Lies in the ability of the reporter to push an unverifiable "quote" and ignore the actual data.
The New York Times is at it again.
Update Kevin Jaeger (of the much- missed Trudeaupia) in the comments;
And note how after several years of having nothing whatsoever constructive to say about the topic of either terrorism or Iraq Pauls Wells has started mocking Steyn's columns (see here:)Of course, the mocking is based on the massive strength of the very anonymous quote you pointed out.
Which is why it's so often suggested that the time has come to demand the same professional qualifications of foreign policy pundits and journalists that are expected of say - sports reporters.
Nothing unexpected from the curb worms on the lib/left. I have a policy that I follow when it comes to most of the MSM, and that is, think the complete opposite to everything they say or do and you will be right more times than wrong. Even things that I say to myself I think my little system failed me this time eventually turn out to be right. I equate my little system to the one a lot of the successful farmers on the prairies used in figuring out what to plant the following year, do exactly the opposite of what the government forecasts.
The NYT article seems to be asserting that "attacks are increasing".
Although there is some fudging of facts about results...the refuting article in Gateway Pundit is focussed on Injuries and Fatalities without addressing the main assertion re; frequency of attacks!
Apples and Oranges.
Althought the NYT does seem to prefer to leave full anysis and fact checking to the public and apparently likes to be the cheerleader for anti-Bush sentiments.
I understand that their circulation numbers are dwindling also......any connection?
Oy vey. What schmucks, those NYT joiks. What to do?
Then there's the "anonymous sources" that are so anonymous the story doesn't even make it into the coverage.
Until the recent Canadian military victory last week, where our brave and selfless soldiers killed 75 Taliban, the CBC seemed only to report the number of Canadians killed in such-and-such a battle. I kept waiting to hear how many of the enemy we're at war with had been killed, but the CBC was mum on those numbers...
Hey, when you're playing the Tokyo Rose card, you can't encourage the troops and the folks at home. No way. 'Keep them thinking that all the losses are on our side and they're bound to lobby the government to get our troops out of this war.
'Never mind that when our troops come home, we're all going to be killed in our beds, or in our neighbourhood shopping mall, or in the bus that takes us to work. But the CBC hasn't thought that far ahead...
The NYT is the leader of "resistance" against the west. They should be declared enemy combatants and destroyed along with CNN, CBC, BBC, CBC, G&M, the Toronto Red Star and last but not least the UN itself.
"The New York Times is at it again."
I would say the New York Slimes is doing what it always does.
"again" implies they relented for awhile,
I know picky, picky
"Oy vey. What schmucks, those NYT joiks."
Damn those liberal Jooos, huh?
Who said anything about New York Jews?
Boy, processing problems are becoming epidemic these days. What's the problem with people's education?
Now you know how it feels to have stuff attributed to you that you didn't say.
What do you mean by "Now"?
Members of the leftosphere have been fabricating, misrepresenting and misattributing direct "quotes" to me for over 2 years. I can count the retractions on one hand.
Actually, now that I look more closely, that would be one finger. The middle one.
good counting Kate . . . .
LOL, Kate and Fred!
And note how after several years of having nothing whatsoever constructive to say about the topic of either terrorism or Iraq Pauls Wells has started mocking Steyn's columns (see here: http://weblogs.macleans.ca/paulwells/archives/week_2006_08_13-2006_08_19.asp#002539)
Of course, the mocking is based on the massive strength of the very anonymous quote you pointed out.
Jaeger's right. The so-called "insurgency" did in fact peter out a few weeks after December, 2003, just as Mark predicted. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Especially not me.
"The so-called "insurgency" did in fact peter out a few weeks after December, 2003, just as Mark predicted. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise."
Good work, Paul. Keep us updated on the whereabouts of Mo Strong (Beijing) and his nefarious cabal.
Kenney's side
Directed to the website, Kenney said he was "completely unaware of the context as it is presented here, even though we had done our due diligence."
He said he did not know the rally was in support of PMOI prisoners. He said it was a small crowd of about 30 people.
"I told them I would pass by if I could. And I was running up to the Hill, I just literally grabbed a megaphone and said that the Canadian people would stand in solidarity with the Iranian people in their wish for respect for human dignity and human rights and democracy, and these were universal aspirations that all people in every country deserve to have respected, and you know, our government will stand for those universal values.
"I honestly don't recall any particular grievance that they had about any particular person in Iran or Iraq or somebody who's pending execution. At least that wasn't brought to my attention."
Kenney said he is well aware that the PMOI is also known as the MEK and is listed as a terrorist group. He then specifically recalled questioning the man who invited him — whose name he said he could not recall — at a meeting in Kenney's office after the parliamentary committee meeting. He asked if the man had any ties to "those radicals in the People's Mojahedin. And he laughed or denied it or something."
"I wanted to be sure there wasn't a connection," said Kenney. "I came away with the impression that there was no connection whatsoever."
During last fall's federal campaign certain articles in the Globe and Mail refered to statements by anonymous high-ranking Conservative campaign insiders close to Stephen Harper who expressed unhappiness with his views, his tactics, his personality, etc.
This practice of anonymous sources has a built-in, handy way of converting its glaring weakness -- the reporter could easily be completely making up the quote, and the source -- into a strong positive: the merest reference to high-ranking insiders has a certain built-in cachet, a winking nudge-nudge significance built on the implicit suggestion that people who are off-the-record are more free to honestly express their views, and that their words therefore words carry more significance and relevence than verifiable quotes would.
But several of their uses of anonymous quotes didn't pass the most basic sniff-test. The notion that dedicated people close to Mr. Harper who were exhausting themselves and making great personal sacrifices in order to get rid of the Liberals would have chosen to repeatedly voice their discontent off-the-record to prominent Liberal-operative reporters who were tangibly trying to stall the Harper campaign was beyond absurd, never mind that it was contemptuous in its assumptions about the credulity of its readers.
Another of the "tells" in these articles was that the supposed insider quotes always perfectly fit the point of what the report/article was trying to stay about Stephen Harper; none of the articles were written around the subject contained in the supposed leaks, but rather used the quotes to support the point the reporter was already making.
Anonymous sources remain a perfect shield for politically motivated liars, because it is impossible to prove that someone who says "I heard (X)" is lying. But the case against them ends up being made by their own arrogance; you can see reporters emboldened by their easy victory continue running straight out of bounds.
As for Wells, he continues to be a stale-dated LPC-Canada front-man dressing up as the everyman (for a tellingly formative time, of course, they were the same thing.) He changes portions of his uniform in the interests of his quintessentially Liberal fence-sitting style, but he's always at the front-line shrouded in a soft-focus MOR fog. Like Radwanski (until his article last week on the Chretien old-guard re-emerging through Bob Rae's campaign -- what the heck happened there?) his oeuvre, taken in it's entirety, doesn't add up to any coherent point whatsoever -- this in stark contrast to, say, Mark Steyn, or Barbara Kay, or David Frum, or...
This is great theatre. The balding, pedestrian, hypersensitive pipsqueak is pecking away at the manely Giant of Letters and Literature.
"Send your comments to Paul Wells"...who won't have the courage to post them.
The insurgency as Mark Steyn describes it is petering out (see graphic at this link http://icasualties.org/oif/hnh.aspx ).
The insurgency is as it always has been - Iranian sponsored and directed.
What has changed and what Mark Steyn and others did not anticipate was the redirection of the violence away from coalition forces and towards sunni moderates and to a lesser extent shiite moderates. Attacking coalition forces does not generate enough support among the Iranian-sympathetic factions (coalition counterinsurgency tactics have worked in that regard).
Paul Well's sarcastic attacks on Steyn's writings do not provide any balance and as Jaeger points out, they do nothing to further one's understanding of the issue(s). That used to be what a good journalist/columnist does.
The insurgency as Mark Steyn describes it is petering out (see graphic at this link http://icasualties.org/oif/hnh.aspx ).
Well, we must grant the point that it hasn't petered out according to the schedule Steyn predicted.
And, if a columnist had been predicting that the violence would first be directed at American forces, then foreign contractors, followed by violence against the elected government, its police and security forces, and then after the democratically elected government is formed and all that violence has failed, then there would be a bunch of groups firing on unarmed pilgrims and blowing up each others markets and mosques to no seeming purpose or effect - well, if someone had been writing that he'd be in a good position to smugly mock the others who got it wrong.
At this point upwards of 90% of the violence is no longer even directed at either Iraqi or American forces but at seemingly random civilian targets in and around Baghdad - I'm not sure it qualifies as either an insurgency or a civil war. It certainly qualifies as sickening.
But in any case an almost certainly fabricated anonymous quote that doesn't correspond with what's actually happening certainly isn't very illuminating, as Gord points out.
Contest between Paul Wells and Mark Steyn?
Are you kidding?
Mark Steyn's articulate, informed, witty, courageous, prescient, prophetic, and despised, it seems, by the MSM power elites in Canada.
He wins, hands down.
Meanwhile back at the ranch;
Tonto decides to line his bird cage, not realizing that the Lone Ranger
has disguised himself as a so called news magazine.
Be fair, guys. Paul is just a blogger on that page, so he doesn't have an army of fact-checkers around to check every claim made in the NYT for accuracy--especially if he's still in his pajamas.
Wells has some good thoughts from time to time. If only he could write like Steyn.
Steyn is certainly not above slagging fellow columnists. I've no problem with it. And if anything, it helps to further illuminate where the author stands.
But I wish Wells had a comment section. Until he explains why he doesn't, it would be fair to reserve judgement. Perhaps his outfit doesn't permit it. Wasn't WK's shared commentary site with other journalists axed because of excessive trolling or something? I dunno. If it's simply because he couldn't be bothered then I'd feel inclined to remove him from my bookmarks. I'm sure it'd ruin his day.