News Coverage from Hell

I've given up on any WOT coverage by the MSM. So have they. Reuters and AP have active jihadi stringers on their local ME payrolls which speaks to their sincerity and truthfulness. The other Usual Suspects.....no point in rehashing them.

Since the MSM collectively were reported last week to have 9...Nine!!... embedded reporters in Iraq, I've figured that the other few hundred assigned there are just running up bar bills in their hotels.

Using Google you can phone anywhere for free over the internet. I just spoke to a friend of mine last night for an hour, a Canadian Iraqi, now working in Saigon. I ask him what's happening in Iraq. He still has lots of contacts there. What we ought to have is a site with the phone numbers of English speaking Iraqi and Afghani "pen pals". Anyone, anywhere can use Googles' phone service, all you need is an inexpensive headset. It's that kind of thing, if it ever takes hold, that is going to democratize information and bring down the MSM empire.

..." you've got to read a cross section of news and op-ed to even begin to form an informed opinion. " ...

ABSOLUTELY. The MSM, especially the CBC, has used this to their advantage the last 30 years. Use the all-knowing Reporter at the end of the news clip to "simplify" and make it easy for us all to "understand" what the news clip was "all about". Nothing more than Billion-Dollar-Snake-Oil-Salespersons. I was also taken in by the "simple and entertaining" MSM. Nothing is ever black & white. It takes some research to understand what they are trying to pull over on us.

Thankfully we now have the Internet and news blogs. Litterally hundreds of sources instead of basically one. The CBC and it's clones. Clones because they have to follow the Billion a year so-called leader.

The question I have is: " Has the media been using more and more left spin than in earlier times?" Growing up I remember listening (and viewing) news reporters and trusting what they reported on. There was no twenty minute panel discussion, with so called experts, about what Mr. Xyz said and what he REALLY meant in a five minute speach.

BTW: expert = x + spurt
where x = unknown quantity, and
spurt is nothing more than a drip under pressure.

.."more spin now than in earlier times"... ?? Probably, but it has been going on a long time. We, including moi, just didn't realize it.

The CBC's Front Page Challenge, case in point. Seemed like an innocent "entertaining" program Guess the news maker of the day and then interview them. With spin of course. Turn on the applause meter so the "selected" audience can help "form" TV audience's opinion.

Kipling: "The Young British Soldier"

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
and the women come out to cut up what remains
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier."

Will MediaRight be getting an RSS feed soon?

And do you like Kipling?

Oh, I don't know, I've never kippled...

TVO premiered its major 'debate show', titled Agenda, last night. I started to watch its discussion on Afghanistan. But, when I saw the line-up of speakers, I couldn't deal with it. There was the basic leftist professor, funded by our gov't with a special research chair, obviously anti-American; there was Janice Gross Stein, a highly knowledgeable expert in the area, but, tending to be less than supportive of the US.

But, the definitive reason for my turning off the TV, was the presence of that buffoon, that utter idiot - Eric Margolis. How any station could have someone as ignorant, as emotional, as irrational, as biased, on their show - well - that was the end of that. He's the Toronto Sun's version of Harroon Siddiqui - another ignorant sophist.

There seem to be too many negative and discouraging stories coming out of Afghanistan (& elsewhere) but that should not discourage us and give an excuse to remove our troops. It should mean the opposite. To give the enemy the impression that they are winning only makes them turn the heat up more, which makes the situation even more dangerous for our troops.

The enemy is watching us and in this wired world they don't have to wait long for a reaction. Whether we agree with the politics or not, we're in it and everyone affected deserves respect, not dissension.

We must believe that dude from Rabble. Look at his quote, Karl Marx, quite impressive if you are whining commie puke.

They lost the Vietnamese war for us, it gave our enemies strength. They pressured Regan into pulling out of Lebanon and gave our enemies strength. They pressured us into pulling out of Somalia and gave our enemies strength.

It is time to tell the left to shut the f*** up and let the strong protect the rights they are obviously so illing to give away. Either that or send them to Iraq/Afghanistan to protest to those individuals that will not allow the war to stop.

Eric Margolis claims he is a big expert on the Afghan news front. Based on his relationship with Ahmad Shah Massoud, whom he claimed was a good and trusted friend, one would think he would support the US in their aims to eradicate the Taliban and Al Queda: That was exactly what the leader of the Northern Alliance was trying to do. But no, he just spews his usual anti american garbage. He's very two faced.

ET,

you must have loved David Bercuson doing his usual "historian as the handmaiden of politics" schtick. Would you happen to know if his chair or institute are funded by DND?

For viewers in Ontario who want real news, don't miss The Agenda with Steve Paikin.

Lloyd Robertson is to Steve Paikin, what addition & subtraction are to particle physics. No shit.

Military reality postdate:

"Mr Layton: Canada must change mission in Western Europe [1944]"
www.damianpenny.com/archived/007671.html

Mark
Ottawa

Military reality pre-date:

"Mr Layton: Canada must change mission in Western Europe [1944]"
www.damianpenny.com/archived/007671.html

Mark
Ottawa

Sorry for the double and the "pre" and "post" confusion.

Mark
Ottawa

Bush and Karzai Strike Back

This morning President Bush and President Karzai of Afghanistan had a brief press conference at the White House. After some introductory remarks, they opened the floor for questions. You can read the full transcript here.

The first question came from our old friend old friend Jennifer Loven:

Q Thank you, sir. Even after hearing that one of the major conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate in April was that the Iraq war has fueled terror growth around the world, why have you continued to say that the Iraq war has made this country safer?

This is when Bush announced that he had ordered the report declassified, to the extent possible. But there's lots more to his answer:
....

President Bush:

"You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq, we would see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement requires us to ignore 20 years of experience. We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq, and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions. They kill in order to achieve their objectives.

You know, in the past, Osama bin Laden used Somalia as an excuse for people to join his jihadist movement. In the past, they used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a convenient way to try to recruit people to their jihadist movement. They've used all kinds of excuses.

This government is going to do whatever it takes to protect this homeland. We're not going to let their excuses stop us from staying on the offense. The best way to protect America is defeat these killers overseas so we do not have to face them here at home. We're not going to let lies and propaganda by the enemy dictate how we win this war.

Now, you know what's interesting about the NIE -- it was a intelligence report done last April. As I understand, the conclusions -- the evidence on the conclusions reached was stopped being gathered on February -- at the end of February. And here we are, coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.

I talked to John Negroponte today, the DNI. You know, I think it's a bad habit for our government to declassify every time there's a leak, because it means that it's going to be hard to get good product out of our analysts. Those of you who have been around here long enough know what I'm talking about. But once again, there's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign, -- to create confusion in the minds of the American people, in my judgment, is why they leaked it.

And so we're going to -- I told the DNI to declassify this document. You can read it for yourself. We'll stop all the speculation, all the politics about somebody saying something about Iraq, somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of this enemy. And so John Negroponte, the DNI, is going to declassify the document as quickly as possible. He'll declassify the key judgments for you to read yourself. And he'll do so in such a way that we'll be able to protect sources and methods that our intelligence community uses. And then everybody can draw their own conclusions about what the report says."

President Karzai, before he went on to respond to Loven's second question, added his own observations on what must have seemed to him to be an expression of sheer lunacy:

PRESIDENT KARZAI: "Ma'am, before I go to remarks by my brother, President Musharraf, terrorism was hurting us way before Iraq or September 11th. The President mentioned some examples of it. These extremist forces were killing people in Afghanistan and around for years, closing schools, burning mosques, killing children, uprooting vineyards, with vine trees, grapes hanging on them, forcing populations to poverty and misery.

They came to America on September 11th, but they were attacking you before September 11th in other parts of the world. We are a witness in Afghanistan to what they are and how they can hurt. You are a witness in New York. Do you forget people jumping off the 80th floor or 70th floor when the planes hit them? Can you imagine what it will be for a man or a woman to jump off that high? Who did that? And where are they now? And how do we fight them, how do we get rid of them, other than going after them? Should we wait for them to come and kill us again? That's why we need more action around the world, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to get them defeated -- extremism, their allies, terrorists and the like." ...-

http://www.powerlineblog.com/

Why bother with the MSM when you can get the most accurate news from those that know best:

"We cannot eliminate the Taliban, not militarily anyway."
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor

So, unless we come up with a different method, we will eventually leave Afghanistan after we get tired of watching our troops bleed...just like the Greeks, Mauryans, Kushans, Hepthalites, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, British, and Soviets did.

For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
Our world has passed away,
In wantonness o'erthrown.
There is nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone!

- Rudyard Kipling, "For All We Have And Are", 1914

...a better Kipling quote for today's Afghanistan

Germany does not equal Afghanistan, either WW1 or WW2. Vietnam, on the other hand...

Myth of Glory

1.
The orphan boy
has one arm,
he stares at me
from the side of the road;
a lifetime of hate
in eight short years.

2.
We storm the village,
it is invested by VC
wrapped in villager's cloth.
They fire AK-47's.
We return fire, kill them.
From a hootch we hear voices,
we yell, throw out your weapons,
come out, with your hands up!
(pigeon Vietnamese.)
They answer with curses and fire.
We fill the hootch with lead,
toss in a grenade.
Silence.
Warily, we look inside,
all dead.
A young woman
clutches an infant to her breast;
welded together
in a river of blood.

3.
She is young, yet old,
browned by the sun.
Barefooted
she toils in
the dark corridors of night,
the small dank rooms;
repeated heaving, drunken breath.

4.
The Saigon street
is filled with people,
the sounds of life energizing,
the business of living
intensely pursued.
A shell explodes, then another
and another.
The Saigon street
is filled with the sounds of death.

5.
The boy, no more than ten,
glares at me.
From beneath his garment,
he flashes his weapon.
Give me a noble cause,
telll me why,
I had to kill a ten-year old boy.

6.
We are on patrol,
dark night, steaming jungle.
The sawgrass cuts.
We step warily, listening for a sound;
trip-wires, booby traps abound,
meld with the earth,
waiting for one more step.

7.
The nurse came down
with the chopper,
its blades whirling, churning air.
They take our wounded.
The nurse is young, rumpled;
the lines of exhaustion, heavy
on her face.
She tends our wounded with the
sure hand of an angel of mercy.
I hunger for her.
I ache for her soft touch.

8.
We are on a two-man LP
fused to the undergrowth
of the jungle.
The moon peers between
the tall-bladed grass,
giving us vision,
then retreats behind night clouds.
Our ears become our antenna,
tuned to detect a suspicious sound.
It is difficult.
All sounds are suspicious.

9.
Today,
I see a monk burning;
self-immolation.
He sits on the damp ground as a budda,
his hands clasped in silent prayer.
The flames flare up;
as ash, he disappears.
Still, the war goes on.
Tomorrow, another monk will burn
in flaming protest,
and every day a monk will burn
and still, the war will go on.

10.
There is little thought
of rioting, flag-burning,
our own venomous vilification.
We fight because we are here,
there is no alternative.
We did not burn our draft cards
and run off to Canada.

11.
There is a place called home.
I don't know where that is.

John Kent
USMCez21@aol.com

This morning as I was bustling about, getting ready to go to my office (though a Canadian, I live in London - London, UK not London, Ontario), I had the 24-hour BBC News channel burbling away in the background.

There was an item on childbirth and midwifery in Afghanistan. Needless to say, I leave to you to imagine how frightful the whole situation is for a pregnant woman in any given remote Afghan village.

What struck me yet again about the reporting was that strange, smarmy but ever-conflicted Western media attitude: it was clear that the Taliban was bad news all round for women in Afghanistan, particularly so in terms of infant mortality rates and the lack of even minimal gynecological health capabilities.

The report focussed on a young woman (no, let's face it, a girl) who had had to travel nine hours from her village in labour to a hospital; sadly, she lost her baby anyway. Under the Taliban, no doubt she too would have died.

But the report just couldn't leave it at that. The female (!) narrator went on to talk about the years of war, the Soviet invasion and the US-led campaign that toppled the Taliban - the usual litany of ills.

But the simple facts are these: if the Taliban and their kind are ever permitted to rule Afghanistan again, conditions for Afghan women can only go from bad to worse. If even the merest sustained effort is made to fend off the Taliban, conditions for Afghan women will at least go from bad to poor.

Plugging 500 Taliban full of lead courtesy of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry might well appal the NDP* but that's 500 Taliban less to attack and intimidate schooolteachers, midwives, nurses and doctors.

In the end, there is no happy-clappy, it's-a-small-world-after-all, all-cultures-are-equal way of doing this. We either get involved, or we turn our backs on it.

To paraphrase Mark Steyn, "idealism as inertia" is the hallmark of a line of thinking that proclaims loudly "something must be done" in places like Kandahar and Darfur but won't actually ever do anything because we must somehow "respect the sovereignty" of the perpetrators.

* Canada's Official Enemy PartyTM.

>>Germany does not equal Afghanistan, either WW1 or WW2.

So what? I never said that it did. Take your strawman out of that coffin, it ain't dead 'cuz it was never alive to begin with.

The poem by Kipling is apropos today's Afghanistan for the sentiment expressed regarding the circumstances extant.