Posted on 12/22/2004 5:58:12 AM PST by LS
I agree with you completely. The only thing that is considered "news" in the MSM is sex scandals, celebrity murders and other notorious crimes. They refuse to address those issues most important to mainstream Americans.
The purpose of a war is to win and achieve peace. President Bush is absolutely correct.
Great post.
After this election I start calling the liberal media DLM instead of MSM.
DLM = Defeated Liberal Media.
No. Families of injured or killed soldiers speaking to the media is not Aiding and Abetting the insurgents in Iraq.
Supporting the insurgents, either with money, or even moral support is aiding and abetting. To disagree with a policy is hardly treason, it is in fact, the exercise of our wonderful American Rights.
People like you are quick to toss around the words, aiding and abetting the enemy (TREASON), like it was candy. You accuse lightly, people of aiding and abetting the insurgents trying to kill Americans, because you disagree with what they say.
There is a difference between people who support our enemies and those who just disagree with their own governments policies.
While I disagree with what these families say, they are hardly traitors. I think you do a disservice to our cause to confuse real Traitors with Americans.
My view may be distorted as my daughter will be taking meals in this tent in a matter of hours or days, but if this was a rocket attack (which I doubt) and such attacks are common, why in the hell were these soldeirs not required to wear body armor? I told my daughter to wear her body armor in the shower, sleep in it. And this was just from reading what I could about the camp before this attack happened. Not saying it is Rumsfeld's fault, but the commander should be asked some hard questions.
Military Was Building Bunker to Replace Tent Hit in Deadly Rocket Attack
By Matt Kelley Associated Press Writer
Published: Dec 22, 2004
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Worried about recent artillery attacks on American mess halls in Iraq, the U.S. military was just days away from completing a reinforced dining area at the camp where a rocket attack killed more than 20 people in a tent the bunker was meant to replace.
Iraqi insurgents have attacked several U.S. military dining hall tents with mortars or rockets over the past few months.
On Tuesday, before the hardened dining hall at Forward Operating Base Marez could be completed, a 122mm rocket slammed into a tent where hundreds of troops were sitting down to lunch.
The military was building a bunker-like mess hall at the Marez base as part of continuing efforts to make the base safer. Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, commander of the multinational force in Iraq, said the new facility was due to be completed in February.
"We recognized the threat," Metz said Wednesday on CBS' "The Early Show." He told CNN, "We've been looking at the force-protection parameters, not only for dining facilities, but for other places we have large gatherings."
Attacks from rockets or mortars - what the military calls "indirect fire" - have been commonplace at U.S. bases in the Mosul area as well as other insurgency hot spots in Iraq. Dining halls are a prime target because they offer a readily identifiable place where lots of troops congregate at predictable times.
For example, a mortar round hit near the mess hall of a U.S. base in Tikrit during dinner one night in March. The round didn't explode and no one was injured. Insurgents also launched rockets that month which exploded near a large military dining hall within Baghdad's Green Zone where U.S. and Iraqi government offices are located. Another mortar round injured three soldiers at a dining hall on another Baghdad base in February.
"It is extremely difficult to prevent these appalling and horrific attacks," said Wendy Hall, spokeswoman for Halliburton Co., the Army contractor that provides food services in Iraq. She said some Halliburton employees and subcontractors died in Tuesday's attack.
At many bases - including Marez - troops have been required to wear their body armor and helmets while in the dining hall because of the threat of attack. Most of the attacks don't hit any structures or cause any injuries, however.
Still, one soldier was killed near the dining hall at Marez in a mortar attack in May, and two soldiers were killed in November when mortars exploded in their living area on the same base.
Maj. John Nelson, the battalion's chief surgeon, told a reporter earlier this year about plans for a possible attack on the dining hall. Nelson told the Portland (Maine) Press Herald that military statistics showed that if a 60mm mortar shell hit the dining hall with 400 soldiers inside, an estimated 12 would die no matter what medics could do.
President Bush said Tuesday's deadly attack should not derail Iraqi elections scheduled for next month and that he hoped relatives of those killed would find solace in the service their loved ones provided.
"We just want them to know that the mission is a vital mission for peace," Bush told reporters after visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Bush said the violence, part of a continuing wave of unrest in Iraq, should not affect elections scheduled for Jan. 30.
"I'm confident democracy will prevail in Iraq," he said.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, responding to a question about how Iraqis would be able to get to some 9,000 polling places for the elections if U.S. troops can't secure their own bases, said there was "security and peace" in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces.
"There are tough challenges that remain ... but we are making important progress on the ground," McClellan said. "We also have to keep in mind that the terrorists and Saddam loyalists have adapted and changed their tactics. We adapt and change with that as well to meet those ongoing security challenges."
Both American and Iraqi forces use the base that was attacked Tuesday. A surge in killings and other attacks in Mosul in recent weeks has targeted members of the Iraqi security forces in particular, with the bodies of many Iraqi soldiers found dumped in the streets as a warning to others.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR has gotten more than $8 billion worth of work supporting U.S. forces in Iraq, performing functions such as building and maintaining housing, washing clothes, delivering supplies and serving food. As on the base attacked Tuesday, KBR typically runs the mess halls in cavernous tents, which include cafeteria-style serving lines as well as tables piled with fresh fruit, soft drinks and pastries.
AP-ES-12-22-04 0917EST
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Yes. Ann Coulter made this point last night on Hannity and Colmes.
I notice in your article that the troops were requiered to wear body armor in the mess, but none of the pictures I've seen showed anyone wearing body armor----first thing I noticed. I would like to know why?
Consider a POW in any war. He breaks, and says things that are deleterious to the war effort. Is he a traitor? Certainly not. Do his words have an effect? Absolutely. If you cannot see that you are blind as well as deaf.
Unfortunately, the MSM includes local affiliates who always try to find a local connection to increase interest. And they will always find a grieving relative, friend, etc. who will say it's a shame that fine young Americans must be sacrificed for an unnecessary war, blah, blah, blah.
It's the old argument about welfare: you give a bum $5 you may have good intentions, yet if the effect is to allow him to buy alcohol, was that outcome desirable? Are you guilty of making him an alcoholic? Probably not, but was that the result?
No, to think that they are not aiding and abetting he enemy shows us what kind of american you are. Not much of one. To go on tv and bad mouth the country and the war causes the terrorists to toughen up their resolve, just as it did in Vietnam, therefore they keep fighting because they think we will give up. This causes more troops to die. Thus they are aiding and abetting the enemy, the people who killed their sons and daughters.
Oh, I don't think we disagree on that, really. I'm just saying that "democracy" certainly doesn't do anything to help that situation either. I think "liberty and freedom" enforced with by a benevolent dictator, for example, would do more for "peace" than any eventual mobocracy taking place there.
If it bleeds, it leads.
True, but Americans need to start figuring out that they cannot be "enablers" of the MSM's assault on America---especially those who are in military families. There is, of course, another option, which is for these people to appear "sympathetic" to the MSM's position in the initial interviews but who, once on the air, just lambaste the coverage by the MSM.
Absolute Power Corrupts absolutely!
What kind of Conservative would want the Government to silence people especially in a LONG TERM WAR!
We all know these War could end in a day if we nuke Mecca and show some Real muscle, but it is becoming evident that the bureaucrats in charge love war because it increases their power, and the Sheople just go along
Or like many of us, we are just tuning out. I can't remember the last time I watched TV network news.
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