Meanwhile, Bill Roggio is on the scene;
Tonight I had the displeasure of witnessing the Death Watch in action. An Al Jazeera report, based on an unsubstantiated claim from an unnamed Taliban source, indicated a Canadian soldier was kidnapped in Afghanistan. Reuters repeated the unsubstantiated claim, which later morphed into an unspecified number of Coalition troops. Canada’s Globe and Mail, in a rush to press, misidentified the lead Canadian Public Affairs Officer, Major Scott Lundy, as the “spokesman for NATO Special Forces” (the webmaster later corrected this and removed the reference to Major Lundy altogether.)
The Canadian media rushes into action, trying to get to the bottom of the story which very likely is a Taliban information operation. Cell phones are buzzing, reporters are pressing the public affairs officers for quotes. The Death Watch is in full news-gathering mode. Media outlets in Canadian are requesting live interviews and quick columns from their reporters at the airfield. The Canadian forces are in turn conducting a headcount but discount the reports, as this have happened in the past. If this is a false report, as it likely is, the propaganda machine of al-Qaeda and the Taliban has succeeded yet again in manipulating the Western media into doing their bidding. The DeathWatch continues as I submit this post, and Al Jazeera is downplaying the reports of the kidnapping.
He has more. Unsurprisingly, it involves real news about the operations there.
In 2001, I was in the media room at a major sporting event. In the final seconds of that event, one of the competitors was killed.
From that moment, there was a two-hour gap until the press conference announcing the man’s passing.
It was a long, quiet two hours. And once it became clear what had taken place, everyone in that room felt like throwing up. People did their jobs as reporters, but there was a great sense of loss.
So it’s hard to imagine the situation you’re describing in Afghanistan, where the press is working itself into a tizzy over the prospect of a human tragedy.
There’s a difference between doing the job, and acting like a Piranha on a carcass.
What is fuelling this? Anti-war sentiment? A sense that these deaths will hurt Harper?
Hopefully there’s nothing to this, and it instead turns out to look just like the premature dissemination of the Iranian yellow badges story.
I believe the quote is: “If it bleeds, it leads”. Why show Afghan girls going to school for the first time when you can show blood and gore, even if the original photo/video was shot a long time ago. Part of the problem is that the line between the editorial page, news commentary and the news part of the paper, news broadcast has disappeared. You have trouble telling which is which. Reporters are expected to put a personal “light” on it. All too ofter it isn’t their spin but the big boys upstairs.
“… the propaganda machine of al-Qaeda and the Taliban has succeeded yet again in manipulating the Western media into…”
…. reporting that the news was probably false.
Nice try, Bill. Better luck next time.
I wonder how this will play out in certain Canadian political and media circles (from washingtonpost.com > World > Wires).
“U.S. Offers to Command NATO in Afghanistan”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp…6060601124.html
“The United States has offered to take command of the NATO force in Afghanistan next year following the current British stint in charge of the expanding peacekeeping mission, diplomats said Tuesday.
The handover to a U.S. general is expected to take place in February as part of an overhaul of the NATO mission. The changes will include introducing a more flexible, multinational headquarters to replace the system of rotating national commands which has been in place since the start of the operation in August 2003…
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said his country would like to take command in 2008.
NATO is scheduled to expand its peacekeeping mission from 9,000 to 16,000 by late July when it is scheduled to take on security in the dangerous southern region. Later this year, it hopes to complete its expansion by moving into the eastern sector, which will likely take its total numbers to 21,000.
The U.S. is hoping to reduce its troops numbers this year from 19,000 to 16,000. Many of the remaining U.S. troops will be incorporated into the NATO force, notably in the eastern region, where Americans will be the lead nation under the NATO command. Britain is taking command in the south [presumably around the end of this year when Canada’s command
http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/new…s_e.asp? id=1703
of the Multi-National Brigade Headquarters ends], Germany commands the north, and Italy the west.
However, the U.S. will also maintain a smaller combat force independent of NATO with the aim of hunting down Taliban and al-Qaida remnants…”
Mark
Ottawa
Hey TC, and the big boys upstairs answer to ______ ?
As the old saying goes, follow the money.
As for the anti-war sentiment that rabid in it’s logic here not sure, perhaps we should start selling soldier dolls and small war toys, like tanks and ships and guns, like we use to be able to do. Ever watch two or three little guys play naturally together? First thing they do is make a gun out of any thing available, then the mom freaks out like it’s a poisonous snake.
Why are we as parents not allowed to make the decision of our raising of our children with ‘war toys’ or not but the government is?
Meanwhile, things in civilian Afghanistan aren’t going so well:
Shoddy Reconstruction Angers Afghans
via berkeleydailyplanet.com
By Fariba Nawa, New America Media (06-06-06)
KABUL, Afghanistan—I am writing this in my apartment in one of the “posh” new buildings constructed in 2004 near downtown Kabul. The shiny structure is five stories tall with tinted windows. My roommate and I pay $300 a month in rent, the going price in such buildings. Few locals can afford such relative luxury—a civil servant’s salary is just $50 a month. And this is no Trump Towers.
Foreign dignitaries and television cameras see only the shiny windows and new-looking construction. Inside, our bathroom drains emit the stench of sewage because of faulty plumbing. The pipes in the walls leak constantly, and the lightest touch sends disintegrated wallboard cascading to the floor. There’s no insulation in the walls, and the gaps in our misshapen door and window frames allow icy winds to blow directly into the apartment. As temperatures drop below zero in the winter, we get 15 hours of power for the week.
Very little in Afghanistan could be considered well-made. Soviet-era construction is notoriously flimsy. But for sheer lack of durability, you need look no further than some of the reconstruction projects undertaken in just the last few years.
**************
For more, see: http://www.aopnews.com/today.html
The fact that the news story turns out to be false, has no effect on the propaganda value of that story.
Propaganda isn’t about truth; facts and evidence are irrelevant to the strategy of propaganda.
What propaganda is all about, is raising emotions. That’s all. The facts that come later, can’t nullify that already-existent emotion. What happens is that people will start to justify their heightened emotions with rationalizations. They’ll say that the story is ‘possibly true’ or ‘it might happen in the future’ or ‘it’s true but they are covering it up’.
Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of propaganda to manipulate a population.
On the home front:
UPDATE: Military Now OKs ‘Support our Troops ‘ billboard
Acting Chief of Defence Staff of Canadian Forces has apologized to Mr. Peter Coleman, President of the National Citizens Coalition and has indicated that we are very pleased to see Canadians supporting our troops. via nealenews.com
Andy- what’s your point about the ‘shoddy buildings’? Are you trying to say that freeing the Afghanistan people from the Taliban wasn’t such a good idea? That maintaining that freedom isn’t such a good idea?
Shoddy construction is found everywhere – not merely in communist era Eastern Europe, but in china, in Africa, Turkey, Indonesia, on and on, in all developing countries. It’s also found in developed countries – you’ll find interesting tales of shoddy and faulty work there as well.
It takes time, it takes the development of building codes, it takes the development of supervision – on and on and on. But, these construction problems have nothing to do with the war.
ET:
Isn’t reporting about alleged shoddy workmanship a form of negative news reporting ie. “death watch”?
Ack! Part of our mission in Afghanistan is imposing our radical feminism on Afgthanistan; specifically, we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars setting up “affirmative action”, “pay equity”, and gender hiring quotas:
“”Canada and its international partners are making a difference in Afghanistan” by helping to create a sense of security and self-sufficiency, as well as extend freedoms that have not previously existed, Mr. MacKay said.
He said Canada will know its job in Afghanistan is done when the more than 40 recommendations that came out of an international conference on Afghanistan that took place in London earlier this year have been achieved. They include measures such as the development of an Afghan army, a police force and a border patrol, a significant reduction in the number of land mines and a targeted increase in female employment.“
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060607.AFGHANCOST07/TPStory/National
Invading sovereign states to impose feminist hiring quotas? Isn’t that kinda Marxist? Is this a war on terror? Or an escalation on the Judeo-Christian-Atheist/Socialist Western world’s war on men? It’s a fair question.
Anyway, in Mackay’s own words our job in Afghanistan isn’t done until certain gender hiring quotas are met. He said that explicitly; no wiggle room there.
E.T. – would you say that the Iranian yellow badge story was effective propaganda, too, or do you think it fizzled too quickly?
From the link of the daily times, I noticed this little vermen.
WASHINGTON: The three tonnes of ammonium nitrate found with the Totonto terrorism suspects was planted by the police in an elaborate sting operation.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\06\05\story_5-6-2006_pg7_6
by Khalid Hasan, who quotes the TO Star & G M only.
Replies –
Fergy – Reporting shoddy construction is fair. But to associate the shoddy construction with the war is propaganda.
Grasshopper – of course it was effective propaganda. The officials worked very fast to ‘douse the fires’, but, the fact that it was ‘heard in the world’ gives it a reality that, in the minds of some, won’t go away.
Bob – for heaven’s sake, don’t transform the basic modern civic value of gender equality into the irrelevant affirmative action goals of identity politics/
The Islamic tribal world denigrates women. To help move out of tribalism, you have to move out of the perspective that women are worth ‘half of a man’ and belong only in the home, and must not be allowed to be educated, must not go to school, must not drive a car, must not vote, must not…etc,etc.
You can’t have a modern economy and a modern democracy if half your population are uneducated, locked into a house, and not allowed out unless accompanied by a male relative. Get it?
C’mon, Bill.
While the Canadian media understandably sprung into action upon hearing reports of Canadian soldiers being kidnapped, you sprung into action to report on… the media.
Don’t blame them for mobilizing to report on what would have been a very important news story. If you doubt its newsworthiness, check Kate’s post and updates at 12:44 p.m. By your definition, she’s just as guilty for picking up the CTV story as CTV was for picking up the AP story as the AP was for picking up the Al Jazeera story.
In the end, it turned out to be a false lead; 90 per cent of them are. Welcome to the news business.
I just thought your post today was unbelievably off-base. Reporters were simply doing their job, and it’s a little rich for you to comment so condescendingly on it as if to say, “Oh… this is soooo unpleasant!”
Damn right, it’s unpleasant. But I’d love to hear your alternative suggestion: Next time some tragic incident befalls our nation, maybe we should all sit there with our thumbs up our butts, NOT seek out sources, NOT ask any questions, and read your blog to read the headline: “No Death Watch Today.”
ET:
sigh I was agreeing with you, I just don’t throw quite so many words around.
Come on. Is it better to ignore it than to leg it out and check if it’s wrong? If it’s true, it’s a terrible, huge story. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. A bad day for Al jezeera.
It’s not like soldiers, including Canadians, have not been snatched in hostile zones before. Les
From the Canadian Press:
Report of Canadian soldiers being abducted in Afghanistan proves false
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) _ A report that Canadian soldiers were abducted in Afghanistan is false and all troops have been accounted
for, officials said Wednesday after a head count to make sure.
The Prime Minister’s Office announced that all 2,300 Canadian personnel and another 4,200 coalition troops in the war-torn country
were safe.
ET & Grasshopper: Iranian dress codes.
The “yellow badge” story has been denied although Amir Taheri is sticking to it.
What seems to be true is the decree of a Muslim dress code in Iran.
In and of itself this is worthy of strong criticism.
En passant, it will also automatically denote “non-Muslims,” just not delimit them by specific religions.
The Iran regime is hardly off the hook.
the way the story morphed reminds one of the game we played as kids when one person whispers something into the next persons ear and it goes around the circle of kids the end message is never anywhere near what started. ‘course there was always someone that would screw it up on purpose to make it more interesting…or front page news
Shoddy construction in Afghanistan. Well you know that could never happen in Canada.
Anyone recall that apartment building in BC that was literally condemmed months after it opened? Contractor left pretty quickly leaving leaking roofs, black mold and rot. Made national headlines because the BC government inspectors blessed everything but joe and Jane sixpack ended up losing.
Keep in mind too that con artists will show up wherever there is money for these reconstruction projects, whether it be ripping off senior citizens with hurricane roof damage or building bomb shelters.
What would it take to convert you from Christianity to Islam? When we ask them to “free women” and buy into democracy we are asking them to radically alter their way of life. Why would they want to do that? Anyway, their needs are basic, money, food , shelter. Many get those things through cultivating the poppy for opium. That is their cash crop.
Five years ago the Americans came in and promised to rebuild and change the cash crop to something else they could live on. The Americans didn’t keep their promises.
Now the Taliban is coming back and is protecting their crop through a mafia kind of justice system are maintaining law and order in those rural areas now targeted by NATO.
The Afghans are fed up with American broken promises and destroying poppy crops while not replacing them with other means of subsistence.
That is what this is about. Credibility or the lack of it on our side. Is it now too late? We shall see.
I generally like Bill’s contribution to our knowledge of what’s going on in the world, but he’s off base on this one.
The fact the insurgents take exponentially more casualties is reported in just about every battle story. NATO’s ramp-up, courtesy the Brits, the Dutch and (soon) the Canadians, has been reported for months. (Anyone remember the heated debate in the Dutch parliament over whether they should go at all?) News of the small U.S. withdrawal is ancient.
Like any good publisher, Bill makes his call on what he considers news and what will serve his readers. There are certainly new elements to be unearthed as these troop shifts take place. I suspect Bill’s audience is mainly from the U.S. and may not know international forces are taking up the Afghan mission in relief of some American forces. Let’s face it, Afghanistan is a tough case and front-and-centre in Canada (and probably The Netherlands now), but it remains the barely-seen mouse next to the elephant that Iraq has become in the U.S.
But criticizing Canadian reporters on a given Wednesday for chasing down and eventually discrediting a spectacular TV report about supposed kidnapped Canadian soldiers, compared to what he reports, strikes me as a bit much.
It does raise the old question about the constant news cycle and how people can get conclusive information when stories now unfold before their eyes. Blink twice, and the situation has changed.
Roggio writes:
Elsewhere in southeastern Afghanistan, there is real news to report, and it is the Taliban that is taking the brunt of the casualties. As the hot and dusty Afghan summer begins, NATO is increasing its presence in Afghanistan, particularly in the Southeastern provinces of Helmand, Uruzgan, Kandahar and Zabul. NATO forces are expected to surge from 9,000 to 17,000 troops by the end of the summer. The U.S. commitment of troops in Afghanistan is expected to decrease by one bridage, as forces are decreased from 23,000 to 20,000 troops. This results in a net gain of 5,000 NATO troops during the summer.
steve d. as usual in your self-enclosed perspective, it’s all the fault of the Americans.
Could you possibly suggest what other crop would provide a 2.3 billion economy? These farmers aren’t poor; they are businessmen and they don’t want a substitute crop that merely provides food for the locals.
After all, it IS illegal to grow opium in Afghanistan, but, could you explain how the Afghans could provide the legal system to prosecute this enormous industry and the policing to enforce it? Or, do you think that the US should police it, and also provide the courts and judges?
The Taliban only stopped production for ONE year, 2001 – and only the new growth. The growers simply stockpiled and drove up the price.
It isn’t as simplistic a situation as you outline. Opium is an extremely lucrative crop; nothing else can match it – unless, of course, you want to drive up the price of corn, beans, tomatoes by having the growers switch to these products and selling them at opium prices.
Tony wrote:
C’mon, Bill.
While the Canadian media understandably sprung into action upon hearing reports of Canadian soldiers being kidnapped, you sprung into action to report on… the media.
Judging by your comment, you didn’t actually finish reading his report.
Did you miss the link (the words are highlighted in blue) that reads “He has more. Unsurprisingly, it involves real news about the operations there.”?
Jesus H. Christ. Not only does he have several paragraphs on operations in Afghanistan, but I actually tried to lead you to it. Yet, all you could see in his report was yourself.
I guess he just buried the lead, then.
ET
I didn’t promise anything the Americans did. They were going to give them alternatives to growing the poppy. The farmers don’t care what they grow all they want is to be able to feed their families. The farmers didn’t make huge sums. It is the people who buy the poppies from the farmers who make all the money.
Another point was that the government is ineffectual in the countryside, which means most of Afghanistan. The Taliban have moved in because basically there was no followup after the initial Taliban defeat. Incompetence everywhere you look.
I found these messages on the Write to the troops space on the DND website–thought I’d share it with all————————-Lydia/grade 3 – 6/8/2006 [11:26]
chateauguay, Quebec,, canada
Dear, canadian soldiers i hope you are happy that every one writes to you and get courage from it.i hope you are not too sad to be relly far away from home.i hope youdont all get killed.i am relly going to sad if you all die from that. i hope you feel comefeterbal where you are
well you know what i mean.i hope you finish your job
bye from Lydia
Natasha – grade3 – 6/8/2006 [11:26]
Mercier, Quebec,, Canada
Hi soldiers thank you for helping us, i want to tell you that you are doing great for helping us so i will think of you, so you can do it,i hope you are going to be ok so everyone is hoping for you to save them, good luck soldiers
and i know you can do it.
so don’t be scared i won’t stop thinking of you because you guys are my favorite hero.
so thanks alot for helping us.
Mikhail/ grade 3 – 6/8/2006 [11:25]
Chateaugeay, Quebec,, cananda
Hello, I hope you can live and win the war. Cananda is hoping you can do this. Do this for canada. Go and do this!
Hailey_Grade 3. – 6/8/2006 [11:29]
Chateaguay, Quebec,, Canada
Hello you guys I hope good.you gus are doing a very very nice thing for Afghanistan.I know the people in Afghanistan are going to be very proud of you.If you win or lose we will stell be cheering for you.If you win or lose you did your best.