"But Rokke, you do not have an editor and this reporterette does."
Are you kidding me??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!? You are either a blithering idiot or a Washington Post editor (which may be redundant). Did you somehow miss the whole Plamegate fiasco in which your worthless Washington Post led the pack in dispensing false rumors stated as "facts" spread by anonymous sources? Where were those editors when photoshopped images from Reuters were making the frontpages of newspapers all over the country. Perhaps those editors were doing the same thing that editors at CBS news were doing when they let Dan Rather push obviously forged documents on the nightly news. You are under the very naive delusion that our MSM exists to report truth and reality. You couldn't be more wrong. The MSM exists to make money. And the way they make money is to be the first to publish a sensational story, and sort out the facts later. It absolutely boggles my mind that people like you still exist in this country and operate under the weird fantasy that our MSM has some sort of moral code that carefully sorts fact from fiction. Your willingness to be duped might be forgivable if this were 40 years ago. When our MSM completely rewrote the facts of the Tet Offensive in 1968, there wasn't an internet that allowed average Americans to gain knowledge from sources other than the nightly news or the NYT's. But with the advent of the internet, people have an almost unlimited ability to research the facts for themselves. And unlike you, they are discovering that more often than not, the media gets it wrong. And sometimes it gets it wrong intentionally. And wonder of wonders, as the average American absorbs this revelation, he learns to ignore the MSM and its "anonymous sources" and its bogus polls, and its fraudulent predictions about everything from the worst hurricane season on record (was there even one?) to $100 dollar a barrel gasoline by November. And down goes the readership and viewership of all those traditionally respected MSM outlets. And with it goes their revenue. So what does the MSM do to fix the problem? They try even harder to create stories to generate income. They lie about their readership numbers to justify advertisement charges. And they continue to sucker the decreasing minority of dupes like you who still put your trust in "anonymous sources" and "honest" editors.
Good grief man. What's it going to take for you to realize that our MSM has an agenda as deep as Teddy Kennedy's, and a moral code as wide as Bill Clinton's? I think you are a lost cause with regard to the MSM, but let me drop a few more bits of reality on you in the off chance that one or two might penetrate...you have greater chance of being struck by lightening than winning the lottery, John Wayne wasn't really a war hero, and Santa Claus is not real.
In 1964 while campaigning for Goldwater I attended a rally in South Orange New Jersey. On entering the arena I observed throngs of people who could not get in because the arena was filled to overcapacity. They were exuberant in their support for Barry Goldwater. When I got home that night and turned on my television, I was astonished to find the very same people who were rabid for Goldwater were presented as people protesting against him. I never forgot the experience and I have never again wholly believed the mainstream media.
I have no doubt that the New York Times and Washington Post and the rest of a lot will skew the news, shape it, and sometimes even create it to fit their left-wing agenda. I believed this in 1964, I believed this in Watergate, I believed this in Vietnam, and I believe it now. I am not a fool.
But even the Washington Post has its own rules of the game which it observes. Within those rules topline papers like the Post and the Times play according to Hoyle. When they quote someone for attribution you can be damn sure that the quote is accurate unless the person comes out and says it is not. So in the original article under discussion today, there is no doubt that the police unit had to be disbanded for treachery, there is no doubt that casualties are up, there is no doubt that more Americans had to be thrown into the breach and there is no doubt that all this is contrary to Secretary Rumsfeld's stated prediction. From other sources, we know without doubt that Senator Warner has expressed the same sentiments on the record that this article alleges "anonymous sources" to have expressed in the Pentagon. It can be no doubt that Anbar province is a hell of a mess whether or not you believe the characterization of the intelligence report which describes it as irretrievably lost.
There is no doubt the general Abizaid regards the situation as precarious and near civil war because he so testified under oath in public. These are things not made up by the mainstream media, these are real, hard, facts. I wish they were otherwise and I'm waiting for some poster to give me reasons why they are otherwise besides simply railing against the press. Southack has come up with an argument as has MNjonnie. That is to the good.
One has to balance those kinds of arguments against the incessant deluge of story after story and fact after fact which supports the hypothesis that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating. I cite the Baker commission merely for its very existence. Do you really think that Bush would ask Baker to prepare a whitewash? I don't. I think Bush knows that our policy is not working and he needs to fix it and he has turned to the man his family always turns to in the time of transcendental crisis, James Baker.
I hoped to open discussion on the merits but I see that is sadly not possible and that is a very great pity for both the conservative movement and for freerepublic.
