The 'Emboldenment Effect'

The Virginian ^ | 3/26/2008 | Moneyrunner

[moneyrunner]

Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable 'emboldenment effect' on insurgents there," United Press International reports:

Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university's Kennedy School of Government. The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq." . . . In Iraqi provinces that were broadly comparable in social and economic terms, attacks increased between 7 percent and 10 percent following what the researchers call "high-mention weeks," like the two just before the November 2006 election.

[moneyrunner]

Many on the web have complained that the press is so invested in America losing the war in Iraq that they have stopped reporting on Iraq because the surge is working. This puts a different light on the matter. By all means, Drive-by-Media, ignore Iraq. You're not part of the winning team and are not needed; the American military will do it without you. Just don't cheerlead the enemy.

Of course the impulse to keep reminding us and the enemy of ghoulish milestones is too much to resist.

[mtbopfuyn]

Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq

In other words, the liberals and the msm are causing US deaths.

[rockinqsranch]

“In other words, the liberals and the msm are causing US deaths.”

I thought that a given. The Terrorists themselves have posted on the internet in the past their glee with the dissent broadcast or print of the MSM.

One has to think a study wasn’t really necessary to know they are emboldened by such.

[moneyrunner]

Yes. that’s how the Left shows their love for the troops. They want them dead.

[moneyrunner]

If there is any doubt about wanting our troops dead, look at the glee with which they count their bodies, make mosaics out of the pictures of the dead and report only the American dead, not the enemy dead.

[RU88]

This took a Harvard researcher to figure out? Someone with a sixth grade parochial school education could have figured this out three years ago!

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

In other words, the public pronouncements of leftist politicians and activists here at home is giving aid and comfort to the enemy abroad, with whom we are currently fighting. Sounds like this meets the constitutional definition of treason.