Posted on 08/16/2005 1:14:01 PM PDT by george76
A roundup of the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.
Conservative activist and commentator L. Brent Bozell III recently wrote about an encounter with a veteran:
My son's friend Todd Jones just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. At a celebratory gathering at his parents' home, we chatted a while, and I asked him what he thought were the biggest problems facing the military. Without hesitating, he shot back: "The terrorists and the media."
For Bozell, this pretty much confirmed what many others, on both side of the camera, have been saying lately:
In a rare moment of balance on CBS, Army Capt. Christopher Vick echoed that sentiment: "I think it's hard for Americans to get up every day and turn on the news and see the horrible things that are going on here, because there's no focus on the good things that go on. What they see is another car bomb went off." This kind of coverage is exactly what the terrorists are seeking to achieve, believes Vick.
Society. With the constitutional process under way--albeit delayed by a week--and another election on the horizon, there are growing efforts by the Sunni leadership to make sure that this time their community does participate in the political process:
public participation in the constitutional process has been encouraging:
free media continue to grow. Iraq's first independent news agency is launched:
a radio station is courageously giving voice to Iraqi women:
Economy. Iraq is a risky environment, but nevertheless it offers plenty of opportunities
Reconstruction. Japan, in conjunction with the World Bank, will be engaging in a major residential building program:
Iraq's electricity supply has risen above pre-war levels
( There is a long list on url...)
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
The MSM doesn't care, they are on the righteous path of taking on the Man and the Military Industrial Complex! They will not stop until they use the power of truth to grind our military to a halt and bring our troops home from Vietnam!.......err....Iraq.
Can someone un-jam the timewarp that the MSM got caught into 40 years ago?
Borrowing from the North Vietnamese Communists' praise of the American press as their "most valuable guerrilla" I say the American press is radical Muslims' "most valuable terrorist."
In all seriousness these sentiments are correct. The MSM gets our guys killed - just because you can't track the exact causal chain from print to blood, does not let them off the hook.
Incredible list. It is a shame and a travesty that the MSM are not making these facts known to the American public.
"Rising up against insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, Iraqi Sunni Muslims in Ramadi fought with grenade launchers and automatic weapons Saturday to defend their Shiite neighbors against a bid to drive them from the western city, Sunni leaders and Shiite residents said. . . .
Dozens of Sunni members of the Dulaimi tribe established cordons around Shiite homes, and Sunni men battled followers of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, for an hour Saturday morning. The clashes killed five of Zarqawi's guerrillas and two tribal fighters, residents and hospital workers said. Zarqawi loyalists pulled out of two contested neighborhoods in pickup trucks stripped of license plates, witnesses said. "
The terrorists and the media.
Unlikely allies, but apparently it is working out well for the terrorists. The media, on the other hand, are distinguishing themselves by their relative impotence, and lack of effort. Today, they are getting pilloried on the Internet, and by the persons who are targeted as the audience for the message being sent out through the major news outlet. The once great newspaper, the New York Times, is characterized as being a poor grade of fishwrap, as the fish themselves become contaminated by contact. It matters little which of the network news programs is tuned in, the format is unvarying, and each of the chosen stories for the day are presented in roughly the same order, with about the same emphasis and most of the same dialogue and footage shown. Most of the cable news is similar, but the stories are repeated more often during the cycle of the day, with relief coming only when informercials for various different products available for phone order run for half-hour segments. The weekly news magazines are but a condensed recap of what is published in the newspapers or what has aired on networks or cable, with only rare insights being provided to extend and expand understanding of what is happening.
The limited relief from this homogeneity comes from various radio commentators, but again, the information they pass along is suspect at times, and some of it is just outright goofy. No matter what paranoia the individual has, there is some media out there that will feed into and extend that feeling of persecution.
A little unvarnished factual reporting would go far to dispel this perception. Still, nobody expects this course of action anytime soon. Worse, will we know it when we finally see it?
bttt
Our msn media is, just as they did with Vietnam, the friend of our enemy.
It looks to as if they are joined at the hip with the lib dems and I believe that they (and some senators with their rhetoric) have cost American lives.
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