State Of Obfuscation

It would seem this is the "Way of the Future".

Anything can be The Truth if you just use enough "anonymous sources". I see more and more of this every day!

What is rather frightning is how many people will take information and quotations attributed to "anonymous sources" as the absolute truth, while never questioning the validity of such information when it is coming from unnamed sources.

TerrorStorm

Best on google video's

get a big bag of popcorn for this one folks

For those deep thinks out there...

I wonder what criticism of WWII would have been like in 1943, following today's standards? In the campaign to take Sicily (Operation Husky), there were numerous strategic and tactical errors, including the failure of US command to inform the Royal Navy of a parachute drop, which led to 318 men being killed as a result of 'friendly fire'. By all objective standards, the Germans, once Hans Hube took control, were able to conduct an effective rear-guard action, withdrawing the majority of men and materiel to the mainland, despite the Royal Navy having almost complete command of the sea.

Because the Allies eventually won the war, and thanks to hagiophries like "Patton", many people now think the Sicilian campaign was a cakewalk. In fact, in just over a month, more than 500 Canadians were killed (and almost 5,000 other Allied troops).

How would this be reported today? "Allied blunder costs lives of over 300 men"? "Poor planning allows Germans safe retreat"? "Sicilian campaign costs over 1,000 lives per week"? All of these are true statements, but are they valuable statements in the middle of a war?

Similarly, I'm appalled at the way MSM - the NY Times especially - seems determined to provide the enemy with complete information on every intelligence and surveillance technique we have available. Anyone who's read any WWII history knows how important breaking Germany's "Enigma" code was to the war effort, and how the US Navy's breaking the Japanese code was instrumental to their winning the Battle of Midway (considered the turning point in the Battle of the Pacific). One wonders how this would handled today. I can see the NYT headline "Despite having German codes, Allies continue to lose ships in the Battle of the Atlantic". What would the three-fold effect of that have been? The Germans would have changed codes, making it much harder for the Allies to predict their movements. Shipping losses would have become greater as a result, resulting in more dead merchant marinemen (the unsung heroes of the war, IMHO). Finally, civilian support for their leaders would have been degraded, and we might have elected neo-Chamberlains to sue for peace (Hi Jack!), and thus permanently installed Hitler in Europe. (For those who think this is too ludicrous to consider, I invite them to study the MSM's "considered" view on the state of Soviet-West affairs in the late 70's, when their revealed wisdom was that we should just give up, accept the status quo, and live with Communist Europe.)

I appreciate that historians have to write the truth, and that the truth can be harsh. I'll be the first to say that there have been errors in both the Afghan and Iraq campaigns. But reporting these errors, our intelligence techniques, and criticism of the war in general - *DURING THE CAMPAIGN* - is not productive, IMHO.

It is often said that "victors write history". Let us be the victors first, and then write the history.

From Henry V, Act II, Scene II
"Hear your sentence. You have conspired against our royal person, joined with an enemy proclaimed, and from his coffers received the golden earnest of our death; wherein you would have sold your king to slaugther, his princes and peers to servitude, his subjects to oppression and contempt, and his whole kingdom to desolation. Touching our person seek we no revenge; But we our kingdom's safety must so tender, whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws we do deliver you. Get you therefore hence, poor miserable wretches, to your death; The taste whereof, God and of his mercy give you patience to endure, and true repentance of all your dear offences! Bear them hence!

Please note regarding the phrase "to your death", that while I remain opposed to capital punishment, I am not opposed to another Elizabethan punishment: exile. Anyone who seeks to promote the enemy's cause should have their citizenship revoked. We then 'bear them hence' to to the enemy's shores with the same amount of possessions that immigrants to these shores once had--that is, next to nothing. As for their possessions left behind, possessions that living in a free society allowed the exiles to acquire, they can be given to the families of those who sacrificed their lives defending the freedom birthright our ex-citizens once had, but now must earn all over again. We shall then see if our ex-citizens can make it in a country whose main cash crops are dust and death and the freedom to push for improvements is somewhat curtailed.

Well said, KevinB. I am worried that we are in a situation that we might never get out of, though. I am old enough to remember the first Gulf War...which was when I first started to notice "strange behavior" from western reporters. I remember CNN reporter Peter Arnett (who was responsible for most of those dramatic night-time, anti-aircraft-firing images from Baghdad). I remember that, when he was evacuated from Baghdad, he was asked what he saw. He refused to give US military personnel any information saying that it would compromise his "neutral position as a journalist." Like you mention in your post, I was thinking, "I can't imagine a WWII reporter giving that kind of answer." After all, should he at least consider the fact that the "position" he holds as a journalist is due to the fact that he lives in a country that allows that. Shouldn't he be supporting his country's interest first? It doesn't mean that he has to become a propaganda tool for the military when he gives his news reports or writes a column. But, WTF? Ever since then, I have been noticing that the "neutral" position of journalists has been slipping farther and farther to the left.

The problem we have today is that it is almost impossible to expect any scribes to write in a neutral fashion and in a way that protects their own nations interests first. The left-leaning MSM was having a field day. Now, with counters to the left bias like Fox News, we have another point of view. This is good because it gives us another position on the story. But, it also has a negative side effect because now both the left and right slanted news organizations can claim that their slant is justified because it offers a counter to the "other news networks". It's almost as though, in order to be a news agency, you have to pick a side...which is not (I thought) what journalism is supposed to be about.

But I don't see how we can ever go back to the way it used to be: reporters worrying about their own nation's self-interest before worrying about the next rung on their career ladder first.

Great post KevinB. I've raised this issue a few times on this blog. Could we have won WWII with the current MSM writing about it? I think not. It's not to say that prosecution of the war can't and shouldn't be criticized. It was during WWII. The difference lies in the nature of the criticism, the one-sidedness of the current reporting, the betrayal of crucial military/intelligence capabilities, and the undermining of the stated objective i.e. restoration of democratic, peaceful states and the defeat of terrorism. Will our civilization die by murder, suicide or simply lying down and dying without the basic willpower to exist?

Great post and many thanks, kevinb.

The demand for 'choosing the winner' within the hour, rejecting too many sequels, is part of our modern electronic mindset. As you note, WWII wasn't won in a day and it took many failures, flaws and sheer willpower and courage, to overcome the axis. Our current MSM are so detached from reality - the reality of flaws, failures and inch-by-inch success - that they work almost entirely within a fictional world.

They write 'reality' and insist that factual reality mimic this fictional reality- which is privileged over facts. So, we get angry when Iraq erupts in 'in-fighting'. Iraq has never had a collaborative democracy but has instead, operated as a collective, as a repressed collective - repressed by one tribe viciously repressing the others. Now that the one-tribe-dominance is gone, the Iraqi have to learn to collaborate. This is something entirely new to them; they have only existed as separate, hostile to each other tribes - with 'stability' only ensured by repression and brutal laws.

You can see the same in other ME countries that are tribal in nature. There is absolutely no attempt made to develop collaboration; instead, the tribes are kept separate and their hostilies are repressed by authoritarian totalitarian top-down rules - in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, in Somalia, in the Sudan etc.

The Islamic world is stuck in tribalism and doesn't know how to collaborate, ie, to function within a democracy. All it knows is locking people into isolate groups, that hate each other, and enforcing quiet by totalitarian fundamentalist tactics.

KevinB (7:39 AM)...
I agree completely; media coverage of Iraq quite simply exposes the MSM as taking sides against the war effort (peace effort?), and by extension, the people of Iraq... 90%+ anyway.

From Yahoo! Singapore, Oct. 16, 2006:
...Najaf, so often in the past the target of bomb attacks, bucked the trend with hundreds of thousands -- officials thought perhaps a million -- pilgrims commemorating the death of Imam Ali in relative safety.

Devotees packed the city under heavy security at the golden-domed shrine to the imam, one of the sect's pivotal figures.

Carefully organized city services were ready for the massive influx from across Iraq and neighboring Iran to funnel them to the shrine Sunday.

Pilgrims paid their respects, kissing the doorways and walls of the shrine itself, before making prayers and vows to the founder of the Shiite sect, who was assassinated in 661 AD.

"I am happy and stunned," said Mohammed Jawad, a 36-year-old journalist from the southern city of Basra. "There were huge numbers of people performing their rituals without incident. I was amazed at the organization."

All traffic in the old city was banned, and pilgrims were ferried from outlying checkpoints to the shrine by specially marked cars to reduce the risk of car-bomb attacks.

"The ceremonies went off as planned without any incident on a security and organizational level," said Najaf deputy governor Abdul Hussein Abtan.

"There were a million pilgrims according to the figures of the transportation people," he added. "The popular committees did an excellent job of protecting the pilgrims and providing services."

Iranian pilgrim Gholam Redha, a 50-year-old civil servant who also came to Najaf last year, said the ceremony was much better organized this time.

"Thanks be to God, I performed my rituals and the visit was perfect, unlike last year," he said. "There no problems this time around."(end of article).

I truly believe the story above TYPIFIES Iraq today, and not the day-to-day reports of bombings and GANG violence ("sectarian" my ass!).

tower (11:18 AM)...
I love it! One of the most cogent posts I've read anywhere.

1) Since the victors write the history (to a large extent), there is no such thing as objective history. (Although some attempt to be balanced more than others.)

2) Media is purely subjective, and it has always been that case. So I don't see why people are upset about books or TV publishing descriptions of events that don't fit their particular views. (The anti-Bush crowd doesn't like the tax-payer funded 'propaganda' coming out of the White House either.)

3) Perhaps the main problem is that subjective descriptions (such as e.g. Woodwards) are, by many, seen as 'objective histories'. People (of any persuasion) are so easily duped.

Bravo, Kevin.

Everyone of us has the tools right in front of us to help counter the MSM's duplicity. All of their site have comment links. Negative comments in large numbers can't be ignored. The NYT's, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, the LA Times live of off advertising revenues. You can't forever mask declining viewers and circulation numbers either.

CBC and the BBC need to have their monoplies ended via the ballot box. A grassroots movement to get that referendum on the ballot would be a good thing.

And, don't think the new internet entities are fair and transparent either. Yahoo's behavior in assisting Chinese censorship is appalling. Googles doing the same thing. See Michelle Malkin's site for her censorship ordeal with You Tube. LGF has had issues with Google and Dig IT. Dig It and You Tube lefties are notorious for censoring by complaining about any opinion that they don't like as racist or offensive.

I can't physically assist our efforts in Iraq, so, I make it a point to do my part for it by taking a few minutes to write a complaint when I spot the typical rotten agenda driven reporting or censorship.

VDH is right the current MSM prognosticators and monday morning quarterbacks, couldn't fight a war if their life depended on it, and it very well may.

They are too blinded by their own preordainded agenda to heed real events, so they try to manufacture events in their stead.

Let's see how well freedom of the press worked under Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and other assorted leaders in infamy.

Of course when the freedom of the press is gone they will be baying at why they didn't see it sooner. By then it will be too little, too late.

God gives one a brain, sadly the MSM it too concerned about advertising revenue and ratings and thus 'spin' the story for maximum rating effects.

This is why blogs cut through 'vested interests' and get at the heart of the matter. Ownership may have its privileges, at the expense of the truth.
The MSM will never completely disappear; but the ability to shape political thought and discourse has waned irrevocably.

No longer must the public be spoonfed insipid pablum. With thoughtful people like VDH you can carry on directly with the author through the medium of blogs. We should count ourselves grateful for his insight and reasoned analysis.
One need not agree with everything he says but at least he can string some cogent thought together unlike so much of the MSM.

deep throat was the #2 dog in the fbi.

a.k.a. mr 'follow the money'.

woodward can dig up some rather knowledgable sources. maybe in 40 years we'll find out who these are. has he given any assurances that in fact there is a record 'somewhere' connecting these accounts to real insiders?

ET: "The Islamic world is stuck in tribalism and doesn't know how to collaborate, ie, to function within a democracy. All it knows is locking people into isolate groups, that hate each other, and enforcing quiet by totalitarian fundamentalist tactics."

Marshall Macluhan addressed this over 40 years ago in his seminal "Understanding Media". Talking about tribal societies, which he thought were buttressed through aural media such as TV/radio, he wondered if we might get to a state where we would order "20% fewer hours of radio" in order to calm certain societies. At this time, I think it might be effective to jam all radio/TV communications, accompanied by massive leaflet drops. The written word is far less emotional than the electronic picture, and this tactic might get the Iraqis to step back, and say "Hey, if we just cool off for a while, the Americans will leave."

If the American leaflets read "To the Iraqi people: we came here to lift the burden of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, and install a democracy representative of all Iraqi people. We know our continued presence here is an affront to many Iraqis, and we would be pleased to leave if we thought the country would not degrade to chaos. If the insurgents truly want us to leave, we implore them to refrain from any further activity for 120 days, after which we will leave Iraq.", and they continued jamming electronic media, I think that many Iraqis might welcome this offer. If you're constantly getting messages about the "oppressors" willing to leave, while you're prevented from receiving inflammatory messages from the insurgents, I think you might change from "help the freedom fighters" to "enough, already".

And I think this would play well in the international press. "US offers withdrawal, if Iraqis can control themselves". If we were able to show repeated shots of exasperated US generals saying "Geez, we'd like to leave, but they keep us here by refusing to co-operate", then I think the Iraqi rank and file and the international press might say "Yes, let's give peace a chance".

Of course, I say this late at night, and heavily under the influence of cough syrup, as I am seriously sick. So this may be nothing more than blather... I'll look at comments tomorrow!

As someone who was born in the middle of WWII, I'd like to thank bryceman for his comment "I am old enough to remember the first Gulf War".

It's early in the a.m. yet, but I do believe this will qualify for my guffaw of the day.

If you'll excuse me.....I have to wipe coffee off my keyboard. ;-)

More two plus two equals five logic. The war on Iraq= WW2, therefore anything that held for true about WW2 holds true for Iraq. This is pure and simple a rhetorical trick.

Neutralsam sez:

"TerrorStorm Best on google video's

get a big bag of popcorn for this one folks

For those deep thinks out there..."

A tad sensationalist and speculative but the truth often hides in plain sight... there are smatterings of historic insight to the pattern modern tyrannies follow in this silly alarmist film. Too bad that message will be lost under all the paranoid conjectures and bombast.

....had you told a German back in 1933 that his newly elected Hard Line patriot Chancellor had ordered the Reichstag burnt down as an excuse to consolodate political power, remove civil rights to purge his political opponents/dissidents and forment a military dictatorship...that the show trial of a mentally disturbed Dutch street person who was scape goated for the crime covered the Nazi complicity in the crime... I suspect any reasoning German would accused you of being a conspiracy nut. ;-)

But the historic record shows us this was most likely the case

And in retrospect it would be impossible to convince 303 era German people of the dangerous potential enacting Hitler's "emergency" "crisis management" legislation would have in the future... after all, at that time was it not reasonable and neccessary to secure the nation against the communist threat? He made his case for suspended civil liberties and legal freedoms so earnestly...He so passionatly assured his countrymen this was a noble patriotic plea for Germans to surrender some of their liberties for the security of the nation...they did not fear the fact it created a embryonic police state and a culture of state surveillance of the public.

I can see some chilling paralell dangers particularly in HR6166.

President Bush cannot convince this conservative that there is ANY excuse for suspending habeas corpus domestically...even for anti terror need. And you don't have to be some wild eyed conspiricy loon to see the potential for abuse that creates. IMHO the threat does not justify the potential for abuse. I FEAR a subsequrnt leader like Hillary Clinton ( or worse) having these powers.