So..How do the troops feel about the liberals/press?

[fintstone]

It's not just Newsweek
Michelle Malkin

If you want to hear an earful, ask an American soldier how he feels about our news media. You will invariably hear an outpouring of dismay and outrage over antagonistic and reckless reporting. I have stacks of letters and e-mails from soldiers and their families sharing those frustrations. During the Vietnam War, those sentiments would get packed away -- private hurts to be silently borne for decades.

But today the Internet has allowed soldiers on the front to disseminate their views -- breaking through the media's entrenched, anti-military bias -- in unprecedented ways. In the wake of Newsweek's publication of its unsourced, mayhem-inducing and now-retracted item about Koran desecration by U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, a sergeant in Saudi Arabia immediately responded on a blog called The Anchoress (theanchoressonline.com):

I have placed my life and the life of my fellow soldiers in danger in order to achieve a measure of the freedoms we enjoy at home for the Iraqi and Afghani people. As soldiers, we all understand that we may be asked to participate in wars (actions) that we (or our countrymen) don't agree with. The irresponsible journalism being practiced by organizations such as Newsweek, however, [is] just inexcusable. At this point, because of their actions and failure to follow up on a claim of that magnitude, they've set the process back in Afghanistan immensely . . .

I don't regret serving my country, not one bit, but to have everything I'm doing here undermined by irresponsible journalists leaves me disgusted and disappointed.

Military bloggers across the Web this week echoed the sergeant's disgust with American journalism. And it's not just Newsweek.

It's the New York Times and CBS News and the overkill over abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. It's the Boston Globe publishing porn photos passed off by an anti-war city councilor as proof that American GIs were raping Iraqi women.

It's the constant editorial drumbeat of "quagmire, quagmire, quagmire."

It's the mainstream media's bogus reporting on the military's failure to stop purported "massive" looting of Iraqi antiquities.

It's the hyping of stories like the military's purported failure to stop looting of explosives at al Qa Qaa right before the 2004 presidential election -- stories that have since dropped off the face of the earth.

It's the persistent use of euphemisms -- "insurgents," "hostage-takers," "activists," "militants," "fighters" -- to describe the terrorist head-choppers and suicide bombers trying to kill American soldiers and civilians alike. It's the knee-jerk caricature of American generals as intolerant anachronisms. It's the portrayal of honest mistakes in battle as premeditated murders.

It's the propagandistic rumor-mongering spread by sympathizers of Italy's Giuliana Sgrena and former CNN executive Eason Jordan about American soldiers targeting and/or murdering journalists.

It's the glorification of military deserters, who bask in the glow of unquestioning -- and largely uncorroborated -- print and broadcast profiles.

And it's the lesser-known insults, too, such as the fraudulent manipulation of Marine recruits by Harper's magazine. In March, the liberal publication plastered a photo of seven recruits at Parris Island, S.C., under the headline, "AWOL in America: When Desertion Is the Only Option." None of the recruits is a deserter. When some expressed outrage over the deception, the magazine initially shrugged.

"We are decorating pages," sniffed Giulia Melucci, the magazine's vice president for public relations, to the St. Petersburg Times.

As Ralph Hansen, associate professor of journalism at West Virginia University and a rare member of academia with his head screwed on straight, observed: "Portraying honorable soldiers as deserters is clearly inappropriate. And I don't see any way Harper's could claim that they weren't portraying the young Marines as deserters. A cover is more than just art. I think that someone had a great idea for a cover illustration and forgot that he or she was dealing with images of real people."

The members of our military are more than just an expedient means to a titillating magazine cover or juicy scoop or Peabody Award. Too often since the "War on Terror" was declared, eager Bush-bashing journalists have forgotten that the troops are real people who face real threats and real bloodshed as a consequence of loose lips and keyboards.

It's not just Newsweek that needs to learn that lesson.

[stuartj]

And dont forget the Weapons of Mass destruction. The media went ot town on that one. And all because theyre werent any. Bastards.

So you want to start a war on false pretences AND you want good press. Seems only reasonable.

[fintstone]

I suspect the troops would just be happy if the press made some attempt to print the truth...regardless of what they think about the president or the war.....
but then, the press is liberal...and the truth is adjustable.

[stuartj]

Yep the truth is adjustable. Its simply gobsmacking that you can sit there and bemoan the press when the US military attempts on EVERY occasion to manipulate the press for its own ends. Shall we go through just a couple of them again?

-Pat Tillman
-Jessica Simpson
-The Wedding massacre
-The market strike
-The strike on Al JAzeera
-the strike on the Palestine Hotel
-Abu Graihb
-Koran abuse

and so on and so on.

How do you tell if the US military is lying? Its lips are moving.

[speeder]

Jessica Simpson was in the Army? I can only imagine what her job was.

[fintstone]

Most of those were not even the least bit questionable ...but I will never convince you...but, even if they were... out of thousands of troops...over years time...those are pretty meaningless....and much less than the lies that have been told to hurt our cause/forces Liberals tell more lies here on PP in one evening than hundreds of thousands of US soldiers in this action...

[fintstone]

Originally posted by speeder
Jessica Simpson was in the Army? I can only imagine what her job was.

Trooop Morale...the anti-Fonda

[stuartj]

Originally posted by speeder
Jessica Simpson was in the Army? I can only imagine what her job was.

LOL. Isnt she? Could only help. She could do Lindy England's job.

[Moneyguy1]

Yes..truth is adjustable, and changes depending on the internet site one visits.

One comedian said something I thought relevant: "Sure, the press talks about the number of cars that explode in Iraq. Why wouldn't they? There's no news in the cars that don't explode!" (close to actual quote, not perfect but you get the idea).

The Press has always been that way. "If it bleeds, it leads". The press dumped all over Whitewater, the Lewinsky debacle and every president and administration has seen the wrath of the press from time to time (Trumans vs. MacArthur for instance). It just happens that the press has found something that sells papers and advertising air time. The problem is that it is so difficult to tell what is the truth; it changes from observer to observer. I would think that most folks currently serving in the ME could give a rats a$$ about what the press says, and a few will always be ready to give a juicy quote to anyone who will listen.

Some of the accusations listed in the article I have not heard about. Desertions? Where? Who? The loose lips? Whose? Someone over there selling us out? Certainly average folks over here can't have any effect on intelligence?

[stuartj]

Originally posted by fintstone
Most of those were not even the least bit questionable ...but I will never convince you...but, even if they were... out of thousands of troops...over years time...those are pretty meaningless....and much less than the lies that have been told to hurt our cause/forces Liberals tell more lies here on PP in one evening than hundreds of thousands of US soldiers in this action...

What do you mean "not questionable"? The Military fabricated the circumtstances of Tillman's death to manipulate doemstic public opinion. Same with with Jessica whats er name. It fired on journalists in the Plaestien Hotel and lied about it. It fired on AllAzeera and lied about it. It lied abut Abu Graihb for months. What do you mean, not questionable?

And almost inevitabley, when the doemestic headlines are done, the damage control spin is spun, ie with Newsweek, we find out, lo and behold, yep someone pissed on a Koran. Too late for US domestic consupmtion.

Care to hazard a guess on the crap the US military has been successful in supressing? It simply beggars belief that you can believe anything this rancid organisation throws out for the faithful to lap up.

[fintstone]

By saying "the military" did something you imply that the leadership did or condoned somnething that was actually done by a single soldier or soldiers....That is a misrepresentation in of itself...for example, your statement about Abu Garib. Yes, there were a few soldiers involved...but you only know about it now because another soldier reported it and it was announced by "the military" and an iinvestigation was started...the same is true for most of the other things you just posted. Problems found by the military and reported by them.

[stuartj]

Originally posted by fintstone
Problems found by the military and reported by them.

Bull****.

And comes back to my purely rhetorical question about what the US military media machine is succesfully able to supress.

It learnt a lot after Mai Lai.

[Moneyguy1]

I thought Abu Grahb was a leak of some pictures sent from Iraq.

[fintstone]

The Abu garib problem was announced (via press release) and under investigation (but drew little attention) before the photos were leaked. The military really would have preferred not to have the photos published because it inflamed tensions and made it much more difficult to complete the investigation.

[stuartj]

Originally posted by fintstone
By saying "the military" did something you imply that the leadership did or condoned somnething that was actually done by a single soldier or soldiers....That is a misrepresentation in of itself...for example, your statement about Abu Garib. Yes, there were a few soldiers involved...but you only know about it now because another soldier reported it and it was announced by "the military" and an iinvestigation was started...the same is true for most of the other things you just posted. Problems found by the military and reported by them.

Show me a credible- and by that I mean other than a blanket denial from a US military talking head- explanation of this incident.(below). Justify the web of lies told about Pat Tillman's death. Explain the PR opportunity that Pvt Jessica became.

Why do you continue to accept the lies that spew from the US military?


http://www.sundayherald.com/42229

Iraq: The Wedding Party Massacre




By Neil Mackay



THE bombing started at 3am on Wednesday. The villagers from the tiny desert community of Makr al-Deeb were fast asleep, exhausted after a day spent celebrating a wedding. By the time the bombing had stopped and the advancing GIs had finished marauding and shooting their way through the remains of the village, the Americans had killed at least 42 innocent people.
Among the dead were 27 members of the Rakat family who were celebrating a double family wedding. Many of their guests died as well, as did the band of musicians who played throughout the wedding and one of Iraq’s most popular singers, Hussein al-Ali from Ramadi.

One of the few people to live through the night was Haleema Shihab, the sister-in-law of the groom. She described to reporters from her hospital bed how she was sleeping in bed with her husband and children in the Rakat family villa when the bombs started to fall.

“We went out of the house and American soldiers started to shoot at us,” she said. “They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one.”

Picking up her youngest child in her arms, with two of her sons running at her side, she was hit by shrapnel from a shell that landed nearby fracturing her legs.

Her two boys were dead on the ground beside her and as she lay next to them she was wounded again when another round hit her in the arm. One of her children had been decapitated.

“I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me,” she said. “I pretended to be dead so he wouldn’t kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me.”

Not long before daybreak, Shihab saw GIs reduce the home of the Rakat family and the house next door to a pile of rubble. When a relative carried her and her surviving child to hospital, she learned that her husband Mohammed, had also died. Mohammed was the eldest son of the Rakat family.

One witness, Dahham Harraj, said: “This was a wedding and the planes came and attacked the people at a house. Is this the democracy and freedom that Bush has brought us?”

An unnamed witness said that bombs fell on the village one after another and three houses with the guests inside were hit. “They fired as if there were an armoured brigade inside not a wedding party.”

A third witness said: “The US military planes came and started killing everyone in the house.” One of the causes for the mass killings is likely to have been the failure by US forces to understand Iraqi culture.

At weddings, many Iraqis fire guns into the air as a sign of celebration. The Americans may have misinterpreted what was happening and sent in their bombers and infantry without pausing for thought.

If they had stopped to think they might have remembered an incident two years ago when 48 innocent Afghanis celebrating a wedding were blown to bits by US jets. Another 100 were injured. That time too, the guests had fired guns into the air to celebrate the bride and groom.

Ma’athi Nawaaf, a neighbour of the Rakats whose daughter and grand children died in the attack, said: “We were happy because of the wedding. People were dancing and making speeches.” After the ceremony, guests heard jets and saw a military convoy approaching.

“The first thing they bombed was the tent for the ceremony,” Nawaf said. “We saw the family running out of the house. The bombs were falling destroying the whole area.”

Armoured personnel carriers then drove into Makr al-Deeb, firing machine guns and backed up by helicopters. “They started to shoot at the house and the people outside the house,” Nawaf added.

Chinooks later landed and dozens of troops charged out. Explosives were set in the Rakat house and minutes later it and a neighbouring home were a pile of smouldering rubble.

“I saw something that nobody ever saw in this world,” Nawaf went on. “There were children’s bodies cut into pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces.”

Nawaf found his grandson dead in his daughter’s arms. “The other boy was lying beside her,” he said. “I found only his head. The Americans call these people foreign fighters. It is a lie. I just want one piece of evidence of what they are saying.”



In the al-Qaim general hospital, Dr Hamdi Noor al-Alusi said 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children. “I want to know why the Americans targeted this small village. These people are my patients. I know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?”

In the face of such overwhelming evidence that they had killed innocent revellers, the US stubbornly insisted that the raid was against a “suspected foreign fighter safe house”. A statement even claimed that “during the operation, coalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided.”

Brigadier Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq, said: “We took ground fire and we returned fire. We estimate that around 40 were killed. But we operated within our rules of engagement.”

Television footage showed a truck filled with bodies killed in the attack. Men were seen lifting the bodies from the truck, wrapped in blankets, and taking them to the desert for burial in deep pits. The corpse of a little girl of six was seen wrapped in a white shawl. Other bodies were shown with horrific injuries.

Showing an astonishing arrogance and lack of understanding for the culture or geography of the country his men are occupying, Major-General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, mocked anyone who claimed his troops had massacred innocent Iraqis.

“How many people go into the middle of desert to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilisation?” he said. “These were more than two dozen military-aged males. ”

Makr al-Deeb has been a village for a long time. Before the attack it had around two dozen homes. When Mattis was asked about TV images of a dead child, he said he had not seen the pictures and did not have to justify the actions of his men.

Deputy police chief Lieutenant Colonel Ziyad al-Jbouri said American helicopters attacked the village at around 2.45am on Wednesday morning.

The wedding party was the biggest celebration in the village for years. It marked the moment when two local families – the Rakats and Sabahs – came together with the long-negotiated marriage of Ashad Rakat and his cousin Rutba Sabah. There was also a second ceremony this time between a Rakat girl and a Sabah man. Much of the party took place under canvas in the gardens of the Rakat villa. The leader of the musicians was Hamid Abdullah, who runs the Music of Arts recording studio in Ramadi, the nearest big town.

Incredibly, the survivors included the two married couples and the patriarch of the extended family who owns the Rakat villa. Some of the graves of those who died were marked with this sole epitaph: “The American Bombing.”

Inevitably, the massacre at Makr al-Deeb – taken with the US onslaught at Fallujah which claimed hundreds of Iraqi lives and the on-going horror of the torture, rape and killing of prisoners in US custody in jails like Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib – erodes the moral foundations of the US invasion down to next to nothing. The Arab media completely discounted the US version of events, describing it as a “savage massacre”.

And the suffering of the people of Makr al-Deeb will only fuel the resistance against the occupying forces. Not far from where the victims lay buried, Ahmed Saleh said: “For each one of those graves, we will get 10 Americans.”



lOur View and Iain Macwhirter: Seven Days

23 May 2004

[Moneyguy1]

Wow...dueling posts of long articles...

And the ante keeps being upped..

[fintstone]

That is areapeat of an old article that was investigated and determined phoney. Why repeat your old (wrong) arguments when you can just read them again...including the same contentions about Jessica Simpson

I'm sure you have not changed your mind....and you obviously still buy the terrorist propaganda...so just reread:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/showthread.php?threadid=184985

[CamB]

Don't forget, soliders are biased too - in fact, extremely so due to their position.

When you wake up every morning telling yourself you're doing the right thing, it is probably a little difficult to see the circumstances in perspective.

[fintstone]

I can agree with that...to a point. but got to get to bed. Got a big day tomorrow designing tactics to more effectively seek out and massacre wedding parties. Perhaps a virgin sensor will help......but wait..where will I ever find a virgin in the US to test it with? And suicide bombers have used up the available virgins in the Middle East.
Wait, I know...acccording to the liberals...guys shooting RPGs at you at 3am are young brides...perhaps I can just track down some of them.

[CamB]

Sorry fella, but the Iraqi wedding party story from the Pentagon doesn't pass the smell test:

Originally posted by fintstone
That is areapeat of an old article that was investigated and determined phoney.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6394-2004Jun1

Interesting (inferred) comment re: the (un)liberalness of US media too.

And a similar incident happened in Afghanistan... more than once.

They are tragic incidences, and the key commonality is that there seem to be a difference between the official story from the Pentagon and the eye witnesses.

Can dozens (hundreds) of eye witnesses be lying in unison?

Can you really argue that the first reaction is not always "deny", then only potentially admit to any fault (if at all) when pressed?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3298107.stm