never did, and we never will...let's forget you, better still. http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/breaking2453389.0680555557.html -- 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. The fact is the Coalition is making steady progress in Iraq, but not without ups and downs. So why is it that no matter what events unfold, good or bad, the media highlights mostly the negative aspects of the event? The journalistic adage, “If it bleeds, it leads,” still applies in Iraq, but why only when it’s American blood? ...I have had my staff aggressively pursue media coverage for all sorts of events that tell the other side of the story only to have them turned down or ignored by the press in Baghdad. Strangely, I found it much easier to lure the Arab media to a “non-lethal” event than the western outlets. Open a renovated school or a youth center and I could always count on Al-Iraqia or even Al-Jazeera to show up, but no western media ever showed up – ever.
Funny this author finds it strange, this country has long adopted if it bleeds, it leads approach (maybe he should watch bowling for columbine ). How many times do you see good news in the states reported on your evening news? Now how many murders, rapes, fire, tornadoes, hurricane news do you see?
I don't know whats the big deal about reconstructing and opening an establishment like a school which was open before the war anyway but was either destroyed / bombed / or closed.. its like "Look, we're rebuilding iraq".. well who messed it up in the first place? you're supposed to be fix it!
I couldn't agree more!!! A more noble thing for U.S. to do is to provide security for the general Iraqis, instead of limiting to the "Green Zone". Heck, even the Green Zone is hardly safe nowadays.
There is a war brewing, but it is not in the middle east. It is between the moderate and conservative Republicans. Moderates know the war is going off course, but the conservatives do not care and misrepresent the actual events. The most unfortunate thing is haliburton's stock goes up higher as does our debt, and we just continue to bicker.
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. Fox News says its employees can not go out and get a cup of coffee in the green zone without military body guards. But it really is safe in Iraq for everybody else.
It is interesting that just about everything that is posted on this site, whether by people on the right or the left, is based on what is spoon-fed to us by the major news outlets. We place a lot of trust and faith in those groups. It is almost like people on the left take CNN, The New York Times, and every other major outlet (except the alternativle skewed FNC) at their word and draw their conclusions and establish their opinions based on what they read and see. And those of us on the right take our cues from either the administration or the bloggers, neither of which are any more or less trustworthy than partisan press. It was nice to read the whole article. And yes I have read articles by soldiers that had different experiences.
so its a basically a choice between CNN and news outlets for the left and administration and right-wing bloggers for the right.. guess who gets more accurate info?
That is a good point Chance, I know you are conservative and your view was even handed. That said, besides the major outlets, radio, and the Blogosphere, where else SHOULD or COULD we get our news? I don't think repeating one soldiers view of their experience in Iraq gives any clearer a picture than CNN, FNC or the AP. In fact, it's more confusing as they are focused on their unit, their AO and their mission. They aren't always part of the oft overused "Big Picture". But how else can we hope to get the "Big Picture" view without multiple news outlets and reports and military personnel that oversee the effort without Rummy's sarcastic comedy hour briefings? A hard charging Marine fire-team leader firing and maneuvering his squad through the streets of Falluja will have a far different view of his participation in the War and how effectively it is being waged. An Army reservist serving with a combat support transport battalion operating out of the green zone and constantly worrying about his Deuce and a Half taking an IED hit before he can rotate back to his job at Home Depot will have a FAR different view. An Airforce intelligence analyst sequestered in an air-conditioned situation room reviewing enemy troop movements from the border with Syria will offer a completely different assessment.
That's my point. You guys are under the impression that the news presented to you is complete but it's not. I recognize that the info I get is skewed. You guys don't. And as far as where else can we get information that is where you have to rely on your fundamental philosophies and so much of where our philosophies are established is from the news.
Nope. Why are you assuming this? Show us one example in which you rebuked the story from a source where you normally rely on.
No More Illusions Americans used to dream of building a strong, unified, pluralistic Iraq. Now the possibilities are a very loose federation, or violent disintegration. By Scott Johnson, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Michael Hastings Newsweek Oct. 10, 2005 issue - For more than a decade, Abu Sajad's small convenience store was a fixture in Doura, an industrial neighborhood in south Baghdad. Customers came for friendly service and the ease of buying rice, tea or cigarettes a few blocks from home. Abu Sajad, a 44-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair, would even let regulars—Sunnis, Shiites or Christians—run up a tab. But not long ago, Abu Sajad was found in a pool of his own blood. Sunni insurgents had shot him 11 times with an AK-47. Shortly afterward, his widow and four children left for Karbala, a Shiite town in the south. His brother, Abu Naseer, decided to move to Al Kurayat, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. The Doura shop was closed, another debris-strewn relic of an Iraq that may no longer exist. "I have no reason or explanation why he was killed except that he was Shiite," says his brother. Across the country many Iraqis have begun to fear the worst: that their society is breaking apart from within. "The vast majority of the population is resisting calls to take up arms against other ethnic and religious groups," said a senior Bush administration official whose portfolio includes Iraq but who is not authorized to speak on the record. Yet he also said there "is a settling of accounts and a splitting apart of communities that [once] did business together." Sunni insurgents, trying to prevent political dominance by the Shiite majority, are killing them in great numbers. Shiite militia and death squads are resisting. Now many ordinary citizens who are caught in the middle aren't waiting to become victims. They're moving to safer areas, creating trickles of internal refugees. "There is an undeclared civil war," Hussein Ali Kamal, head of intelligence at the Ministry of Interior, told NEWSWEEK. The outcome of these conflicts—and Iraq's future as a unified state—may well be riding on a critical nationwide vote planned for next week. Iraqis will decide, in a U.S.-orchestrated referendum on Oct. 15, whether to accept a permanent constitution drafted by the transitional National Assembly. Yet many worry that even if the constitution passes as Washington hopes, it will only worsen the disintegration underway. Key provisions allow for separate regions to control water and new oil wells, dictate tax policy and oversee "internal security forces"—to become autonomous, in effect. A confidential United Nations report, dated Sept. 15 and obtained by NEWSWEEK, cautions that the new constitution is a "model for the territorial division of the State." And in congressional testimony last week, Gen. George Casey, commander of Coalition forces in Iraq, said the U.S. occupation may have to continue longer because the draft constitution "didn't come out as the national compact that we thought it was going to be." Others say Iraq can exist, even thrive, under such a loose federalist system. What is not in dispute is that at the most basic level—of neighborhoods and communities—the tissue of Iraqi society is already rupturing. It's not just Shia who are displacing themselves to be among their own kind, though they are the main victims of the Sunni-led insurgents. Many Sunnis, terrified of death squads and Shia-dominated police who look the other way, are fleeing Shia areas even if they don't support the insurgency. Dozens of Sunni families left Basra in the past year, fearing attacks from Shiite militias that dominate that southern city. "For a Sunni family like mine that was swimming in a lagoon of Shiites, it was almost impossible to continue living in Basra," said one refugee, Abu Mishal. Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the National Assembly, concurs: "We never had this even under Saddam ... This is very dangerous." For many Iraqis, the only sense of security they can find after two and a half years of chaos is in the bosom of their sect or tribe. One central government after another in Baghdad has failed to establish order. After two years of training, the new Iraqi Army has but one fully independent battalion—about 500 men—CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid told Congress last week. So, not surprisingly, militias and warlords have begun to take over and tend to their own. All this is the opposite of what was envisioned a year or so ago. As part of the hopeful U.S. vision imposed by then U.S. viceroy L. Paul Bremer, 10 militias nationwide were to have been folded into the new Iraqi military and police. "This decision was never activated," says Ammar al-Mayiahi, Basra chief for the Badr Brigades, the militia of the Iranian-linked SCIRI party. "And Badr is still in control." In fact, several big militias are now operating across the southern Shiite provinces, often warring with one another for political and administrative advantage. All Iraqi Arabs, whether Sunni or Shia, are reluctant to travel to the Kurdish north. The Kurdish peshmerga are by far the biggest native force in the country, some 75,000 strong. They do not fly the Iraqi flag or wear Iraqi Army uniforms. "The most dangerous scenario is that the regions form their own internal-security services and they start operating with the sanction of local authorities," says a Western official in Baghdad who was forbidden by his superiors from speaking on the record. "Then the country could break up." Yet many local authorities are already deferring to the militias. In Sholeh, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad, fighters working for the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr recently allowed a NEWSWEEK photographer to accompany them. The commander, Abu Razaq, who had a black scarf wrapped around his head and an AK-47 slung low on his right hip, said he gets no trouble from the Americans or Iraqi police. "We coordinate very well with the police," he said. Why are the police so compliant? "They are too scared to arrest the terrorists when they have a target. So they coordinate with us and we go inside and storm the houses." It isn't clear whether this reversion to ethnic roots will lead to national disintegration. Iraqis have had a relatively brief experience of nationhood—about 80 years. Most of that has been unpleasant: 12 years of British colonial rule, an interlude of monarchy and then various strongmen and the brutal three-decade nightmare of Saddam's Baath Party. What is happening now, catalyzed by the killing and lack of security, is in part a return to the natural decentralization that once dominated Mesopotamia, as it was called. Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mehdi, seeking to put the best face on things, told NEWSWEEK that the constitutional process will bring Iraq back to a more halcyon era when it was a loose system of communities centered around the three biggest cities, Basra, Baghdad and Mosul. "The decentralized system worked here for thousands of years," he says. Under the new constitution, Mehdi adds, Iraq "could be like the Arab Emirates—each state would have its own investment policy, its own costs, a combination of different models." Even so, U.S. officials were stunned in August when Iraq's most powerful Shiite politician, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, demanded the same rights given to the Kurds and sought to create a Shia superregion in the south. Such a region could become a powerful new ally and satellite for Iran And in the worst case, the new Iraqi Army the United States is training—which is mainly Shia—could become the core of a Shiite army. U.S. officials believe that Iranian intelligence agents have infiltrated the most senior levels of the Iraqi government. Against Shiite power, many Sunnis believe that the only leverage they have left is the insurgency. As a result, some U.S. officials worry that Sunni support of the insurgents will continue no matter what. If the constitution does pass, the Sunnis could feel even more disenfranchised. If, on the other hand, the draft is rejected by a two-thirds majority in three regions—the threshold for defeat under the law—the insurgents may declare success. The administration clearly is concerned. Gen. Peter Pace, the new Joint Chiefs chairman, gave a notably bleak Iraq briefing recently to the White House, breaking with his relentlessly optimistic predecessor, Gen. Richard Myers. Top military and civilian officials are particularly focused on dwindling domestic support for the Iraq occupation. This week, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney begin a new speaking tour to shore up that support. But even if America does "stay the course," to use the president's favorite phrase, many wonder whether the country he liberated will still be there at the finish line. With Michael Hirsh and John Barry in Washington, Melinda Liu in Basra and Joe Cochrane © 2005 Newsweek, Inc. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9558117/site/newsweek/
You have a point, Chance, although I don't think it applies to me. However, I think you left out where the "right" gets their info, which too many take as gospel. (hey, I don't take any of the media outlets you say the "left" gets it's "marching orders" from for granted as the only source I should check out... I check them all out) More of those on "the right" get their "gospel" from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Perhaps blogs are a big deal to them. Personally, I don't know any Republicans who read them, but many here apparently do. (basso, you listening? ) Anyway, you have a point, I just wanted to point out that it's a broad one, and doesn't apply to many on both sides. Hope the throat is better! Keep D&D Civil.
so you conservatives rather have skewed info than incomplete news? can you sight any significant/major news that CNN or any of the major news outlets has not reported on? generally, breaking something working and functioning then fixing it is not considered as news.. or doing something you're supposed to either....
No I watch CNN and FNC and all of the other news as well. I watch it with a hint of skepticism and with the knowledget that the individuals presenting the information to me would rather have Democrats in power and will do what they can to help. Have we forgotten Rathergate? That was one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. And I do not get my talking points from Limbaigh. He infuriates me with his lunacy. Nor do I get them from FNC.
Actually, most of the schools, hospitals, parks and other public buildings that our soldiers and contractors have built were never there to begin with. Last time I checked Saddam was using all of his money on his military, palaces and paying off suicide bombers families while ignoring the needs of his people including the health care and education systems. I read every major US news outlet's everyday, along with countless foreign outlets as well to get the whole story and make up my own mind about what is truly going on, too bad most Americans don't do the same. Simply becasue I choose to watch Fox news doesn't mean I agree or believe everything they say or do... news in this country is a MASSIVE business, and you can never forget that.
