johnson escalated all the way to 542,000.

But defeat became an option when Johnson decided the war was unwinnable and that he would lose his bid for the presidency in November 1968. Hanoi thus turned military defeat into a priceless geopolitical victory.

With the Viet Cong wiped out in the Tet offensive, North Vietnamese regulars moved south down the Ho Chi Minh trails through Laos and Cambodia to continue the war. Even Giap admitted in his memoirs that news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations that ensued in America surprised him. Instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, Giap said they would now go the limit because America's resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp.

- - - - - - -

Whatever one thought about the advisability of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the United States is there with 100,000 troops and a solid commitment to endow Iraq with a democratic system of government. While failure is not an option for Mr. Bush, it clearly is for Sen. Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, who called Iraq the president's Vietnam. It is, of course, no such animal. But it could become so if congressional resolve dissolves.

Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, received South Vietnam's unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, he made clear the anti-war movement in the United States, which led to the collapse of political will in Washington, was “essential to our strategy.”

Visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers “gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses.”

America lost the war, concluded Bui Tin, “because of its democracy. Through dissent and protest, it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.”

Kennedy should remember that Vietnam was the war of his brother, who saw the conflict in the larger framework of the Cold War and Nikita Khrushchev's threats against West Berlin. It would behoove Kennedy to see Iraq in the larger context of the struggle to bring democracy not only to Iraq but also to the entire Middle East.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large for The Washington Times and United Press International. He covered Tet as Newsweek's chief foreign correspondent and had seven tours in Vietnam between 1951 under the French and 1972, during the U.S. involvement.

- - - - - - -

Hat-tip to R. Holden of mcgop.net.

This is a duplicate of the original post on the nikita demosthenes website.

If The Media Treated Basketball Like They Treat The War On Terror

Dan Koppel: I'm your announcer Dan Koppel here with my co-hosts Peter Brokaw and Laurie Malkin. It's late in the third quarter and the Damascus Jihadis have the LA Lakers on the ropes. It has been a dominating performance by the Jihadis...

Peter Brokaw: You said it Dan! Nothing has gone right for the Lakers tonight and coach Phil Jackson's gameplan is the likely culprit. Do you agree Dan?

Dan Koppel: Absolutely! This whole game has just been an embarrassing travesty for Laker fans...

Laurie Malkin: Guys, I hate to disagree but the Lakers are leading 108-24...

Dan Koppel: Come on Laurie, show some professionalism and stop your mindless cheerleading for the Lakers...

Laurie Malkin: Ok Dan, what you need to understand is...

Peter Brokaw: OH MY, OH MY, OH MY! Karl Malone has fouled one of the Jihadis! That is his second foul of the game leaving with him with only four more to go before he fouls out!

Dan Koppel: This thing is over without Malone, I repeat OVER! If Malone fouls out, the Lakers are DOOMED to go down to ignominious defeat!

Peter Brokaw: Holy Moly, Yassir Bin Laden, point guard for the Jihadis has made his free throw! That's another point on the board for the Jihadis and a huge, huge, failure by the Lakers! Did I say HUGE failure?

Dan Koppel: Yes you did Peter and rightly so! It's Lakers ball again. They're going down the court and it's a pass to Shaquille O'Neal and as he dunks, he's fouled by Jihadi center Muhammad Al-Sadr who is out of the game with his 6th foul.

Laurie Malkin: Wow! That's Shaq's 15th dunk of the night!

Peter Brokaw: Yes, yes Laurie -- like anyone cares about how many dunks Shaq gets.

Dan Koppel: (Yawn) Oh, I'm sorry everybody, I was falling asleep hearing about Shaq's dunks. Like there's anyone in the audience who'd want to know about that.

Peter Brokaw: MY GOODNESS, Shaq has missed a free throw! Shaq! Has! Missed! A! Free! Throw!

Dan Koppel: How can these Laker fans be expected to sit through this type of drubbing Peter?

Peter Brokaw: I just don't know Peter, I just don't know....hey, wait a second! Jihadis small forward, Deir Atta, has run into a group of small children in the crowd, yelled something about "infidels", and has blown himself up! What a tragedy...

Laurie Malkin: Oh my God! What sort of psychopaths are these Jihadis?

Dan Koppel: Now Laurie, I didn't want to say anything, but earlier today as I was coming in the building I noticed that Gary Payton turned down a young Jihadi fan who requested an autograph. So can we really say that the Lakers haven't done anything just as bad as the Jihadis here today?

Peter Brokaw: Quite right Dan! You know who I blame for this debacle?

Dan Koppel: Lakers coach Phil Jackson obviously...

Peter Brokaw: That's right, Phil Jackson!

Laurie Malkin: What?!?!

Dan Koppel: Well, as expected, this game has been called on account of suicide bombing. The league will probably want to finish the game at a later date, but is there really a point?

Peter Brokaw: I agree Peter, can't they just call this one a Jihadi victory and let it go at that?

Dan Koppel: Yes Peter, I never thought the Lakers had a chance. Maybe, just maybe, if the Lakers give this one up, it'll make them a little more humble and it may even cool off their hot rivalry with the Jihadis.

Peter Brokaw: I agree Dan! LA Lakers: fire Phil Jackson and just give up!

Laurie Malkin: But the Lakers are winning and...

Peter Brokaw: Oh good grief Laurie, stop being such a Lakers apologist for once in your life!

Dan Koppel: I agree wholeheartedly Peter! Well, that's it for this week! We'll be back to cover the rest of this one if the Lakers insist on continuing towards certain defeat.

Peter Brokaw: Oh goody, another quarter full of fouls and missed free throws inbetween all those dunks and that scoring Laurie seems to find so impressive for some reason...

Dan Koppel: Let's just hope the Lakers fans have the common sense to call it quits and demand the Lakers don't finish this one out.

Peter Brokaw: Agreed!

Stop the Censorship!

I am angry tonight. I hope other Americans are also.

Some of us have long understood the depths of the barbarian evil confronting us. Too many others refuse to understand, even after today's beheading of an innocent American civilian.

At a meeting today with a nice, intelligent businessman of South Asian descent, the subject of the war came up. In his part of the world, he said, all the butchery of war is shown. He was sure that we would never have completed our Iraq invasion if our media showed the all the gore.

Although he lives at least part time in the United States, he believes our media hid those pictures to promote for the war. He doesn't realize that the majority of our news media personnel were and are against the Battle of Iraq. He doesn't understand that they hide the gore because they think we cannot handle it.

Our media has decided to act in loco parenti. They don't want to show mere citizens the full bloody truth. Of course, this hasn't stopped them from bombarding us with degrading and prurient images from Abu Ghraib. It hasn't stopped them from bombarding us over and over again with pictures of Americans, not representative of America or our military, badly abusing suspected killers.

This gentleman had a point, although his inference was far from the mark.

Stop the censorship!

Let Americans see the whole picture.

Show the video of the jumpers of 9-11 - all the way to the ground, as often as we had to see the prison photos.

Show the full video of today's beheading.

Show American civilians risking their lives to rebuild the Iraqi power system.

Show the videos of Iraqi professionals murdered by Ba'athist terrorists in order to derail the rebuilding.

Show the videos of Iraqi tanks destroyed by bombs filled with concrete instead of explosive, to avoid killing the innocent people in the houses near the tanks.

Show the full videos of the Fallujians desecrating the remains of the American civilians they had just killed; show the joy they express in stabbing and cutting and then hanging the remains from a bridge.

Show how little damage was done in order to pacify Fallujiah and show the civilians allowed to flee to safety before that opation.

Show the full video of our wounded soldiers as they fall, suffer or die while fighting those who would rule Iraq by violence.

Show our soldiers risking their lives in combat to avoid unnecessarily killing innocent Iraqis. Show what our firepower could do if we chose to save our soldier's lives instead of the innocent Iraqis.

Show Saddam's videos. Make the entire world watch them. Show them as often as the prison videos are shown.

Show the pictures of the Israeli children after they have been murdered by Palestinians.

Show the video of Palestinians dancing with the bloody body parts of Israeli soldiers they have killed. Make sure our multi-culturalists see how those Palestinians respect the Jewish cultural need to bury all parts of their dead.

War is hell. Post 9-11, so is the alternative.

Show us all of the truth!

Let's see how our citizens balance the events and necessities of this war against the death cult of radical Islam.

I trust our citizens to come to the right conclusions.

Our Censors do not.

Stop the Censorship!

[Also published at Useful Fools blog]

A Fence is Needed for Security

Not around Israel - around the U.N.

Via A Collection of Thoughts.

This is a duplicate of the original post at the nikita demosthenes website.

Prisoner Abuse and Media Responsibility

Fox News Watch today had a segment discussing the prisoner abuse scandal. Never once did they consider the question of whether the photographs should have been released.

The following is my letter to the show:

I am shocked that nobody asked: “Should the pictures have been aired?”

Journalists have a first amendment right not to face prior restraint. With this comes a duty to behave as responsible citizens.

In the case of this story, the release of the pictures was irresponsible. Americans will die because of that action, and 60 Minutes II must have known that. The journalistic watchdog function could have been performed in this case without showing the photos, some of which will appear on terrorist recruiting posters and web sites for decades. Of course, it wouldn't have provided nearly as juicy a scandal, but it might have saved many American lives. Waiting two weeks was not enough.

This was classified information. The person who released it to the media is a criminal. Were it not for the enormous political power of the media, a grand jury (or military equivalent) would have been convened to determine the identity of the leaker. If necessary, journalists would have been ordered to reveal their source. They would then take great pride in going to prison instead.

Why do you folks think you have not only a right, but a duty to release information very damaging to our effort to fight terrorism? Is it because it is a political year?

I admire Fox news, but I cannot admire anybody on your panel after the arrogance demonstrated by your failure to even realize that such a question is valid.

You people should be ashamed, if such an emotion is allowed in media personnel.

Consider me dismayed and disgusted

The media now assumes that possession of information confers an automatic and unfettered freedom, even an obligation, to release it, regardless of the resulting harm to the nation.

By far the greatest damage resulting from the prisoner abuse situations was the release of photographs. Had those not been released, the situation would have been appropriately handled by the steps already in process. Journalists could even have used their normal “gotcha” against the administration on this issue without releasing the photographs. But that wasn’t enough for them.

The consequence of the release of those pictures is potentially catastrophic. We are fighting a war for the “Hearts and Minds” of Muslims, especially in the Middle Easter. Information is a very important weapon and a very important defense in that war.

If we lose that war, we will have to fight a potentially much broader and vastly more destructive war, both to us and especially to countries that are involved with terrorism. Remember Dresden and Hiroshima, and extrapolate.

Am example of the damage done can be seen at the Iraqi blog Healing Iraq. It contains the writings of Zeyad, a young Iraqi dentist. Zeyad had been supportive of the occupation, even when one of his cousins was apparently killed in another rare incident of abuse (which is also under investigation). Zeyad understood that these events were rare. But now, Zeyad appears to have given up on us.

Thank you, 60 minutes II, for costing us an ally, and for humiliating and angering a good person.

Ironically, the release of those pictures may damage the military’s ability to prosecute those who abused the prisoners. Again, the media didn’t care.

As exemplified by 60 minutes and the Fox News Watch panel, the media simply doesn't care. They are so arrogant and isolated in their own value system that the question apparently didn't occur to them.

The pictures caused a scandal. The political scandal will follow the normal script for these. But the international damage may result in the death of many Americans.

Here is their Code of Conduct. You will find no mention of the national interest in it.

Note: Also published at Useful Fools blog.

Media Crosses The Rubicon

Well, the American media has finally joined the war, on the other side.

All pretense of representing our national interests has been dropped in favor of driving their agenda. The continuous low-brow ridicule of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, anti-Semitic scorn for Wolfowitz, the disgraceful racial coverage of Powell and Rice, and wall-to-wall pro-Democrat reportage was not working quickly enough. So they have now taken an active role in assuring a defeat in the public’s mind, if not fact.

The American media forecast a defeat and they will not be denied schadenfreude.

ABC’s Nightline pious breast-beating while openly using the deaths of service men and women as a blunt instrument with which to beat the Bush Administration is so transparent and repulsive that it will not gain traction. It will be seen as the cheap ploy that it is, the term “media whore” comes to mind, but dishonors the world’s oldest profession.

However, CBS has crossed the line.

Their reportage of the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US military will inflame the Arab street and endanger American lives, both civilian and military in the Middle East, as anti-American propagandists such as Al-Jazeera apply their hatred to the images. This is simply aiding and abetting the enemy as our military is engaged in war.

Don’t get me wrong, US and Allied military personnel involved should be charged, tried and punished to the letter of the law, forthwith, but the dog and pony show presented by CBS denies them the fair trial to which they are entitled. The media cries crocodile tears over enemy combatants captured in battle and those who admit they plot to commit acts of terror, but US military personnel are guilty by their very existence.

Enough! It’s time for Americans to stop sitting passively by, like a herd of well-fed sheep waiting for the knackers truck. Pick up a pen, or fire off an email to ABC, CBS, and more importantly, write to the advertisers. You are underwriting these irresponsible broadcasters, if you disagree, which is our right, then say so, LOUDLY.

No one elected the media; they have no mandate to drive a private agenda. They are not privilege to briefings, classified information or events on the ground. What makes them qualified to influence the outcome of the war in Iraq? They cry “No Plan!” but how long would a plan remain viable if it were revealed to the media? Every scrap of information they can winnow, is broadcast worldwide.

Get off your ass, America or the next calamitous event CBSABCNBCPBSCNN will be lamenting as deserved retribution for our many grievous crimes against humanity may be in your town or city.

Get Your Antennae Up!

The first rule of the internet, the very first one, is “don't believe everything you hear”. That seems simple enough doesn't it?. After all, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that something you receive in an email, see on a message board, or read on a web page with pictures of Elvis driving a flying saucer on the front page, probably isn't something you're going to want to bet the farm on. Only the ignorant, the gullible, or conspiracy theorists are going to be snookered by sources that dubious.

Then there are the biased sources, like Newsmax, The Village Voice, or even Right Wing News ;). Since these sorts of websites don't try to hide their partisan leanings, the reader can consider himself forewarned that people of a different ideological stripe might have a different take on the same issues. For example, if you went to Eschaton, a left-wing blog, and saw a headline that stated “George W. Bush wants to grind up fluffy kittens to help Haliburton profit margin,” your antennae would go up — because you know this a left-wing blog — and you'd naturally take what you read with a grain of salt.

But, what gets people into trouble are the sources and articles that seem reliable, yet actually are about as trustworthy as the political info you get from your friend's cousin's mother's brother after he finishes off his second pitcher of beer at Pizza Hut. And that's where I come in.

Yes, I, your humble neighborhood blogger, am an information junkie's information junky. For years now, I've been reading, analyzing, questioning, perusing, and skimming news from across the world in an effort to inform and entertain my readers. During that process, I've run across more than a few potholes on the information superhighway that can keep you from reaching your destination. Luckily for you, I'm going to clue you in on when you should get your antennae up so you can steer around those potholes instead plowing over them like I've done far too often in the past. Keep an eye out for…

Anonymous Sources: Believe it or not, people often treat quotes from anonymous sources, even controversial quotes, as MORE CREDIBLE than quotes from people who go on the record because they believe they're getting a scoop from an inside source. But in reality, there are a bevy of reasons to concerned with the veracity of anonymous sources.

First and foremost among them is of course “why are they coming forward without revealing their names”? Are they bitter for some reason and trying to get revenge? Do they want to make an outrageous assertion that they don't want their names attached to when it's proven to be untrue? Could they be partisan holdovers from another administration who'd be revealed as biased if they went on the record? Heck, in these days and times when we have reporters like Jayson Blair sitting in New York bars writing “on site” stories that put them in the Mid-West, you even have to question whether the reporter exaggerated or made up the quote from the source. For the most part, anonymous sources are much more appropriate for smut rags like the Enquirer than mainstream papers.

Anecdotal Stories: It doesn't matter if you assert that the CIA was actually behind 9/11 or that there are 100,000 Chinese troops poised on the Mexican border to invade Texas, you're going to find at least a handful of people who'll believe it. That's why anecdotal stories that feature a few quotes that are supposed to be representative of a larger group are generally worthless. Actually, make that worse than worthless, because anecdotal stories are more often than not misleading.

Judging by how most of the anecdotal stories in the mainstream press seem to play out these days, here's how you have to figure they're put together. A reporter comes up with a theme for a story, interviews people until he gets several juicy quotes that support the point he wants to make while discarding contrary opinions, and then he writes a story implying that the people they talked to represent a majority. The mainstream media runs these sort of stories about Iraqis, soldiers, military families, 9/11 victims among others and usually the only common theme you'll see are that the people quoted don't accurately reflect the feelings of the group they're supposed to represent and the articles almost always reflect poorly on the Bush administration. What liberal media, right?

Enemy & Civilian Casualties: When our troops are fighting in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, trying to get an accurate estimate of how many civilian or enemy fighters are killed is nearly impossible. Combatants dressed in civilian clothes fire at our troops from areas inhabited by civilians. Wounded fighters may crawl away after being hit or be dragged away by their compatriots. Women and children are used as human shields — sometimes involuntarily making them civilians — sometimes voluntarily making them members of the enemy force.

On top of that, opposing forces and even the Arab press commonly downplay the number of losses taken by enemy fighters and dramatically inflate the number of civilians killed. Last but not least, in the heat of combat, it's very difficult for the members of our military to give an accurate count of how many people they've killed when they have bullets whizzing around their head and massive explosions going off all around them. So it's fair to say that any enemy or civilian casualty numbers you hear from the front may be less accurate than Bill Clinton's explanation to Hillary of why a woman answered his phone at 4 AM.

Foreign Papers: Don't get me wrong, there are some really superb papers foreign newspapers out there like the Jerusalem Post or the Online Sun (stop sneering you elitist ;). However, there are also legions of unreliable foreign papers that play so fast and loose with the facts that you can't trust anything you're reading. That includes all of the government controlled press in the Middle-East, Al-Jazeera, & Russia's Pravda.

Furthermore, it's also worth remembering that some of the European newspapers like The Guardian & The Independent slant so far to the left that they have more in common with openly left-wing US websites like The Nation than they do left-leaning papers masquerading as unbiased sources like the Washington Post.

Internet Polls: Few things are easier than influencing the results of an internet poll. All it would take to send tens of thousands of people to a local church website to write in Satan as a choice for a new pastor would be posts on a handful of large message boards and websites. In fact, this has been done so often by the folks over at Free Republic that the word “freep” has come to mean deliberately skewing a poll. Not to say that online polls aren't entertaining, they can be, as long as you don't confuse them with some sort of accurate reflection of the public's feelings on a subject.

Scientists: Understandably, most people tend to pay quite a bit of attention to articles featuring scientists talking about their fields of expertise. However, you must keep in mind that whole image that has been built up of scientists as impartial fellows only interested in the facts and whatever can be proven in the laboratory is pure bunk.

Not only do scientists have political biases that effect their opinions just like the rest of us, they may have large amounts of grant money and years worth of papers and research that can all be riding on coming down a certain way on an issue. For example, if a liberal scientist who has written a book on the existence of global warming, given countless lectures on its existence, & lives off a $250,000 grant to study the subject by an environmentalist group comes to the conclusion that global warming is incredibly overblown or doesn't exiss, is he really going to say so? Human nature says that under those circumstances some people will come forward, but most people won't.

Perhaps more importantly, we must remember that there's often just as much disagreement in the fields that these scientists come from as you'll see on a typical edition of “Crossfire”. So if you're not hearing a scientist with a dissenting opinion, do you really know if you're getting the whole story?

Washington Budget Numbers: Let me tell you a little story that'll give you an idea of how dishonest the figures tossed around by Washington politicians are. Let us say that there is a proposal to raise the funding for “educating the orphaned children of patriotic Americans who also love fluffy puppies” by a billion dollars a year. But, Senator Phineas J. Taxemall votes for an Amendment to that bill that would only raise spending by 800 million a year. So the good Senator just voted to raise spending for the orphans by 800 million a year, right?

WRONG...well, at least according to the campaign ads the Senator will see the next time he's up for the election. Those ads will say “Senator Phineas J. Taxemall voted to CUT funding for educating the orphaned children of patriotic Americans who also love fluffy puppies by 2 BILLION dollars! How can any man be so cruel”? So how would his opponent come up with those numbers? Easy. In Washingtonspeak, increasing spending “only” 800 million when you could have spent a billion is a CUT, not an increase. Then you run those numbers over say a 10 year period and sabim, sabam, there's your 2 billion dollar cut. The same sort of hinky number crunching is done with tax raises, the deficit, & Social Security (the “trust fund” is actually an IOU), so you can't trust those numbers either.

Rooney Forgets Meds; Hilarity Ensues

Now the Nurse has to Skip Lunch to Tie Him Back up

Originally published at Hog on Ice.

The whole right-wing Blogosphere is up in arms about Andy Rooney's latest “column.” I use quotation marks because I can't bring myself to call 600 words a column. I've written grocery lists longer than that.

An interesting sidelight: if you cut and paste Rooney's piece into Microsoft Word and use “Word Count,” it comes out to exactly 600 words. I think that tells you something about his attitude toward his work.

Rooney: [tap, tap, tap] Is it 600 yet?

Nurse: No, dear.

Rooney: Darn. [tap, tap, tap]

Rooney is in big trouble for saying some of our troops in Iraq aren't heroes. Most right-wing bloggers want to gut him and set him out for the crows. What he said was clearly stupid, but I'm not all that agitated. Of course, it's early for me, and the caffeine hasn't done its work yet. At this stage, it may not be possible to agitate me.

I think Rooney meant that not all of our troops are gung-ho. Which is what he should have said, if you think about it. It sure beats issuing a gratuitous insult.

The weird thing is, Rooney himself served in the Army. His bio says he was in an artillery regiment in England in World War Two (not scary, I admit), and that he later joined Stars and Stripes and accompanied bomber crews on flights over Germany (plenty scary). I guess esprit de corps is not what it used to be.

Rooney implies that if you asked a whole bunch of US soldiers how they feel about Iraq, they'd tear off their fatigues, exposing MorOn.org MoveOn.org T-shirts, and loudly proclaim “Bush equals Hitler.” He wants us to think they're over there cursing Bush day and night and writing love letters to Patty Murray.

Not true, of course. Polls suggest morale may need some punching up, but that's about it. Name a conflict in which no soldiers grumbled. Hell, Rooney himself grumbled about working in the oppressive Rather regime at CBS, but he kept plugging along until they put his things in a box outside his office door.

Rooney cites the 23 soldiers who have committed suicide in Iraq. What he doesn't tell you is that soldiers commit suicide in peacetime, too, and that the numbers are not that much worse in Iraq, where stress is much higher. And for all we know, the suicides had more to do with the economic problems at home than the situation in Iraq. It's not like we have a control group to look at for comparison purposes. For all we know, more soldiers would have killed themselves if we hadn't gone to war.

Peaceniks like to cite the suicide figures, but they haven't been able to come up with any evidence that soldiers are killing themselves because they're in Iraq. Where are the tormented final notes lambasting President Bush? Strange, offing yourself for a very specific reason and not bothering to let anyone know what it is.

Rooney says praising our soldiers as heroes is “an old civilian trick” intended to keep our uniformed dupes in front of the cannons. Is that right? As is so often the case, I missed the memo and failed to show up for the conspiracy meetings. I thought I was praising our soldiers because I admired their courage and their willingness to offer their lives in order to benefit the rest of us. Am I a dupe, too? Is there a second, even-more-secret conspiracy to dupe civilians like me into duping our soldiers?

I feel so violated. First, they fluoridate our water, damaging the purity of our precious bodily fluids, and now this. We are but toys for BushCo's amusement.

Rooney also pushes the highly annoying liberal canard that the military is fundamentally a means of providing jobs and scholarships. We really need to fight this one, because eventually, it will be accepted without question, the way we have come to accept the insane notion that wealthy seniors deserve free prescription drugs. Rooney thinks the military is bad because it offers people employment and tuition money to sign up, and then it requires them to LIVE UP TO THEIR COMMITMENT TO SERVE. Outrageous! Why, who would ever think, when enlisting in the Marines or the Navy, that MILITARY SERVICE might be involved? It's fraud, plain and simple. These kids thought they were signing up for Outward Bound.

Here's a thought: if you don't want to shoot people, don't enlist in the military. Does that sound crazy? Help me out; I'm having a hard time finding the logical flaw here.

Don't hand me that tired old BS about people having no choice. That may have been true in eighteenth-century England, where people were forced into service at gunpoint or joined because the alternative was starvation in filthy gutters. In modern America, it is the farthest thing from true.

I don't want to get into a big argument over the definition of the word “hero,” but I am willing to state that I admire anyone who willingly joins the US military and then consents to be placed in harm's way for the benefit of total strangers. Rooney thinks we tricked people into enlisting and then dragged them kicking and screaming into Iraq, but the facts are that our military personnel vote conservative by about a three-to-one margin, and that they generally support an aggressive stance toward foreign enemies.

We shouldn't pay too much attention to a silly, poorly written, ill-supported, terse column scratched out by a retired humorist about three decades past the peak of his mediocrity. I would not support an outcry to have Rooney's house burned and his odd little columns withdrawn—with great fanfare—from syndication. As I told a reader today in an email, I think the best thing would be to set them out with the trash, tell Mr. Rooney they've been published, and get him a nice cup of tea.

Suicide “Epidemic” Proven Nonexistent

It was already obvious to the number-crunchers among us, but in case math is not your long suit, you may wish to check out a conclusive refutation of the Operation Iraqi Freedom Suicide Myth.

In The Worst Possible Light

To hear some of the media tell it, Iraqis everywhere have risen against Coalition forces. But the truth is that it's a very small but militant minority. You'd think that the media would be able to see that for themselves, but you'd be wrong. Only a few here and there seem to get it.

Casualties are reported as if they were a sports score, but with a twist – usually only Coalition casualties are reported. The impression given is that those committing the attacks, committing the atrocities, get away unscathed. But for the most part they don't. Were the media to take a closer look (assuming they're brave enough to go out without military escort), they'd probably find that most of the attackers die in a hail of 5.56, 7.62, and 12.7mm rounds, backed up by the occasional 20mm chain gun or 120mm Abrams cannon rounds. They get a few of ours and we get a truckload of theirs.

One thing we don't hear from CENTCOM is enemy body counts. That's one legacy from Vietnam we don't need to revive. Let the media do the counting, assuming that they're willing to count enemy dead as readily as they count ours. But that might change the apparent dynamics of the fighting still going on in Iraq, and the media can't have that. After all, we're supposed to be losing in Iraq, aren't we?

At least that's how it appears what many in the media would like us to believe.

(Cross-posted to Weekend Pundit)

Student: Clarke Misled Harvard Class Too in Promoting Pro-Clinton Revisionism

Per Chuck Harrison, a national security fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government - via his commentary published in the Washington Times:

The country is in an uproar over former White House terrorism expert Richard Clarke's recent contentions, which will continue to be debated.

Let me give some insight on my own very recent (February 2004) experience with Mr. Clarke, who teaches a class at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He teaches this class with Rand Beers, a former government official with National Security Council experience who now works on the Democratic presidential campaign.

As a national security fellow at the Kennedy School, I attended one of Messrs. Beers' and Clarke's classes to discuss U.S. experiences in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo. I was involved in the planning or execution of each of these military operations and wrote my master's thesis on U.S. Somalia policy while attending the Naval Postgraduate School in 1994-95.

I requested permission to sit in on the class, which Mr. Clarke cheerfully granted and told me to “pipe up” if I had anything to say, which I quickly did when I questioned his theory there were three major policy decisions during Somalia.

While we were debating U.N. actions in Somalia, Mr. Clarke incorrectly stated the U.S. military made a unilateral decision to pull forces out of Somalia. The defense secretary and the president decide deployment and redeployment of combat forces, not the military. So I questioned his statement to the contrary. I specifically asked him to clarify his statement.

He backed his contention, stating the military made the decision. He also said our participation in the U.N. mission in Macedonia proved how smooth U.N. operations could be. I reminded him of the soldiers taken prisoner by Serb forces and the ensuing crisis, but he ignored my comment.

After class, I asked him to explain who in the military ordered redeployment of forces from Somalia without permission of the president. I asked him specifically, “Who signed the redeployment order for those forces to leave Somalia?”

He finally clarified by saying “the secretary of defense.” It seems Mr. Clarke was actually referring to the desire of the U.S. military leaders to leave Somalia rather than their ordering it without administration knowledge. Why is this important?

Because he purposely misled the class into believing the U.S. military, not the administration controlling the military, made the decision to leave Somalia at a critical time in the mission.

When given a chance to correct the record, he chose not to do so. This was well before I knew Mr. Clarke had a book coming out or that he would have such a role in the current debate.

- - - - - - -

The bottom line is Mr. Clarke obfuscated the truth in my presence for some unknown reason. After this experience with him, I cannot trust his judgment. The timing of his book release, his prior silence on the topic and his close relationship with campaign advisers, coupled with my personal experience, cause me to question his credibility on this subject and I now suspect it is for political and/or personal gain.

As September 11 commission member and former Navy Secretary John Lehman has noted, it is truly unfortunate for the country that, despite Mr. Clarke's personal knowledge and experience, he now lacks credibility. I am sorry to say I agree with that assessment.

- - - - - - -

This is a duplicate of the orignial post from the nikita demosthenes website.

CNN Bias

Ready for another example of media bias?

CNN: Israeli police enter holy site to quell protests

Israeli police entered a Jerusalem holy site and used stun grenades and rubber pellets to quell Palestinians throwing rocks at police and Jewish worshippers at the end of Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque, according to a police spokesman.

There were some injuries and at least 14 arrests, police said.

The mosque is located on the Temple Mount or Haram al Sharif, one of the holiest sites in Islam and is above the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.

The entire Temple Mount is the holiest place in Judaism, not just the wall.

UPDATE:
CNN makes a correction:

The mosque is on the Temple Mount, or Haram al Sharif, a site sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and is above the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray.

The area, long a flashpoint for conflict, has been the site of numerous clashes.

Religious Jews consider the Temple Mount to be holiest site in Judaism, but the Israeli government law bans from praying on the Temple Mount to maintain the status quo between the Jewish and Muslim communities.

CNN proves once again that haste makes waste.

Hard Left, No Balls

News Flash — Chris Matthews and Dick Clark agreed on china patterns and were last seen boarding a red-eye to SF.

I forced myself to watch Hardball last night much as one peers under a rock…you know what types lurk there. Seriously, what a waste of time. Yes, yes, I understand Matthews is a Democrat partisan, a political commentator, not a journalist, as if there is much of a distinction nowdays, but he is smart politically and often has a different spin than his journalist brethern.

Matthews appeared awe struck in the face of the brilliance that is Dick Clarke.

Treacly sycophancy is not must-see TV.

Are we through or must we witness another round of journalists and commentators verbally fellating Clarke after Dr. Rice testifies?

Crazy Al Blindsides LaRouchie

Leftist Censorship now Comes With a Free Aggravated Assault

From Little Tiny Lies.

All the idiots who defend Al Franken have a big problem to cope with today. Bigger than the abysmal stupidity they have to cope with in the first place.

Al just flipped out and attacked a heckler at a Dean rally. A LaRouchie was yelling during the festivities. The shrimpy, bespectacled, hobbitlike hack comic jumped him and knocked him to the ground. Al later said he did it out of respect for free speech.

Let's see. What was the LaRouchie doing when Al went postal on him? Let's say it together…SPEAKING. So I guess to Al, “freedom” means “the right to be sat on by a third-tier comedy writer.”

Censorship is almost exclusively the tool of the left now. When was the last time anyone on the right even tried to silence someone? John Mitchell couldn't even make his own wife shut up. But the left does it all the time. They try to get Rush taken off the air. They pass Orwellian, authoritarian rules on college campuses, essentially forbidding anyone to say anything negative about anything the left likes. They throw eggs at Arnold while he campaigns for governor. They barge onstage while President Reagan tries to accept awards. Now they've progressed to outright beatings.

I haven't seen the guy Al took down, but it's safe to assume he wasn't a Navy SEAL or a martial arts instructor. I wish some day he'd pull a stunt like that on someone like Ollie North or J.C. Watts. They'd take Al's little shrimpy body home in three shopping bags and a damp sponge.

Remember, conservatives: free speech isn't for us. It's not even for the LaRouchies. It's for Al and guys who want to photograph crucifixes soaking in urine. So if you want to heckle at a Dean rally, make sure you bring your own bucket of urine to stand in. Then you're golden. So to speak.

BBC: Anti-Jewish Speech is Great...

...but Anti-Muslim speech is forbidden.

Fun with Numbers

The Associated Press shows how to cook the numbers to get a story with this doozy today:
"Most U.S. Iraq Deaths Are Reservists": :

Overall, since the start of hostilities last March, 14 percent of all U.S. military deaths have been members of the Army Guard or Reserve. The Army says it has had 68 reservists killed so far, compared with nine reservists among the Marines, two in the Navy and one in the Air Force.

I'm away from my AP Stylebook at the moment, but I'm pretty sure 14 percent doesn't meet the definition of "most."

And that's not the only boneheaded part of the story. The writer mentions 10 of the 39 deaths in December as reservists, and then makes a "trend" case:

It's too early to know whether December's proportional increase in deaths among citizen soldiers was the start of a trend, but some analysts say the jump is both politically and militarily troublesome, even if it proves temporary.

It's too early because the total number of deaths in December was absurdly low to be talking about "proportional increases." THERE WERE ONLY 39 DEATHS TO BEGIN WITH! Not to mention that, for a "trend" to occur, there has to be more than one instance. Definitionally speaking, it's OBVIOUS that it's too early to tell if it's a trend because IT'S THE ONLY INSTANCE OF ITS KIND!

Not to mention the fact that 14 percent of 89 deaths - the total for November - is 12.9 deaths, AT LEAST TWO MORE DEATHS THAN THE NUMBER FOR DECEMBER!

In November there were 89 Deaths - "the deadliest month of the war" according to the AP writer. So there was a drop in the total number BY MORE THAN HALF(!) and yet the focus of the story is the increase in the PERCENTAGE of reservist deaths!?!?

I'm sorry. I thought this was AP, not Reuters.

Found at COINTELPRO Tool via Instapundit

Cross-posted with slight modification at my blog

The New York Times has a new Jayson Blair problem

Per Michelle Malkin in National Review Online:

* * *

Looks like the New York Times has another ugly Jayson Blair-like scandal on its hands. This time, the young minority reporter is Charlie LeDuff, a part Native-American, part-Cajun writer, known as a rising star and favorite pet of former executive editor Howell Raines.

The hotshot LeDuff is now in hot water over his cribbing of anecdotes from someone else's book about kayaking down the Los Angeles River for his own Page One fluff story about — you guessed it! — kayaking down the Los Angeles River. An embarrassing correction published in the New York Times on Dec. 8 explained:

An article last Monday about the Los Angeles River recounted its history and described the reporter's trip downriver in a kayak. In research for the article, the reporter consulted a 1999 book by Blake Gumprecht, "The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth." Several passages relating facts and lore about the river distilled passages from the book. Although the facts in those passages were confirmed independently-through other sources or the reporter's first hand observation-the article should have acknowledged the significant contribution of Mr. Gumprecht's research.
Gumprecht, an assistant professor of geography at the University of New Hampshire and a former newspaper reporter, told Slate's Jack Shafer he was "fairly shocked" by the similarities between his book and the Times's story, and that LeDuff's borrowing went beyond accepted journalistic practices.

Perhaps not coincidentally, LeDuff was a good pal of the disgraced Jayson Blair. According to New York Metro:

One of Blair's closest friends was Charlie LeDuff, a rising star in Raines's firmament known for his colorful writing style. "Jayson would sort of tag along" with him, said a friend of LeDuff's. "He was very competitive with Charlie, and then kind of took it many, many steps too far-because he could get away with it."

Like Blair, LeDuff climbed the Times's ladder swiftly thanks to the media diversity machine. The 36-year-old scribe went straight from journalism school to a minority internship at the Times to full-time reporter in 1995.

* * *

In September, author and columnist Marvin Olasky reported that LeDuff attributed fake quotes to a naval officer in San Diego to fit the reporter's antiwar agenda.

Lieutenant Commander Beidler, 32, on his way to Iraq in January, was walking with his family toward the end of Naval Station Pier 2 when the Times's Charlie LeDuff asked him for his general view of war protesters. Mr. Beidler recalls stating, "Protesters have a right to protest, and our job is to defend those rights. But in protesting, they shouldn't protest blindly; instead, they should provide reasonable solutions to the problem." The LeDuff version had Mr. Beidler criticizing Los Angeles protesters but turning his guns at a complacent United States: "It's war, Commander Beidler said, and the nation is fat. 'No one is screaming for battery-powered cars,' he added." The journalist then turned to Commander Beidler wife's Christal: "'I'm just numb,' she said as she patted down his collar. 'I'll cry myself to sleep, I'm sure.'"

Mr. Beidler was at sea when he discovered how far at sea the Times's reporting was, but he sent off a letter to the editor stating what he had said and arguing that the quotes about national fatness and battery-powered cars "were completely fabricated by Mr. LeDuff in order to connect our nation's dependence on oil with the current military buildup in the Middle East."

Mr. Beidler also stated, "Mr. LeDuff continued his shameful behavior by attributing words and actions to my wife that were not her own. Not only did she not say she would cry herself to sleep, but she didn't pat down my collar either, which was impossible for her to accomplish with my civilian shirt hidden under my jacket and a duffle bag hanging on my shoulder closest to her."

In response, a Times editor shrugged off Beidler's complaint. LeDuff, he informed Beidler, "thinks that he accurately represented his interview with you and your wife, and therefore so do I. If you have another encounter some day with The New York Times, I hope its outcome is more satisfactory to you."

* * *

Via The Spoons Experience.

Liberal Loons Minimize Importance of Saddam Capture

Hello in There, Pea Brains

From Little Tiny Lies.

The capture of Saddam Hussein has done a couple of wonderful things for the right. First, it caused liberals to prove, once again, that they are praying for bad news for America. Second, it showed that no matter how well Bush does his job, they will dishonestly portray success as failure every time.

We all know the story of the Dean supporters crying over Saddam's capture. It came as no surprise to conservatives. The left has been praying for--and sometimes working to cause--local and national misfortunes that would make people miserable enough to vote against Republicans. We all remember how liberal California legislators were caught conspiring to screw up the state's finances purely for P.R. purposes. For the left, a happy, prosperous, secure America--the dream of the right--has become a threat to be staved off at all costs.

Now we're seeing journalists from the liberal establishment press trying to paint Saddam's capture--an important victory--as insignificant or even unfortunate.

In one example, eyelidless NBC news gnome Katie Couric interviewed Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and flatly asserted that our latest victory was "symbolic" and that Saddam could not have been coordinating the insurgency from a hole. And she suggested it had actually been a mistake to capture Saddam, because it might make our enemies angry!

First of all, dumbass, Saddam Hussein does not need to be in hands-on mode to be a tremendous threat. If you had any interest in facts instead of pushing your liberal agenda, you might consider the fact that Hussein is believed to have stolen something like thirty billion dollars from his people. Sure, he lived like a groundhog, but his ability to tap into huge financial resources made him very dangerous. Are you even dimly aware that he was paying people to attack us and the Israelis? Even in his humble burrow, he had $750,000 in cash on him. What do you think he was doing with it? Buying take-out falafel? There's a difference between planning attacks and funding them.

Second, the Iraqi people were afraid of this man. They have been reluctant to commit to cooperation with the coalition because they feared that people like you would drive us to abandon them. They were afraid that just as they began to get with the program and openly defy the Baathists, we would turn tail and run, and Saddam's goons would come back and start reprisals. His capture is going to give Iraqis courage to move forward and turn their back on the anti-American past.

Third, his capture has led to big scores against the insurgency. He had a wealth of useful material in his briefcase, and the coalition has put it to use. As a result, people who were conspiring to commit murder last week will be rotting in jail this week.

Fourth, you should be slapped for sheer stupidity for saying capturing the leader of the insurgency is bad because it makes our enemies mad. According to your feeble logic, anything that makes our enemies mad is a bad idea. In other words, we should never fight back, because fighting back provokes a response. If you were in charge, when bin Laden destroyed the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people, you would have sent him a fruit basket. Guess what, stupid? On this planet, we FIGHT our enemies and we're nice to our FRIENDS.

Of course, if Bill Clinton had captured Hussein, Couric's dress shields would be damp from her enthusiasm.

She's not the only one stupid and shortsighted enough to twist the meaning of this glorious event. I have to say it again. Thank God for Rupert Murdoch. If it weren't for Fox, we'd think we had lost the war.

Bush served Thanksgiving turkey to the troops in Iraq. Bush-haters serve up a turkey too.

President Bush serves turkey to the troops on Thanksgiving

In a recent silly pseudo-scandal, Bush-haters in the media and elsewhere actually tried to push a story that Bush hadn't really served turkey to the troops in Baghdad on Thanksgiving. Unfortunately for the Bush-haters, their false story has been undercut by a wealth of evidence, including the above photo, and the below stories.

1. This recent story in The Weekly Standard.

2. This definitive posting by Instapundit.

Is this the best the Bush-haters can come up with? Sad, really.

I Thought "Canard" Meant "Duck"

Bush Turkey a Political Plant?

Finally, a true scandal for the Bush administration. It seems that the turkey George Bush posed with in Baghdad was not actually eaten. At least not right away. It was a spare turkey intended for decorative purposes.

Naturally, my faith in the man is shot. If he would pose with a dinner-dodging turkey, who knows how low he would sink?

I'll give the left credit. I checked a few blogs, and I don't see any mention of "Turkeygate," and to the best of my knowledge, Hillary Clinton has not said anything about an independent turkey counsel. I suppose they realize they would look pretty stupid--moreso than usual--complaining about a quasi-bogus turkey photo when George Bush did, in fact, serve the GI's and refrain from dining.

Of course, the left may be unaware that the turkey's credentials are being questioned. The information appeared on Drudge's site, not in The Utne Reader, Mother Jones, MTV, or a pop-up book.

I admit, sometimes I hope the left will step in it, just so I can push them in a little deeper and hold their heads under.

Oh, wait. I'm wrong. The Washington Post devoted NINE HUNDRED WORDS to the turkey scandal. Not fifty. Not an offhand mention in a real news story. Nine hundred words of nothing but turkey-slinging and stuffing-raking.

Way to go, Post. Like your credibility as a serious news outlet wasn't already in the crapper. What's next? "BUSH USES AIR FORCE ONE LAVATORY, FAILS TO LOWER SEAT." Maybe Jenna and Barbara will get the turkey a fake I.D. I'm still waiting for that lying weasel Robert Fisk to publish a story. "Innocent Turkey Burned on 100% of its Body in Bush Iraq Raid."

There is no basis for reports that the turkey has an upcoming spread in Vanity Fair.

I am so disenchanted. Thank God I still have my Nader/LaDuke 2000 shirt.

This originally appeared at Little Tiny Lies.

Scandal: American General admits that he's a ... Christian

In a shocking development, an American General admits that he's ...

... a Christian.

* * *

IN AN EMERGING scandal, NBC News has produced tapes proving beyond deniability that the new deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence is ... a Christian. Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin has been captured on a series of grainy tapes, attesting to his faith at churches and prayer breakfasts. Having driven the Judeo-Christian value system out of the public square, the classrooms and the Alabama Supreme Court, liberals now want to drive it out of church.

In one "inflammatory" remark, Boykin said that the enemy was not Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, but "is a spiritual enemy. He's called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan."

* * *

Sen. Kerry said Boykin's remarks were "un-American." The only people you can't call un-American are the ones burning the American flag or demanding an apology from a man who called Osama bin Laden satanic.

Howard Dean said the American flag "does not belong to Gen. Boykin," it belongs to all Americans. Could someone rustle up a liberal who actually owns a flag?

In the most pathetic case of pandering in recorded history, Sen. Joe Lieberman called for Boykin's resignation before the group, but still got booed. Lieberman said "the war on terror is a war on terrorists, not religion." Who is Lieberman standing up for here? Is he upset because Boykin compared the terrorists to Satan or Satan to the terrorists?

Boykin is a highly decorated officer who has participated in nearly every major military operation for the past 25 years – from Jimmy Carter's failed attempt to rescue hostages in Iran, to Reagan's successful invasion of Grenada, to Clinton's disastrous "Black Hawk Down" episode in Somalia. (Say, anyone notice a pattern?) No one has questioned the general's job qualifications. Liberals want him fired because he spoke in a church. If Gen. Boykin had been caught giving talks to NAMBLA instead of church groups, Democrats would be hailing him as a patriot for exercising his First Amendment rights.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., demanded that Boykin be reprimanded or reassigned, saying his views were "extreme," "closed-minded" and "zealous." We should be more open-minded toward people trying to kill us.

Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, said Boykin's remarks "fly in the face of the pleas of the president and violate the basic principles of tolerance and inclusion that are implicit in the culture of this nation." Uh-oh. If liberals don't like what Boykin said about the terrorists, wait until they find out about the MOAB bombs the U.S. military has been dropping on them.

* * *

The Heart of Ronald Reagan

A few things that CBS and Leslie Moonves won't tell you about President Ronald Reagan. From "The Heart of Ronald Reagan" by Michael Reagan:

* * *

The Heart of Ronald Reagan

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

Ronald Reagan, about to be portrayed as an unfeeling, forgetful conservative, had the biggest heart of any President in America’s history – so big that CBS had no trouble finding it when they decided to plunge a dagger into it.

The liberal network had the gall to allow a scriptwriter to put words in my father’s mouth he never spoke – words that pictured him as having no sympathy for AIDS victims.

Now CBS’s defenders are trying to excuse the network for its shameful fictionalization of my dad’s life by noting that the miniseries "The Reagans" gives him credit for many of the great things he did, such as winning the cold war, but they cannot gloss over the fact that the Ronald Reagan shown in the miniseries is not the real Ronald Reagan.

They want to talk about his forgetfulness, but he never forgot the people of this country. He gave us all a tax break, created tens of thousands of jobs, and restored our faith in ourselves. He never forgot the hostages in Iran who were freed the day that he was sworn in as president.

He never forgot the suffering people behind the Iron Curtain, living in squalor and poverty and under the gun for all those many years and he did everything he could to free them.

And he never forgot who he was, and where he had come from. He remembered being poor. He remembered struggling.

The important things he needed to know he never forgot.

On the day he took office, right after he was told that the hostages in Iran had been freed, he called former President Carter and told him, "You’re the one who did the work, you’re the one that did so much to free those hostages. You are the one who should get the credit." And he gave the former president Air Force One and sent him to Germany to welcome the hostages. That was the heart of Ronald Reagan. That story, like so many others, was never told because my Dad didn’t trumpet his good deeds.

The miniseries won’t tell you the whole story about my dad’s visit to Japan when he learned that on the 747 jet he was traveling only the first class section would be occupied. He went out and got families of service men and women serving in Japan and filled up the back of the plane with them so they could visit their loved ones they hadn’t seen for over a year. They won’t tell you how he took them to Japan and brought them back home on the plane without it costing them one cent.
That was also the heart of Ronald Reagan.

There are so many stories you don’t hear from the people who are hateful, the people who are spiteful, the people who are jealous, the people who never liked Ronald Reagan.

In a column last July I wrote that CBS was planning to produce a miniseries on my father, and noted that while I hadn’t seen the script, I understood it had been leaked around Hollywood and was anything but friendly to my dad.

After all, Hollywood has never warmed up to him, even when he went to bat for actors as president of the Screen Actor’s Guild and won them the right to get residual payments when their movies were rerun – a right he refused to give to himself because he thought that this would be a conflict of interest. So his movies alone are exempt from residuals. They also forgot that they elected him president of the Guild nine times.

Moreover, not once – ever – did Hollywood even think about giving my dad an award in recognition of his many services to the film industry and the people who work in it. So I wouldn’t expect them to do a positive miniseries about somebody who gave them residuals so they could take the summers off.

And they also forgot to go to the people who knew him best – his family. Nobody at CBS came near any of us. They were probably afraid we’d tell the truth about the heart of Ronald Reagan and that would have spoiled their plans to show him as they wanted to see him and not as he was a wonderful caring human being and one of the greatest and kindest men ever to serve as President of the United States.

* * *

Mike Reagan, the eldest son of President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Premiere Radio Network. Comments to mereagan@hotmail.com for Mike.

Via Curmudgeonly & Skeptical.

See, also, Michael Reagan's web site.

See, also, Reagan: A Life in Letters. From amazon.com:

* * *

Whether discussing economic policy with a political foe, dispensing marital advice, or sharing a joke with a pen pal, Reagan comes across as gracious, caring, and inquisitive. Even when responding to blistering criticism, he remained fair and thoughtful. As one would expect, many of the letters are addressed to world leaders, well-known American politicians, pundits, and journalists, and these are certainly interesting for their historical relevance and insights into Reagan's diplomatic style. Among the more fascinating notes, however, are those sent to private citizens, some of which are quite long and detailed. That Reagan would spend the time, as both governor of California and President, to respond to the concerns and inquiries of constituents reveals that he never forgot how he got to his positions of leadership in the first place. He even went so far on occasions to help make business connections for people he had never met in person. He also sent many letters to children. In one, he encouraged a young student to turn off the TV and grab a book instead: "Reading is a magic carpet and you can never be lonely if you learn to enjoy a good book." Taken as a whole, these revealing, well-written, and entertaining letters trace the story of Reagan's life and times as well as any standard biography. They also offer further proof of why he was dubbed "The Great Communicator."

* * *

Rumsfeld's memo to senior staff clearly shows that Rumsfeld is ... doing his job.

The full text of Secretary Rumsfeld's memo to senior staff is provided below. It clearly shows that Secretary Rumsfeld is ... doing his job.

It's a short, relatively informal memo to senior staff, exhorting them to work harder on long-range ideas in the war on terrorism. The only thing this memo reveals is that Secretary Rumsfeld deserves praise for his vigilence and long-range vision. We should be glad we have a Secretary of Defense who takes his job very seriously - and is constantly "thinking outside the box" to protect America's security.

Lefty (and mainstream media) commentators have said that Rumsfeld's memo is proof that the war on terrorism is not going as well as the Administration has said. This is, not surprisingly, a double lie by the left. Or rather, the setting up of yet another straw-man just to knock it down - a tactic much loved by the left.

The Administration has repeatedly, mind-numbingly, said that the war on terror would be a long, difficult undertaking. This is consistent with the Rumsfeld memo. Recently, the Administration (and most of the righty blogosphere) have correctly complained that the news coverage from Iraq has been far too slanted to the negative - that there's lots of good being done in Iraq. The Rumsfeld memo says nothing inconsistent with this view. Lastly, the Rumsfeld memo does not say things are going badly in Iraq, as the lefties spin it, it just exhorts the senior staff to continue to remain aggressive in finding and disrupting terrorism. This exhortation, on the part of Secretary Rumsfeld, might fairly be characterized as: doing his job.

The following is the full text of the Rumsfeld memo to senior staff re: Global War on Terrorism:

* * *

TO: Gen. Dick Myers, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Pete Pace, Doug Feith

FROM: Donald Rumsfeld

SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism

The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?

DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere - one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.

With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be: We are having mixed results with Al Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them - nonetheless, a great many remain at large.

USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis. USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban - Omar, Hekmatyar, etc. With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started. Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the U.S.? Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror? Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental?

My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?

Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?

The U.S. is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions. Do we need a new organization? How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools? Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"?

It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog. Does CIA need a new finding? Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course? What else should we be considering?

Please be prepared to discuss this at our meeting on Saturday or Monday. Thanks.

* * *

Keep up the good work, Rummy.

NPR providing transcripts from Israel/Palestine stories

This is only due to constant pressure from groups who think NPR is biased toward one side or the other in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Transcripts are available FREE! for all stories related to this Middle East hot spot.

Normally, NPR charges $4.95 for individual story transcripts.

Highlights include:
a Cornell West commentary
A Remebrance of Edward Said
and various breaking news stories.

Interestingly, at least one story about Iraq and Intelligence made it into this archive.

NYTimes Scoop: Intelligence Evaluations Are Fallible!

Today's New York Times editorial withholds its breaking news until the last sentence:

..."the fallibility of intelligence evaluations has become all too apparent."

This astonishing discovery prompted the editors to call for independent experts to inspect the inspectors. In a surprise move, however, the editors did not insist on unanimous UN (aka UUN) approval and control of the inspector inspectors.

The Unscientific Nature of Poll Reporting

[From the Chicago Report]

I've said before that one of the biggest areas in which media bias can manifest itself unintentionally is in poll report. Polling is a science involving various sampling techniques, question strategies, and methods of contacting respondents. As such, most all polls can tell us something about how the electorate will vote in upcoming elections. However, when reporting poll findings, journalists (especially TV journalists) often fail to keep results in their proper scientific context; thereby gleaning the wrong message from the data, usually a more favorable one. My argument is best made by looking at several recent polls and what you aren't hearing from journalists.

The first is a poll showing that only 38% of Americans think Bush is beatable. Polls like this tell us absolutely nothing about how Americans will vote. They only serve to gauge a general public opinion and become important only in the context of who it is that thinks he is beatable and the affect their opinion will have on voter turnout. Without this supplemental data it’s a pretty irrelevant stat. In other words, it should mean something to campaign strategists but very little to election watchers. Yet, Foxnews and CNN have both cited the poll without giving it any sort of context.

As I was going to bed last night, I heard a similar poll being reported as news on one of the local stations. The poll found that two years after 9/11, +70% of the public believes there will be another terror attack. Again, this poll doesn’t tell us all that much about an actual threat, but only about the level of fear. To the untrained ear, this one might even cause fear; “If 70% percent of the country is afraid, maybe I should be as well”.

Another poll getting a lot of underserved press is the Time/CNN survey asking: “If George W. Bush runs for reelection in 2004, would you say you will definitely vote for him, might vote for or against him, or will you definitely vote against him?” To which 41% answered "definitely against", while only 29% responded "definitely for". On the surface this poll appears to show some serious slippage in Bush's support. But since only hardcore partisans generally answer "definitely" before the exact candidates are known, we can that this poll is really only reflecting a fairly normal party alignment. Since FDR, Dems have had a major advantage in the number of people identifying themselves with their party. At one point there were five Democrats to every three Republicans. While this Democratic hegemony has begun to crack over the last several decades they still have a decisive advantage.

There is also something a little vague about the way the question is asked. Notice the options are definitely for, maybe, and definitely against. "Maybe" is a very broad category hiding tons of nuance. For instance someone could be tentatively for Bush, but unwilling to say definitely, which is to say never.These people might be classified as leaning toward Bush. There is also sure to be a number of those maybes leaning to a Democrat. But suppose for argument’s sake that of the 25% maybes, 20% are Bush leaners will only 5% are Democrat leaners. Well the election results look much different. If the leaners vote the way they lean Bush could easily best his opponent by 4% or 5%. So the definitely for or against data only tells us the level of base loyalty that either side has.

Incidentally, other unreported polls contradict this poll’s finding. In a Ipsos-Reid/Cook Political Report Poll (via Polling Report.com) that asks a near identical question, 38% responded that they would definitely vote for Bush, while only 36% responded they'd "definitely vote for someone else". The discrepancy between the two polls highlights an equally important question about these sorts of Bush vs. Someone else polls. What they can do is expose an incumbent's weakness. What they can't do is predict election outcomes. When someone responds to such polls they very possibly imagine their ideal candidate, one who satisfies all their ideological criteria. Yet, elections are not between one real and one ideal candidate. They are between two very real and thereby flawed candidates. what's telling is that in the very same Time/CNN poll discussed above where only 29% of respondents declared they would "definitely" vote for Bush, head-to-head matchups were decidedly for Bush: Bush gets 50% to Kerry's 45%, 50% to Lieberman's 44%, 52% to Dean's 42% (how's that for a "frontrunner"), and 53% against Gephardt's 42%.

A final example. Last week a CBS News Poll reportedly found that only 35% of registered voters could actually name a candidate running for the Democratic nomination. The poll’s finding was greeted by shock and awe from journalists and pundits. The student of politics, however, is not the least bit surprised. Why? Because it is generally well known that only about 25% of registered voters participate in primaries. Considering this fact, 35% is not actually that bad, especially not this early in the game.

Polls are very important tools for politicians and strategists who look at them in a whole nexus of polls and historical trends. However, they are unfortunately very popular tools for journalists (specifically TV). They make an easy story, much easier than actually covering the substance of a campaign. Often called “horse race journalism”, modern media coverage is generally about who is winning and not necessarily about what anyone is saying. Polls have to be reported within the context of general political analysis by experts, not flashed on CNN Headline News with little to no support information. Polls have affects on the way voters turn out and vote and must be treated with responsibility and intelligence.

Deadly war souvenir

I almost titled this post "Japanese Fisk Bombs Arab." Read on.

Shouting Across the Pacific (another BlogSpot victim - scroll down to "Oh, they're protecting the queen.") has some background on the Japanese reporter who caused an explosion in the Amman, Jordan airport (which killed a Jordanian security guard) by taking home a cluster bomblet as a souvenir of the Iraq war.

As Charles Oliver puts it,

Just cause the prez ends hostilities it doesn't mean all the munitions are turned off.

It gets better. Turns out said clueless reporter is

pretty much the Robert Fisk of Japan. Not in a literate sense, but as a photojournalist Gomi's pictures focused on the daily suffering of the civilians, but only that which was attributable to the war. The implication was the US that was visiting unjustified hell on these poor, confused people who simply would be fine if left alone.

Charles gives some examples of his stories. But it gets even better: "Gomi" means "trash" in Japanese. Fisking . . . . Trashing . . . . that works.

Need I point out that this would have been a much bigger story if an American reporter had caused that guard's death?

Pro-Marxist Slant Pushed at ABC, Retired Correspondent Claims

A former ABC news correspondent claims Peter Jennings repeatedly changed his reports to make them more favorable to Marxist regimes.

Collins is speaking publicly about his years at ABC and CNN for the first time because he has walked away from the news business and no longer desires to work in the industry. . . .

"The first obligation of a reporter and a news organization is to get the facts straight and report both sides of the story," Collins said. But he didn't see the issue as one that was charged politically. "I would not frame this whole question as just a left - right issue, but rather as a question of competence," Collins said.

Collins believes CNN's recent admission and his own experiences in Central America are merely "scratching at the surface" of what Collins regards as a long standing failure of the media to report accurately about despotic governments, particularly left-of-center authoritarian regimes.

CNN's Compromise

I know that revelations of CNN complicity in Saddam's propaganda are old news, but this piece by Andrea Levin is required reading for understanding that the phenomenon is pervasive and ongoing.

That is to say, the practices employed in Baghdad characterize CNN's kowtowing to dictators elsewhere. This extends to the autocratic regimes throughout the Arab Middle East, now being serviced by a recently launched CNN Arabic language division....

It is hardly surprising, then, that with regard to the Arab-Israeli
conflict CNN exhibits a tendency to prefer formulations
agreeable to Arab leaders while minimizing realities that
might offend. Thus, on the very day Eason Jordan unburdened
himself, CNN analyst Bill Schneider declared "...there could
be a fresh start [in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations], but
only if President Bush decides to push for a peace deal,
which means pushing Israel." (Emphasis added) The notion
that "pushing Israel" is the key reflects, of course, the Arab
perspective, not the Israeli or American one, which sees
reform of a corrupt and terror-promoting Palestinian Authority
as the central task.

Nor are such CNN observations unusual. Shortly after
Schneider's comments, CNN anchorwoman Paula Zahn
questioned Arab journalist Hisham Milhem about
Arab-Israeli peace and its supposed role in placating
anti-American sentiment in the Arab "street." Milhem
promptly responded: "...if you're talking about people
who need liberation, need liberation more than the Iraqis, they
are the Palestinians, who are under tremendous occupation,
brutal, Draconian occupation."

"I was wrong."

First Eric Alterman admitted he was wrong. Now "Hardball" host Chris Matthews says:

"I thought there would be an Arab revolt, a tremendous uproar. . . Nothing happened. I hate being wrong, but I’m glad."

CNN to DT...get stuffed!

Re: We need no lectures from broadsheets
Date: 16 April 2003

Sir - You printed a view about CNN that jumped to a number of conclusions about our staff's actions in Iraq (leader, April 14). I would like to set the record straight.

You claim that, in Tikrit last weekend, a CNN security adviser exchanged fire with Iraqi troops, thus making the lives of war correspondents harder and more dangerous.

The use of security guards and advisers is sadly nothing new for our profession. There are some factions around the world that see all the media as a legitimate target and for that reason the use of armed security is widespread, particularly given the situation in Iraq - probably the most dangerous conflict for members of our profession.

Brent Sadler and his crew were a target of documented assassination attempts in northern Iraq in the months leading up to war and CNN makes no apologies for providing all the security necessary to protect them.

In Tikrit this week our security person reacted to a deliberate attack that placed CNN people in mortal danger. He probably saved their lives and I am not sure what your implied alternative should have been.

CNN, with the BBC, is an industry leader in safety provision and training for its staff. Because of that leadership, I head the International News Safety Institute, which advises global media on safety and operating procedures in hostile areas. Broadcasters lead the way in this respect - we need no lectures from The Daily Telegraph.

From:
Chris Cramer, President, CNN International Networks Honorary President, International News Safety Institute, Atlanta, Georgia

I see Nuthink!

re: Committed to impartiality
Date: 14 April 2003

Sir - You criticised the BBC correspondent in Baghdad for a truthful report the weekend before last that he could not yet see any American troops in the city (leading article, April 10). Once the BBC could confirm details, we updated our reports. The BBC is committed to impartiality.

From:
Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC News, London W14

I have posted my thoughts on the Beeb and the war.

Update: A British listener responds in kind. A rather unsatisfied licence fee payer.

Too much coverage of journalist deaths?

Romenesko's News has a letter from journalist Constantine von Hoffman discussing whether there's been too much coverage of the death of journalists as compared to the deaths of coaltion soldiers or Iraqis:

Are journalists' death getting a disproportionate amount of attention?

This came to mind because of a few recent incidents in the Boston Globe. Last Friday, the Globe's story on Michael Kelly's death was a front page. In the Sunday Globe, the death of Benjamin Sammis, a helicopter pilot from Rehoboth, Mass., killed in action, was teased from page 1 with the actual story on page A-33. In today's Globe, (4/10) Kelly's funeral -- with picture -- was on page 1 of the Metro/Region section. I may have missed it (and that's not an attempt to be coy, just an admission that I may in fact have missed a story that ran) but I haven't seen any coverage of the funerals of the local soldiers who have died in Iraq. That may also be because their bodies have not yet been returned home.

While I don't believe this was intentional, the net result of these
placements reads as if one person's life is worth more than the other's.

I agree that deaths of journalists have gotten disproportionate coverage as compared to the coverage of coalition deaths. Part of that is a fact of journalism - some lives do matter more, in a news sense, than others. A housewife in the Bronx dying of heart failure isn't going to get the same coverage as, say, the death of someone like Barbra Striesand, even if of natural causes. One of the arguments made by the writer of this letter is that Kelly matters no more in his realm than Sammis mattered in his, and that's true. It's also true that in the broader realm of the Globe's readership, more would know of Kelly than Sammis.

But in another sense, von Hoffman is correct. The intense coverage of Kelly has as much to do with the journalists' connection to him as it does the actual objective news value. If Kelly's death had happened in, say, a car accident in Virginia or a heart attack on a tennis court, it would have received much less coverage. Journalists are sensitized to the risks of their comrades in a combat situation, and they are mourning and memorializing their dead within their own accustomed framework: In words and pictures. The other combat deaths - those of military personnel - are an anticipated part of their war coverage package that doesn't touch them personally. I don't mean by that to say that they don't care about the soldiers who die - I'm sure they do. This is about a comparison, not an effort to pillory the press on the coverage.

It speaks to some degree of media bias, however. They are affected by emotion, and they do make coverage decisions on that basis. This is just one example, albeit one that stands out because of the availability of the direct one to one comparison of death coverage. If the media wanted to be completely objective, they could have established a formula for dealing with war deaths (say, photo on front page always jumping to a specified inside page for details), and confined the coverage of Kelly's death to that same formula. Again, I'm not criticizing them for the broader coverage of Kelly's death. It's just important that they - and others - realize that the coverage was as a result of the death touching home to journalists more thoroughly than the deaths of military personnel did and do. They are in essence using their media outlets as a grieving mechanism - not a readership/community grief, as was the case with the 9/11 coverage, but a very personal grief centered in (although not limited to) the media community.

Spain's "so-called" journalists show true colors

Spanish Journalists showed their stupidity, arrogance, ignorance and lack of professionalism today with a disgusting display before their own prime minister and British foreign minister Jack Straw (not Jack Frost).

"Journalists snubbed Spain's prime minister and Britain's foreign minister Wednesday, putting cameras, microphones and notebooks on the ground to protest the death of a Spanish TV cameraman killed by a U.S. tank shell in Baghdad."

Those so-called journos are lucky I'm not still editing, or they'd all be looking for jobs with Arab News. So much for objectivity. So much for reporting the truth. So much for finding out the whole truth before making judgment.

First, these journalists were in the middle of a war zone, with sniper fire all around. A hostile environment if ever there was one. Mistakes will be made. That's life. That's war. Ask people who covered Viet Nam. Bullets don't play the "impartial observer" game.

Now, there is speculation that the U.S. may not have fired the deadly round. We don't know.

But that's the whole point. These "so-called" journos have made up their minds prior to finding out all the facts. And this isn't an isolated incident.

These "so-called" journos have been doing this a lot recently.

Say what you will about Helen Thomas, or any of the other liberal members of the media. They know to do their jobs, ask the questions and write down the answers.

The FIRST time one of these cheap "so-called" journalists came in after pulling that stunt at my newspaper would be the LAST time ANYONE pulled that kind of stunt at my newspaper.

Here's my canned speech: "You want to make a political statement, you do it on your own time, bub. But while you're shooting that camera, covering the prime minister, you are on MY time. You are representing the eyes and ears of our readers, and if you can't do that professionally, I've got a drawer full of resumes from people who would love to have the opportunity."

Al Jazerra and (Arab) street cred

Could it possibly be that Al Jaz deliberately sent their people into harm's way to get their Arab street cred back? In recent days they have been taking a pummelling in the Arab Press and have even been accused of being a front for the Mossad/Zionists. So bad has its gotten, that a new network has been formed called Al Arribya. In order to boost their ratings they hired Peter Arnett, the voice of reason and clarity.

Think of it this way, if you wanted to convince someone you are not a friend to his enemy, getting one of yours killed by the enemy might be a good idea right? Now they can wail to their viewers that the horrible Americans have killed one of their great reporters. Al Jaz has been saying it was a deliberate act to "silence them".

Al Jaz has a media martyr killed by the Americans. I can't think of a better marketing tool in the Arab world.

Live TB Beats Reporting and Editing

If there is one thing this war has made clear, it is how much better it is to have the raw news information rather than the predigested reporter and talking head version.

Over and over again, I have seen things on live TV that were later incorrectly reported. For example, I just heard an NBC talking head general describe the hits on the Palestine hotel as a lot of small arms fire. Obviously he was talking about the building across the river which received a spectacular hosing down with explosive cannon rounds. This is just one little example.

I have heard a number of others today, describing last night's (or yesterday's) battle. Since I stayed up and watched the battle live, and have a good map and .9 meter satellite image of Baghdad, I know what happened in a number of cases that were misdescribed.

I wonder what it will be like when ubiquitous web cams allow us to see many more incidents unedited? It's likely to beat the current efforts of journalists.

NYTimes: Iraq Over, Augusta Back

On the most momentous and newsful day of the war, with our troops in downtown Baghdad, Chemical Ali dead and WMD found, the New York Times had a higher priority for its Op/Ed page: forcing a private club to go coed.

More twitting of the twit

PoliticaObscura posted on the News page about Brit Will Self's anti-US tirade on Private Jessica Lynch's rescue. Unable to leave well enough alone, I took it to a whole new rant-level. I won't take up CP space posting it here, as it's to some extent duplication.

Casualty in an Undeclared War

The casualty is the journalist's negative stereotype of the military.

. . . there has been no bridge between two very different cultures, though they are not as different as one might think. One of the more successful campaigns in the current war on terror has been the assault on this divide. The idea of embedded reporters was a masterstroke, since the reporters have to go through training, live with the troops, and go through events with them. Just as their grandfathers did during WWII, these reporters see war oft unvarnished; they see the horrors inflicted by enemy regimes upon innocents; and, they come to question many of the unspoken assumptions that lie behind the undeclared war.

Things you NEVER do...

This week, we've been discussing ethics in a copy editing class I teach. One topic was the ethics of photo manipulation. And then comes the L.A. Times to prove that Life imitates education.

On March 31, Brian Walski, an LA Times photog since 1998, did a combat photoshop, combining two news photos to improve composition. In doing so, he made the photo appear that a British photo was menacing an Iraqi civilian. Again, you can see both photos and the composite at this link

Relevant Ethical standards:

Society of Professional Journalists: Never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations.

National Press Photographer's Association code of ethics:
4. As journalists, we believe that credibility is our greatest asset. In documentary photojournalism, it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way (electronically or in the darkroom) that deceives the public. We believe the guidelines for fair and accurate reporting should be the criteria for judging what may be done electronically to a photograph.

NPPA Digital Ethics: journalists we believe the guiding principle of our profession is accuracy; therefore, we believe it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way that deceives the public.
As photojournalists, we have the responsibility to document society and to preserve its images as a matter of historical record. It is clear that the emerging electronic technologies provide new challenges to the integrity of photographic images ... in light of this, we the National Press Photographers Association, reaffirm the basis of our ethics: Accurate representation is the benchmark of our profession. We believe photojournalistic guidelines for fair and accurate reporting should be the criteria for judging what may be done electronically to a photograph. Altering the editorial content ... is a breach of the ethical standards recognized by the NPPA. (emphasis mine)

To which comes the inevitable question: What were you thinking? Every photojournalist knows you don't combine two photos to "improve composition" in news photojournalism. This just gives the profession a black eye and damages credibility even further.

The consequences: Because of the violation, Walski, a Times photographer since 1998, has been dismissed from the staff.

It's going to be a long flight home from Iraq. Few things in journalism are as serious an offense as plagiarism. Digitally altering a news photo is one of those things.

hat tip: Instapundit

Cross-posted at: Arguing with signposts...

Funny old world

Last night Ben Kepple: fellow blogger, Blogwolf, & journalist, and I were discussing Arnett's remarkable recovery after his seditious interview on Iraqi TV. Less than 24 hours after being fired by NBC/National Geographic for his humiliating them, his profession and his country, he has a new gig with Daily Mirror. Instead of being in a POW camp with his fellow Saddam-o-philes, he his happily existing on his expense account in Baghdad. While his fellow journalists are booted out of Iraq after 48 hours in prison, he remains in its capital.

In his first piece he makes no apology for his behaviour. One wonders if he will be the first reporter to get himself embedded into an Iraqi unit. I am sure, after his praising their fighting skills, they would welcome him.

I suppose we can expect George Galloway MP to get the Nobel Peace Prize for his support of the Iraqi war effort and those responsible for desecrating the war memorials in France given a national honor.

It seems that no evil deed goes unrewarded.

Objectivity as an excuse

Debra J. Saunders has a penetrating article about media bias in war coverage, chiding leftist media critics for claiming "solid news coverage" has been a casualty in the war. She makes a very clear point that journalists are not universally objective, and claiming that US journalists taking sides in the war would be to damage coverage is patently ridiculous:

WHEN MAINSTREAM journalists report both sides of racism -- pro and con, with equal weight -- or both sides of having a free press in America, then I'll believe that American media don't take sides on issues, and that there is at least a rationale for American media not rooting for U.S. troops to win in Iraq. But that day will never come.

There are certain issues on which thinking Americans don't disagree. Discrimination against minorities is bad. Period. (There are disagreements on how to achieve racial equality, but not whether racial equality is desirable.) A free press isn't optional -- who would want to live in an America without it?

The same bias should apply to U.S. victory in Iraq.

She continues to make a powerful case, which I recommend you read. And one of the most interesting aspects of the article? It's in the San Francisco Chronicle.

I think Saunders is exactly right, in that it would not compromise honest coverage for the US mainstream media to wholeheartedly support the success of our military in this war. That doesn't mean they reflexively agree that the reasons we went into the war are the ones stated by the Bush Administration - I think they are, but it's not a precondition to supporting success. It also doesn't mean that the media should in any way hold back on reporting on the negative, when it happens. However, digging for the negative, focusing on the negative, seeking opposition for the sake of having opposition, challenging the military commanders with questions that at best are ill-informed and at worst petulant or openly anti-war, damages both the likelihood of swifter success in the war and the reputation (such as it is) of journalism as a profession. In this war, it's very clear that journalism is the emperor with no clothes, and just as clear that they see themselves tricked out in the finest, most sumptuous cloth of reason and objectivity. The only high regard war journalists have as a collective group is high self-regard.

[Link via Media Minded]

Faint Praise from Walter

I had to read it a few times, but I finally figured out that Walter Cronkite wasn't being critical of Peter Arnett in a NYT editorial the other day. I'm not one for fisking, but this analysis demanded it. And, I thought Walter might actually join the Command Post crew...

Reuters Claims "Iraq's No-Frills Media Show Outshines US, Britain"

In this article, filed under the category "Top Entertainment News," Merissa Marr, Reuter's European Media Correspondent, writes:

Iraq is winning battles in the propaganda war with a modest media strategy, despite a multi-million dollar U.S. campaign featuring painstakingly choreographed briefings and Hollywood-style sets.

Undeterred by America's elaborate media plan, Iraq is making its mark on the airwaves with its decidedly basic approach, media pundits say.

From a crude Baghdad set, Iraqi ministers each day knock down Western media reports and list their latest claims of conquest, sometimes wielding chrome-plated Kalashnikovs.

Unlike America and its allies, theirs is a simple message delivered directly: "We will defeat the infidel invaders."

Despite poorly-lit surroundings and a sea of microphones often crowding the view, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf has become something of a global television star.

"It's a Cindarella story."

Wonderful News! Arnett Fired!

Baghdad Pete Soon to be Embedded at Unemployment Office

Cross-post: Little Tiny Lies.

NBC has canned treacherous, self-promoting windbag Peter Arnett, who endangered the lives of coalition soldiers and Iraqis by stating on Iraqi TV that our first war plan was a failure. What a glorious piece of news to wake up to. Arnett, an American citizen, now says he's sorry. We're sorry, too, Petie. Sorry NBC had the poor judgment to hire you in the first place.

First of all, let's address the content of Arnett's idiotic claim. The war was about ten days old when Arnett announced that our plan had failed. As an analyst on Fox pointed out last night, in Afghanistan, it took us around forty days to get where we currently are in Iraq. Funny how forty days make a whirlwind campaign and nine days make a quagmire. As the analyst noted, GRENADA took longer than this. Grenada, the North Vietnam of the Caribbean.

Saddam Hussein is probably dead and almost certainly wounded, and he has been since the day the war started. Imagine if our first attack in Afghanistan had put bin Laden out of commission. Imagine if we had nailed Hitler in 1941.

Fighting a war is not like baking a cake. It takes time, especially when you take the kind of unprecedented pains we are taking to avoid harming civilians. Every war can't be an MTV war, a video game that conveniently ends in time for the weekend.

So, Arnett's remarks were unbelievably stupid and indisputably wrong.

Now, let's talk about the traitorous nature of Petie's disgusting pronouncements.

There is an important word we all need to keep in mind. That word is "morale." More than food, more than bullets, more than diesel, this is the fuel that drives the enemy. We can slaughter them like sheep, but if their morale remains high, they will continue fighting even if they have to use sharpened spoons.

Peter Arnett's deliberate lie fed our enemy's morale. We have total dominance of the air, we control a huge percentage of the country, we have probably killed Hussein and at least one of his sons, we own the country's borders and its only port, but partly because of the treachery of Peter Arnett, there are still Iraqis who think they can win. That means they will continue to fight, and that means Arnett's remarks will probably cause some coalition soldiers to die.

Arnett can always find another job--we'll always need strip-club barkers and people to test new drugs on--but the soldiers who die because of his unthinking blather can't be brought back to life. And let's not even think about the ones who will be shipped home to rot in VA hospitals. I don't know why the government doesn't require us all to visit VA hospitals for three hours a week. I don't know why we don't do it without being told.

Our own soldiers will only compose a small fraction of Arnett's victims. The ratio of Iraqi to coalition casualties is very high; as much as we suffer to hear about coalition soldiers being hurt, we need to remember that Iraqis are being killed and wounded by the hundreds, and not all of them support Hussein.

We know who Arnett harmed. Who did he help? There are two classes of people who could have benefitted from what Arnett said. The first class is made up of members of the brutal, oppressive, parasitic regime that has the Iraqi people under its heel. The second class is made up of Peter Arnett.

Obviously, Saddam's underlings benefit. Arnett's propaganda makes Iraqis fear that Saddam and his people will still be in charge after the war. Still capable of inflicting reprisals on those who opposed them or simply didn't help. More rape, more beatings, more mutilation, more torture of children in front of their horrified parents. So Arnett has made ordinary Iraqis more likely to cooperate with Saddam's regime, not out of loyalty, but out of the usual motive: terror.

Arnett was supposed to benefit as well. He has two Pulitzers that I know of. He was angling for another. He wanted to show off his Iraqi connections and punish CNN for letting him get away; his snotty remarks regarding CNN's expulsion from Baghdad prove it (wonder if Arnett had anything to do with that). And he surely wanted to secure himself a pedestal from which to receive worship from his liberal peers, who would donate vital organs for the opportunity to humiliate George Bush.

Petie wanted to be the King of Baghdad. CNN was gone, he had his Gulf War connections, established during a previous round of boot-licking, and he was going to be the dean of the Baghdad press corps. Sorry, Petie. Not going to happen. Better buy some batteries for your remote, because if you want to get war news from now on, you're going to need it.

It's wonderful to live in a time when unprincipled liberal journalists are occasionally held accountable. No one minded when Don Hewitt admitted he dedicated an episode of 60 Minutes to saving Clinton's first campaign. No one fired Dan Rather when he lost his composure and tore his panties at Bush I in prime time, causing Walter Cronkite to say he should have been fired. Connie Chung still had a job the day after she lied to an elderly woman to get her to drop a verbal bomb on her own son, the Speaker of the House. But Baghdad Pete is packing his bags, because the seasons have finally changed.

Now, if we can just do something about Robert Fisk.

Some Perspective

Impressed with how effective the US military was in the first hours in the campaign to liberate Iraq, many journalists have started second-guessing the military now that the war is into its second week.  Its second week!  And the coalition already has established air superiority, taken control of all Iraqi ports, and controls the majority of the country.  In addition, the coalition has managed to protect most of the country's resources for its people, including dams, bridges, and oil fields.  The coalition has managed to do this while (to date) suffering a remarkably low number of casualties.  In addition, the coalition has done all of this while taking extreme care to minimize the number of civilian casualties and offering Iraqi soldiers many, many opportunities to surrender.

Instead of downbeat reports about 'unexpected' resistance, the media should be discussing the amazing military prowess of the coalition.  The only thing unexpected about the war so far has been its rapid progress.  Every casualty is regrettable, but only a fool would expect a war with no casualties.  More people died from lightening strikes in the US last year than have been killed fighting Saddam's troops.  I predict far more people will die from fatal car accidents in Los Angeles County alone in 2003 than all coalitions losses from the entire war.

Let's also look at a reasonable timeframe.  The Taliban, a government with only a small fraction of the military resources of Saddam Hussein, lasted 14 weeks against the US government.  As Jonathan Last pointed out, even the French - hardly the epitome of military competence - lasted 7 weeks against the Germans.  Surely, one would expect the Iraqi regime to fight harder than the French.  After all, the thugs that support Saddam Hussein expect death by the hands of their fellow Iraqis for their past atrocities should they ever lose their grip on power.  Unless they see an opportunity to survive the peace, they will fight to the last man.

I would be surprised if this war was over in less than 7 weeks.  I would not be surprised if it took 14 weeks.  Some statistics are available to help you keep the war in context.  Next time someone bemoans our "slow" pace, rattle off a few of them as a reality check.  You'll be glad you did.

Yes, Virginia, there is media bias

Much has been made about the flag-waving pro-war stance of Fox News. Although they call themselves "Fair and Balanced," most people think they are anything but.

In fact, Oliver Willis recently compared Fox to al Jazeera, while Laurence Simon pointed out the blatant jigoism of Fox.

The fact is, you will not be able to find a fair and balanced television news channel anywhere in the world during wartime.

I watch Fox News because I find it has the most interesting reports, the best view of Iraq and the most straight-forward war reporting. That is not to say it is even handed all the time. The cheerleading and pro-war ruminations exist often on Fox. One only has to listen to Sean Hannity or Neil Cavuto to see that.

There's not a lot of choice out there, despite the fact that there are a zillion news channels between cable tv and live streaming news on the internet. You're either going to get feel-good, rally around the U.S.A. and tie a yellow ribbon reporting, or you are going to get look at the carnage the U.S. and coalition forces are producing reporting.

Each view of the war exploits different things. al Jazeera exploits American casualties and death in general. Fox exploits the same thing, but in a different way. They want to tug at your red, white and blue heartstrings so you start seeing things through the same colored glasses as they do.

The war is everywhere. If you turn on your tv or radio or boot up your computer it is staring you in the face, be it with bombs or bodies or flags. The media is changing to fit itself into the war niche. Radio stations are either banning war related songs or urging listeners to go to pro-war rallies. Every local news station has already done a story on how the war is effecting children.

It's really not up to the media to decide what we see or how we perceive their views. It's up to us to make our own choices and to disseminate the information as best we can. Even if you watch a channel that seems to trasmit with a closed mind, it's up to us to watch with an open mind.

Yes, there is liberal media bias. And there is conservative media bias. And in this age of readily available information from all over the world, there is bias news to be found everywhere. Pro-Palestine and anti-Israel, pro-Iraq and anti-America, whatever bias you are looking for, it's out there.

If al Jazeera is not your cup of tea - and I imagine that most of us look at in order to fuel our outrage - then make the choice to not watch it. If Fox News is too jingoistic for you, try CNN. If you are sick of the war at all, turn on your local news station where they are probably right now debating the merits of fertilizer. And you just know that someone is going to write into the station accusing them of being biased against the fertilizer industry.

Marines And Airborne Continue Push North -- Sometimes Door-To-Door

Everybody's been saying for a couple of days that the worst is still in front of us. Well, this is probably part of it. Our Marines and Airborne are making a strong northward push and in some cases going door-to-door to find the enemy. They're hiding among civilians and our boys sometimes don't actually know who the enemy is until they're being shot at. That's bravery and worthy of our admiration, praise and prayer.

Marines Press 'Seek and Destroy' Missions:

SOUTH-CENTRAL IRAQ - Thousands of U.S. Marines pushed north toward Baghdad in "seek and destroy" missions Sunday, trying to open the route to the Iraqi capital and stop days of attacks along a stretch that has become known as "Ambush Alley."

Charging into previously unsecured areas, the Marines tried to provoke attacks in order to find Iraqi fighters and defeat them. A chaplain traveling with them handed out humanitarian packages to distrustful Iraqi civilians encountered along the way.

In Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, the 101st Airborne division encircled the city Sunday, severing inroads and preparing to go door to door to root out paramilitary supporters who have waged stiff resistance for days.

"This is our type of fight," said Command Sgt. Maj. Marvin Hill. "This is probably the most dangerous part of combat, and that's urban. Sometimes you don't find out who the enemy is until they're shooting at you."

Our Domestic Al-Jazeera

Much tooth-gnashing as of late in the usual quarters about the biased perspective offered by Al-Jazeera. To anyone but the most addled loon, Al Jazeera's biases in favor of the Middle Eastern status quo is quite evident. As far as Al Jazeera is concerned, America is the Great Satan and can do no right.

How is this any different from the Fox News Channel?

Fox has carved out a very profitable niche for themselves as the right-wing news channel of record, and even though it gets the teeth of liberals gnashing from coast to coast - they do what they do well. What Fox News doesn't do well is report news objectively. In the Fox News world view, President Bush can do no wrong. American military exercises are always justified, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either a stupid anti-American (or even worse, French).

Fox News basically serves the same function in the United States that Al Jazeera does - whipping up a receptive audience into a frenzy without presenting a full slate of facts for each side of an argument.

Al Jazeera: evil or just different?

The Arabic-language news station Al Jazerra has been under a great deal of criticism this past week for its use of images deemed crude or heartless in the West. They claim to be independent and unbiased, yet there are continuous accusations that the station is being used as a conduit for Islamic terrorist organisations. I will for the moment leave that accusation aside. I am more concerned with criticisms if the pictures being show by the network in broadcast and online.

In a press conference this week, a British office visibly had to restrain himself from violence when encountering an Al Jazeera reporter who rose to deliver a statement in defence of his station. So enraged were some on the internet that they hacked Al Jazeera's English language site.

Are we in the West upset because they show dead people or just when they are showing OUR dead people? In a world where Western audiences can see all manner of death on their TV and movie screen why are we so upset about video of an actual execution? Are we the hypocrites or is Al Jazeera just uncivilised?

I think that the West's shocked reaction to the content on Al Jazeera demonstrates an ignornance of attitudes toward death and the showing of death in the third world. TV screens in Latin America routinely show corpses and the human debris resulting from natural disasters and human atrocities. Whereas in the US or the UK we would see covered or bagged bodies, in other parts of the world you would see the body uncovered and uncensored. Why is this?

It is possible that in other parts of the world they are so used to mass death that they have a different reaction to it. When one sees death and destruction on the streets in your country and on your TV, you become less aware of it. Public executions occur in the Middle East frequently and are shown on the TV. Why would it be more offensive to see Americans die than say so-called Palestinian "collaborators"? In this Islamic world, nations under sharia routinely cut of hands, fingers, ears and other body parts for criminal activity, in many cases publically. It is possible that Islamic world does not understand why the Allies are so upset about the broadcast of the images of the POWs and Daniel Pearl.

Another point that could be made is that Western networks routinely show dead people from other parts of the world, especially those in the third world. Have we not seen bodies from Latin America, Africa and Chechyna on our screens? Why is it ok to see dead Chechen fighters or Russian conscripts but not Americans?

We in the West have a different view of the dignity of real death than does the rest of the world. Al Jazeera merely reflects the values of its viewers, as do our networks. Is it fair to fault them for doing what to them seems normal and natural, even if we would find it reprehensible and repulsive?

Story mistakes

UK's The Guardian has a rundown of over-reported stories that - according to them - required backtracking when details became more clear. I don't agree with all they say, but it's a good look at the complexities of reporting the war.

Terror Used Against Iraqi Troops -- Details Emerging

The use of death to motivate troops is nothing new -- it was used by both the Nazis and Soviets in WW2. It seems particularly cruel this time because it isn't just a matter of getting fearful troops to do things they otherwise wouldn't. It's a matter of forcing troops to defend a dictator when many would rather not.

Is there anything we can do about it? No, other than win.

Hussein's Enforcers At Work:

Gruesome details are emerging from Western intelligence sources regarding the tactics that Saddam Hussein's regime is using to maintain its control of southern Iraq. The stories suggest that while Hussein's forces are fighting more fiercely than expected, they are often doing so with a gun pointed at their head.

"Terror is playing a huge part" in how the war has evolved, according to one intelligence officer familiar with details of reports coming from Iraq.

The most striking example is the assassination Tuesday morning of the head of a major Shiite tribe in Basra, as part of the regime's efforts to stiffen resistance in that city to the advance of U.S. and British troops.

That Saddam is getting support from other Arab countries is all the more perplexing when you consider his complete disregard for Islam, peaceful or otherwise. He won't hesitate to kill religious leaders and he clearly only embraces Islam when it suits his ends.

Enlightened self-interest

How did the embeds come to be? Fox News' Washington Bureau Chief Kim Hume tells the tale in the Weekly Standard:

"Mr. Secretary, you talked about the desirability of having journalists embedded should there be any action in Iraq . . . Is that a core principle for you?" asked one of the chiefs. Rumsfeld replied, "Is it a core principle? Sure. It is something more than that. It's also self-serving." In Afghanistan, he said, the Taliban and al Qaeda showed great skill in news management. The best way to combat that was to have accurate, professional journalists on the ground to see the truth of what was going on. He said he already had intelligence from Iraq that they were arranging things to mislead the press. "Having people who are honest and professional see these things and be aware of that is useful. So I consider it not just the right thing to do but also a helpful thing."

Thus began the stunning cooperation between the military and the media that led to this war being fought live on the television sets of America.

Fascinating.

FOX News: We explode, you decide

Neil Cavuto defends his "American First, Journalist Second" style of reporting on FOX News in a hurricane of invective hot enough to wither the ivy on the wall of every Ivy League school lecture hall.

Who Blew Up Dah Al-Jazeerah.net?

In the story Al-Jazeera — a Threat to Western Media, Faisal Bodi, a senior editor for the web site for Al-Jazeerah, one of the most popular and trusted news networks of the Arab World, states the following:

As I write, the Al-Jazeera website has been down for three days and few here doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon. Meanwhile, our hosting company, the US-based DataPipe, has terminated our contract after lobbying by other clients whose websites have been brought down by the hacking.

For those of you without a dictionary handy, provenance means source or origin.

That's right. Faisal Bodi, a senior editor for the web site for Al-Jazeerah, is claiming in the Guardian (syndicated in the Arab News and elsewhere), that the Pentagon is the source/origin of the crash of Al-Jazeerah's web site.

Not a massive amount of traffic generated by worldwide publicity.
Not independent hackers working on their own despite warnings by the Pentagon not to.
Not incompetent web managers failing to budget and implement the necessary server space, bandwidth, or security measures.
Not this latest Microsoft server security hole. (Are they running on Windows servers?)

That's right. It had to have been The Pentagon.

I, for one, am stunned at this claim. Shocked. Gobsmacked. Beside myself and kicking myself silly, even. For once, an individual speaking on behalf of the Arabic press has failed to blame the Jews for something.

Maybe peace isn't so far off after all?

Quite.

Re: The Beeb should back our boys
Date: 28 March 2003

Sir - I agree with Barbara Amiel (Comment, Mar. 26). It is very depressing watching the BBC TV coverage of this war. At times, one could almost be forgiven for thinking that the coalition forces were losing, so biased is the presentation.

This is the time when everyone in this country should be both supporting our courageous Servicemen and women fighting in Iraq and helping to raise the morale of their families left behind. The BBC prides itself on being fair and accurate, but for us to have to sit through endless Iraqi television footage, which shows suffering mothers and babies in hospital, goes beyond the limit of fair broadcasting.

Our joint air forces are bending over backwards to avoid killing and maiming civilians, which in itself is putting them under increased strain and duress; it is also probably prolonging the war. It saps the morale of members of our Armed Forces, of their loved ones and, indeed, of the rest of us in this country.

One is left wondering what the BBC is trying to do. Is it on the side of our wholly non-political Armed Forces, who are fighting so hard, or, by creating "entertainment viewing" - which war is certainly not - is it trying to support the propaganda of Saddam Hussein?

From:
Brigadier Johnny Rickett, Union Jack Club, London SE1

___________________

The man is right, of course. BBC coverage is slightly less than actively hostile to the Allies and their efforts. I have witnessed at least three occasions where the host attempted to lead a guest into comdemning Allied actions whether it be on the war in general or on treatment of refugees.

Some perspective on the media

From a comment on a thread in LGF:

America was in WW II when I was 14 -18 years old and I followed that war very closely. There was a pattern then and it seems to be evident now in the Iraq war. In WW II the same pattern prevailed in the Pacific and in No. Africa and Europe. There will be heavy fighting for a while during which the media say things are difficult and we may not prevail and then there will be a break through and the Allies would sweep ahead and the media would say the enemy seems defeated and then the advance would stop and the media would say that the Allies have been unable to overcome the enemy and the situation is serious.

This was repeated over and over and over and yet the media never got it right. If I could figure it out why couldn't they? I think the reason is that the media isn't interested in accuracy but only in sensationalism. During the Battle of the Bulge the media made it sound like the Germans were going to cut off large parts of the American army and cause a large defeat for us. The truth was the outnumbered Americans in that sector of the front were fighting like hell and were inflicting heavy losses on the Germans and soon brought the German advance to a stand still. Unfortunately, you can't get the truth until later.

It seems to me the war is going normally when you have an enemy that is willing to fight.

The Racist Press

Rush Limbaugh raised an interesting point on his show today. He was discussing the CENTCOM brief this morning, and specifically the question asked by the New Yorker's Michael Wolfe regarding whether or not General Franks will be giving more of the daily briefs, and whether or not it was even worthwhile for reporters to be there. Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks answered the question politely but firmly, saying "it's your choice."

Limbaugh's tongue-in-cheek logical take is something like this:

• General Brooks is Black;
• The question indicated that the reporters didn't want to hear him, but Franks instead;
• If a conservative reporter (say, from the Washington Times) asked the same question, the first thing the rest of the press would have pointed out was Brooks' race, alluding that the question had racist overtones, which means conservatives are really racist;
• Therefore, since Wolfe is from The New Yorker, a decidedly liberal publication, and other reporters actually applauded his question, they all must not want Brooks to brief them;
• Since Brooks is Black;
• Therefore, all those reporters are racist, and since most of them are probably liberals;
• Therefore, liberals are really the racists.

Makes as much sense as typical liberal logic.

US soldier's website hacked

Lt. Smash is the pseudonym and weblog of a US soldier serving in the Gulf. Yesterday some folks hacked the comment section of a post which was an obituary to a fellow soldier who was killed early Sunday morning when two helicopters collided.

First, trolls started to swarm on the site leaving taunting and mostly illiterate messages, such as:

Lt, orders are not discussed, but have you ever thought whaddahell did daddy Bush and uncle Blair forget in Iraq? They want more oil, and descendants of past Presidents are to pay with their blood for their narrowmindness. Is it justice supreme? Have you found anything but a suspected chemical plant?

The saddest thing is that he sits in clean (?) White House having all he wants, while his 'onward-christian-soldiers' dig the sand searching for the pieces of late friends killed by Soviet twenty-years-ago-made missiles...

Remember, this particular post was simply a memorial to a newly dead soldier.

Then a troll set up a javascript which created popups whenever anyone opened the comments window, with messages such as STOP THE WAR and
YOU ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!

Finally someone figured out how to fix the problem and the site is okay now.

Great way to make friends and influence people.

Students "get" the BBC bias

NPR's Melissa Block did a story today on college attitudes to the war at Georgetown (I'll leave aside for the moment the fact that Georgetown is hardly a "typical" American college). One student made a telling statement about BBC coverage. on All Things Considered. It's a radio segment, about the first 30 seconds or so into the segment.

This is a radio segment, so you have to listen. But there were students in a class who were participating in a war simulation via computer with some other students from a foreign country. One girl was supposed to be "saddam hussein." She mentioned during her remarks that she had trouble combatting the negative press, although the arab media was with her, and "The BBC coverage was helpful!" There was slight laughter in the background.

Al-Jazeera's ban

(cross posted on OverSpill)

Al-Jazeera got "the boot" by NYSE recently. According to the "party line" of the exchange officials "Al-Jazeera's credentials had been revoked as part of a reorganization of media positions". Nevertheless, it seemed to be the only network who fell to "cutback" cited by NYSE management. As the timing of this coincided with the network's contraversial broadcast of American POWs this weekend, most of the traders on the floor were confident that was the catalyst for the network's expulsion. However, when they found out the "official" story, it was just shrugged off as a non-event anyway. According to "The Sun" (print version), one of the traders was quoted as saying:

"While I believe in the importance of the freedom of speech, I just think that freedom shouldn't be necessarily practiced on the exchange floor".

My previous post about war coverage had generated a substantially heated debate whether Al-Jazeera presents us with bias vis-a-vis another point of view. Although, I am not a particular fan of the network and its bias, I do subscribe to the "freedom" of speech and press and feel rather bad over expressed indifference for this event.

Update: Network's problems continue.

Who adopted "resistance" for this war?

Every time I see Iraqi fighting referred to as "resistance" my teeth clench. Who decided to make this loaded word the obligatory term for Iraqi fighting in our media reports and discussions of the war? To me, "resistance" implies something noble and valiant working against something unjust. That is just not the case here, no matter how much the antiwar zealots would like for it to be. From everything I've seen, the only Iraqis fighting coalition forces are Saddam's fanatical Republican Guards and Fedeyeen Saddam, and they're killing more of their own people than ours.

Why do we so readily accept defeat in the language of discourse?

War media coverage

OverSpill>

Ever since the war in Iraq began 6 days ago, it quickly got "supersized" and turned into the war of the "est": largest bombs, best troops, fastest ground moves, and widest media coverage.

The unprecedented media coverage of this war, both mainstream and "non" alike is mindblowing. News junkies in need of daily fix are able to get "all the news that bandwidth can hold" in matter of minutes after news become news.

Weblogs are a particular phenomenon:MSNBC yesterday did a great job summarizing the warblogging activity. Weblogs have been gaining attention in past year or so, with even some some news breaking accomplishments, e.g. Trent Lott.

Blogs provide a bold, daring and intelligent alternative to mainstream and will (if haven't already) soon redefine journalism. WarBlogs, either co-authored, multi-authored or a one man show draw a global, intelligent, politically savvy, sophisticated, thinking crowd. Chances are, if you Google for recent news, you'll hit the "blog" first. Originally created as online personal "journals", weblogs now sport a "forum"-like discussion environment and "expert analyses".

Qatar's Al-Jazeera, for example, has been making contraversial headlines this past weekend with its broadcast of American POWs' video. And even though American mainstream hasn't picked it up or refused to to show, bloggers have circulated the broadcast in either original or "transcripted" version.

Al-Jazeera, unsurprisingly, mostly targets European audience, because of a large Arab population there. Mostly anti-American and anti-Israel network, Al-Jazeera has been a mouthpiece for al-Qaeda and other terrorists groups.

With constant propaganda it "downloads" on its audience, is it any wonder that European and Arabic countries have this, this and this?

As CNN crew has been expelled from Baghdad, Europeans largely getting anti-US media coverage and Al-Jazeera being the only network allowed in Iraq in "the heart" of the action and broadcasting, the question that pops into my mind is this:

What are the costs of us winning the military campaign at the expense of losing a "PR" one? Or, alternatively, how much is "PR" image worth to us, given the fact we have a war to win? What about the fairest reporting?

Uphill media battle

An American in an Arab-language news-media panel discussion tries to combat misinformation about the war in Iraq. (Via Tal G)

Dumb media alert

To the ditz who asked the British press officer about why the British were suited for house to house fighting in Basra. Does Northern Ireland ring a bell at all?

Don't they networks give their reporters even a basic knowledge of our military assets before they go? Do media outlets who send such dolts think it makes them look good? Or don't they care anymore?

"Well she looks good in khaki. She will do."

Sgt. Stryker on war coverage

Beloved blogger and Air Force mechanic Sgt. Stryker has some pungent thoughts on our media. And when he gets pungent it's always worth reading.

Quagmire alert

You'd think, based on the two pieces smacked around below, that all the media outlets are bowing at the altar of Gen. Tommy Franks and Friends, that All War, All The Time entertainment station beaming in from Iraq, with a "God Bless America", "God Bless the USA" and "She's a Grand Old Flag!" soundtrack running an endless loop. Shockingly, there's evidence that (gasp!) journalists are not only not falling into line, but are using sneering skepticism :

Iraqi troops and militias used ruses, ambushes and other guerrilla tactics yesterday that exploited the risks inherent in the fast-moving Pentagon war strategy, inflicting more than a score of American casualties and raising questions about how effective the U.S. approach has been in convincing Iraqi troops and civilians that President Saddam Hussein's removal is inevitable.

After three days of routing Iraqi forces and even labeling their advance toward the Iraqi capital "the Baghdad 500," U.S. soldiers had a series of sobering engagements. One unit of Iraqi regular troops ambushed a U.S. convoy. Others trapped U.S. troops in what was described as a phony surrender, and some reportedly disguised themselves in civilian clothes. In the south, remnants of an army division moved heavy weapons into a residential area of Basra that U.S. and British forces were reluctant to fire upon.

You know, this actually answers itself. First, the engagements are light, with tragic yet relatively few casualties on either side. Second, the United States could limit American casualties by just glassing over the place with bombs, but they don't - the "U.S. and British forces were reluctant to fire" on residential areas. The Iraqi forces are fighting ugly, and the allied forces are trying to accomplish their goals without sinking to their level of endangering civilians. And now on to more blinkered commentary:

Nevertheless, the images beamed around the world of U.S. soldiers in stunned captivity, or dead in a makeshift morgue in southern Iraq, cast some doubt on the assumptions underpinning the U.S. approach. Pentagon officials had expected U.S. troops to be greeted almost universally as liberators, at least in the Shiite south. That view influenced a war strategy based in part on the goal of achieving victory by persuading the Iraqi population and military that Hussein's government is doomed.

Instead, the appearance yesterday was of members of the Iraqi government standing their ground. "We have drawn them into a swamp, and they will never get out of it," Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf declared in Baghdad.

Note that the first graph there says that allied forces thought the Iraqi population - that is, the civilians as well as government - would view the US as liberators. But the ones "standing their ground" in the second paragraph are Iraqi government officials, who of course are going to stand against invasion. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain if the allied forces succeed. Based on this uneven comparison, though, analyst Thomas Ricks has the following conclusion:

The continued Iraqi resistance specifically calls into question the efficacy of the biggest psychological operations campaign waged by the U.S. military. Over the last six months, U.S. aircraft dropped more than 25 million leaflets on Iraqi military units and civilians, urging them not to fight the U.S. invasion. That was supplemented by propaganda radio broadcasts and telephone calls to unit commanders inviting them to negotiate their capitulations.

The lack of large-scale surrenders suggests that Iraqi commanders instead may have been manipulating the expectations of their U.S. contacts. U.S. military commanders speculate that Iraqi soldiers simply are deserting and going home. But it is also possible that some units are biding their time.

Now we're shifting again to the Iraqi military, many of whom again are irrevocably tied to the Hussein regime and have no hope if it goes out of power. Many of them are also virilently against anything Western. But what about the "Iraqi population" as a whole? Glenn Reynolds highlights response that doesn't seem to mesh with Ricks' analysis, including this article:

As Iraqi Americans reach out to their relatives in Baghdad and Basra, in Kirkuk and Irbil, some are hearing words they never thought possible: Iraqis are speaking ill of Saddam Hussein.

They're criticizing him out loud, on the telephone, seemingly undeterred by fear of the Iraqi intelligence service and its tactics of torture for those disloyal to the Baath Party regime. . . .

And this:

For many kilometres, civilians and soldiers were lined up, waving and blowing kisses at the passing vehicles holding U.S. Marines. Many begged for food. Each U.S. vehicle had been given two boxes of ready-to-eat rations suitable for Muslims. Some people came back for seconds, hiding the food they had already collected.

For their part, the U.S. troops were amazed at the Iraqi soldiers' behaviour.

"Canteens, grenades, abandoned positions -- they even left the Iraqi flag in place before they retreated," said 1st Sergeant Miguel Pares, a New Yorker from Spanish Harlem and the top enlisted man in Bravo company, 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division.

It is a war. People will die on both sides. Media credulity about Iraqi military response and government pronouncements while expressing harsh criticism of Allied decisions and activities shows a lack of journalistic integrity and insight. The problem seems rather opposite, at least in this instance, to what Kalb and Solomon worry about.

[Thanks to Curt Coman for bringing the Ricks article to my attention.]

[Cross posted on cut on the bias]

Cry me another river - The Sequel

For more journalistic hand-wringing, head on over to E&P columnist Marvin Kalb's take on the horror of embedding:

When American soldiers go off to war, so too do American journalists. In this war, though, something new has been added. "Embedding" is part of the massive, White House-run strategy to sell a single message about the American mission in this war -- that the United States is liberating Iraq from a bloody dictator, who has used weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors and his own people, and that this is a war against terrorism or states that help terrorists and not a war against Islam.

By the start of the current conflict last week, more than 600 American and foreign reporters were embedded, all of them part of specific military units and many advancing on specific military targets. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, whose fingerprints are all over this new approach to press/Pentagon collaboration, wants proud, positive, patriotic coverage -- and so far that's exactly what he's gotten.

You know, it's hard for me not to just say, "These guys are such absolute and unsaveable morons that we should just throw up our hands and ignore them." I would say that, except for the fact that they represent the "media elite" in a lot of ways. Certainly E&P styles itself as an industry observer with some degree of objectivity. I don't understand why columns like Kalb's, and the credulous coverage of Solomon, haven't put E&P out to pasture. Consider what Kalb says toward the end of his column after all but pronouncing the death knell of journalism (well, he gets to the death knell at the end):

First Amendment purists argue that any government control over the media, even during a war, is constitutionally problematic and sets a dangerous precedent -- and therefore, in their view, embedding is a dreadful proposition.

Embedding is not a dreadful proposition. No journalist had to accept it, or any ground rule associated with it. Embedding is for the journalist who wants access and is prepared to pay a price to get it. But for those who worry about the blurring of the line between government and journalism, even in the post-9/11 war against terrorism, there is the larger problem of patriotic reporting. Will journalists covering the front or the White House criticize the mission, the troops, the president, or the strategy in the face of strong popular support for the war? Or will the public have to wait months, even years, after the war to learn about the blunders?

This is breathlessly idiotic. Does Kalb think that he's the only one concerned? Does he truly think that Howell Raines, or the writers at The Nation, are laying back saying, "Yeah, we're at war! Roll out the flags! Spike the criticism! We're a Rummy-led organization now!" If there's a problem, it's not that journalists can't get any legit negative stories out there - it's that many don't want to do the work that would entail, or their organizations won't support it. Much easier to whip out diatribes from the lofty position of "columnist for E&P".

And of course it's not even to be considered that maybe there aren't reams of horrific news lying unreported on the floor of journalistic opportunity.

Oh, yes, the death knell. Let us not leave it out:

Sept. 11, 2001, is the dividing line in journalism between purists and realists. Purists may still worry about the problems of embedding and patriotism; realists say the rules have now changed, and it's time we all recognize we are in a war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq and one against terrorism at home. And journalists may have to bend with the winds of change.

"Purists" here means "leftist anti-Americans". "Realists" mean "people who realize relentless anti-Americanism could mean more American deaths on the battlefield". I could not identify a single person of my acquaintance who would fault the media for covering a legitimate problem with war policy or prosecution, if it were done fairly and in a straightforward manner without an agenda. After all, this is the country that ousted Trent Lott and Jim Moran from leadership positions for idiocy-while-in-office - in each case their own party was responsible for the ouster. We don't hide from truth. But we aren't interested in leftist, biased whining.

[Cross posted on cut on the bias]

Cry me a river

Norman Solomon thinks the US mainstream media has gone all patriotic now that the war has started:

Creators Syndicate writer Norman Solomon is dismayed with the cheerleading approach many U.S. newspapers are taking in the initial days of war. And the media columnist said the practice of "embedding" journalists with U.S. soldiers is partly to blame.

"Embedding means the journalists covering the U.S. war on Iraq are 'in bed' with the military," said Solomon, explaining that the system can lead to reporters losing objectivity as they bond with troops.

"If journalists are going to embed themselves with U.S. troops, they should also embed themselves with Iraqi families," he told E&P Online Friday. "But it's obviously better to be on the sending rather than the receiving end of missiles."

Of course, we won't discuss that hundreds of journalists covering the war are not embedded, and that a lot of information about the policies behind the war and the way it's being prosecuted could be dug up stateside. Embedding doesn't have to limit coverage at all. However, his intent isn't to give an honest view of media coverage, but to whine because his leftist view isn't prominent enough. And he has such a stellar record that he should be listened to:

Solomon has a unique perspective on coverage of Iraq. He visited that country three times since the fall -- including a September trip with past and present members of the U.S. Congress and a December trip with actor/director Sean Penn that upset Bush-administration supporters.

Fine, fine credentials and certainly evidence that we should respect his view of how journalists aren't covering the war objectively.

Interesting how Editor & Publisher is presenting Solomon's viewpoint with little questioning itself - it does call him a "leftist", but you get the sense they don't see that as a bad thing. He's allowed to make blanket statements that I don't think a "right-wing" type would get by with:

Most mainstream dailies, said Solomon, are very conscious about reflecting the consensus of U.S. "elites." Since few prominent Democrats have spoken out against war on Iraq, newspapers feel they don't need much content against it, either -- even though there is plenty of antiwar sentiment in the communities where newspapers circulate.

Funny, I thought that American opinion was running over 70% for the war; I'd be interested to see how those numbers shake out regionally. I'd be willing to bet much of the country runs 90-95% in favor, with certain pockets on the left and east coasts running at 75-80% against. Obviously Solomon doesn't watch television either, where anti-war rallies are so ubiquitous that you just about believe there's one on every streetcorner in America. No insertion of such factoids in this article. Hmmm.

I'm sure it's not because E&P has its own agenda. How unobjective that would be!

[Cross posted on cut on the bias]

NY Times Goes Wobbly

Go read this column by David Warren, which opens with this graf:

You wouldn't know it from reading most of the papers, but the war in Iraq is going fabulously well. After just five days the U.S. Third Infantry Division and supporting units are approaching Baghdad. The immense steel column continues to drive reinforcements across the Iraqi desert, while its leading edge rumbles through the fields, villages, and waterways of Mesopotamia. To its rear, the "sleeper cells" of Ba'athist and terrorist hitmen waiting in ambush are being eliminated one by one. Special forces have seized bridges, dams, airstrips, oil and gas fields, and weapons sites all over the country. The U.S. Air Force has devastated leadership targets, military infrastructure, and the physical symbols of the Saddam regime, across Baghdad and elsewhere. Allied troops have Basra, Nasiriyah, now Karbala, and other Iraqi cities surrounded, and are tightening each noose. Snipers in the towns are being patiently deleted. The "Scud box" of western Iraq is in allied hands, daily more secure, and allied forces are building with endless air deployments to the northern front. In all, the allies have taken only a few dozen killed, and a couple hundred lesser casualties -- many of these from small accidents within the most amazing and vast logistical exercise since our troops landed in Normandy (when we lost men at the rate of up to 500 a minute, liberating France).

Then go check the front page of the NY Times.

First, there is Michael Gordon's The Goal Is Baghdad, but at What Cost?, charitably labeled as a 'military analysis' and running with this tag:

The cost of taking Baghdad and dislodging Saddam Hussein's government, in terms of both allied and Iraqi casualties, is uncertain.

The second story is titled G.I.'s Regroup After Setback — 2 Prisoners on Iraq TV.

Obviously it is time to quit- the NY Times has lost her will, particularly if you read the lead editorial:

As American forces began skirmishing with Iraq's Republican Guard troops on the drive toward Baghdad yesterday, Iraq's best soldiers seemed in no mood to lay down their arms. Army Apache helicopters attacked and destroyed up to 15 armored vehicles of a Republican Guard division in central Iraq but were driven back by a ferocious hail of small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Virtually all the Apaches were hit, and one went down. It was the latest evidence that some of the initial hopes — even assumptions — that Iraqi resistance would quickly crumble seemed not to be panning out.

The American and British military are prepared to fight a war against a resistant enemy, and they insisted yesterday that everything was on or ahead of schedule. But the public had reason to expect something different. The Bush administration had conveyed the impression that the Iraqi government was shaky, that much of the army was not likely to fight and that the Iraqi people would welcome the invasion force with cheers and flowers.

I guess we can count the NY Times as the only paper or people on the planet who were unaware that the Iraqis might shoot back- which makes their vehement opposition to the war even more interesting.

Idiot Celebrities: How Many Times Do I Have to Say it? "Marisa Tomei."

Posted this to my blog on the morning of March 24, in response to Michael Moore's bout of oral flatulence at the Academy Awards.

Academic Awards a Waste of Time

Michael Moore can always be counted on wedge a lie into any temporal crevice he encounters, much as he wedges cheese tater tots, jam doughnuts, and whole chickens into his own cavernous cakehole. He got a few seconds last night at the Oscars, so he sputtered some lies about Dub and the war, and he came off like the immature, self-centered, attention-starved gasbag he is. The majority of our spoiled leftist showbiz poobahs booed him as though he were Bush Himself.

Generally, our celebs were well-behaved, perhaps because they wanted to know which way the wind was blowing before base-jumping into the Career-Absorbing Abyss of the Dixie Chicks. Even Susan Sarandon managed to keep her hole shut; I looked for the telltale plume of a tranquilizer dart. Seeing none, I surmised that somewhere backstage, the genitals of a duct-taped Timmy Robbins were probably pressed against a hair-triggered cattle prod held by Oscar Security. Maybe not, but let me dream.

Why do we watch the Oscars anyway? I generally don't. I realize that women and gays love pageantry, and the rest of us get drawn up in their slipstream, but hasn't it become clear that the award itself doesn't stand for anything? Why should we huddle together over Jiffy Pop every year, waiting for the wrong people to win?

Marisa Tomei? Are you kidding me? My Cousin Vinny was on an intellectual par with Hee Haw. Giving anyone in that movie an Oscar is like giving a soldier a Purple Heart for getting the clap.

What about Jodie Foster in The Accused? She was competing with real actresses Glenn Close (Dangerous Liaisons) and Sigourney Weaver (Gorillas in the Mist), and she won for a role in a forgettable movie that instantly disappeared into VHS limbo. Why did she get the award? Not sure. I know that Jodie Foster is a lesbian, and that the movie was about that feminist obsession, rape, and that it made men look like pigs, and that women came off (surprise!) as helpless victims. But I'm sure no one was trying to send us a message.

Cher in Moonstruck...what can I say? It's like Sonny getting a scholarship to Juilliard. Cher was competing against Meryl Streep in Ironweed. It's sort of like Sophie's Choice versus My Big Fat Stereotypical Italian Wedding.

The Oscars aren't about quality. They're about favors and cliques and political agendas. The very fact that Moore got one proves that. What's a documentary? It's journalism. Journalism--and I know this will make my Dan-Rather-raised readers gag--is supposed to be based on facts. Everyone knows Moore's film contained deliberate lies. It's not my opinion. It's not a hypothesis. It's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet the Academy gave him an Oscar anyway. This is like tipping a waiter who blows his nose in your coffee.

This morning in an Instant Messenger chat, Laurence Simon of Amish Tech Support put it very succinctly: "I can't help but think that Michael Moore's winning of the academy award is painfully similar to Jimmy Carter winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He didn't win on his merits. Instead, it was a selection meant as an affront to Bush." He wrote a nice piece to that effect this morning, and here is the link.

Giving Moore an Oscar for lying in a documentary is like giving Marisa Tomei an Oscar for refusing to come to the set. He failed to do his job. But Hollywood gave him its highest "honor" anyway.

Keep watching this crap if you want. If you need a corrupt circle of Tinseltown ass-kissers to tell you who can act and who can't, I feel sorry for you. I think I can figure it out on my own.

The Most Trusted, or The Most Trusting ?

CNN's latest self-promotional 30-sec ad includes a 2-sec clip from today's "Saddam speech" while the barker says, "Saddam Remains Defiant".

It swims past quickly in a fast-moving stream of other splashy clips. It's a commercial. It's less than 2 seconds! Trivial. What's the harm? Why should anyone even bother to comment?

This miniscule clip & audio caption not only ignores significant doubt among credible analysts about the video's validity, it promotes the opposite assumption: that Saddam is truly alive & well, and that his regime remains fully in control of all Iraq.

Is it somehow anti-American or anti-war to include it (with said caption) in a commercial? No. But it is deceptive, gratuitously negative (assuming you're not Saddam, an Iraqi minister or Fedeyeen Saddam member), and inflammatory.

Was such deception intentional? No, except perhaps to the extent that it was chosen to grab eyes, quicken pulse rates, and therefore improve ratings.

As a promo, it will get repeated many, many times until the next promo replaces it. So the speech will get far more airplay than CNN's own news stories have implied it deserves, considering its dubious nature.

To me, this is a revealing example of mass media bias seamlessly woven, probably unintentionally, so as to pass by without notice. This is the plankton on which mass public opinion feeds, from which (necesssarily) media ratings thrive, and sadly, by which proper perspective is polluted.