Posted on 10/09/2001 2:13:31 AM PDT by freeplancer
Just when journalism is entering into an age of being punished for possessing a skew to the left by such programming success' as FOX News and The O'Reilly Factor, the last bastian of supposed journalistic integrity (Frontline)finally pulled down it's veil.
Call me naive, call me crazy, but please don't call me late for a full-frontal jihad by the the entire press on the American people. The PBS programming last night showed back-to-back "Frontline" episodes, which essentially amounted to the phenomenon known as 'terrorism' against the United States from 1980-2000.
From Libya to Iran, the 80's began to show the face of a new enemy to the U.S. and it was revealed to be terrorism. Terrorists struck with the hostages in Iran, the bombing of the U.S. embassy and marine barracks in Beruit, the hijacking of the passenger ship "Achilles Laurel" and the infamous passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland and several plane hijackings. Frontline somehow included generous amounts of up close and personal footage of President Reagan during and after the horrific images of all these stories. Reagan was so prominent in the coverage, than one could possibly assume he was undoubtedly at fault and we were seeing the bad guy himself. In fact, if no audio was inserted, a viewer would have been furious that the FBI did not rush him and take him into custody.
The program mainly focused on the fueding between Secretary of Defense Casper Weinburger and ex-marine Secretary of State George Shultz as they fought for the president's ear. Frontline forgot to mention that the hostages in Iran were released the day Reagan won the election because former President Carter had a weak image, but they did manage to show many obligitory photographs of Dick Cheney and Colin Powell seated in the Reagan oval office. Powell and Cheney were offered to the viewers as the brain trusts of the Reagan administration's master minds. The main jist of knocking the Reagan era was the fact that they did not retaliate for most of the above mentioned attacks.
While we did not return aggression with a high-profile military force, we did bomb Khadaffi and ran many covert operations against terrorists organizations. Frontline also neglected to point out that the U.S. was only six years out of Vietnam and very leary of committing a large military force anywhere without a clear and achievable mission. The goverment was feeling it's way while trying to figure out the best way to combat terrorism, and Reagan's team thought it best to initially fight the fight with the intelligence community(CIA).
Frontline concluded that Advisor Colin Powell was somehow directly at fault because he was an aid to Weinburger who wanted to procede with caution and clear mission plans,therefore, eliminating immediate counter action with the military. Again, with more images of Richard Cheney, Frontline tried to show that our current Secretary of Defense and Vice President were deeply entrenched in an inept Reagan administration with the mention of Iran Contra numerous times.
Enter the second program with absolutely no footage of Bill Clinton. The viewers were treated to images of the U.S. embassies in East Africa blown to pieces, the U.S.S. Cole with a cave in its side and the WTC bombing in '93. Guess what was missing though? Any images of Clinton or any mentioning of the word President Clinton more than once. They went out of their way to not associate Clinton with any of the bad news, and the closest they got was the phrase "top administration officials". Infact, the bumbling CIA and the lousy FBI were mentioned throughout the program in a blameful light. They simply coated Clinton's era of defense of terrorism.
The most notable revelation was the mentioning of the CIA calling off an eleventh-hour attack on Osama Bin Laden, which by the way, was in contradiction to what both Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have recently shared with the press. They have both stated that Bill Clinton was the one who called off the attack because of uncertainty. Another notable fact withheld, was the mention of a Monica Lewinski, wag-the-dog scenario with the Tomahawk missles that "barely missed" Bin Laden by minutes. The bottom line to Frontline, was that the administration from '92-'00 had an unreliable intelligence community.
It is bad enough that Frontline did a hatchet job on history, but how could they have played so loose with the facts? I just did not want to admit that the entire media is as corrupt as it is, and I am sad that America is so split in half.
Bias by the staff, long time socialists, is so apparant that you cannot not miss it.
Republican bashing is common fare.
The basic thrust of the show was that all knowledge has sprung from Islam. While Christians in Europe were shivering in their drafty castles plotting the next crusade, Islam was inventing peace, mathematics, the scientific method, blah, blah, blah.
The so-called history stopped about three hundred years ago. I guess stopping that long ago meant that the show's creators didn't have to explain modern terrorism and the fact that most Muslim's today live in abject poverty even though Islam invented everything worth knowing.
PBS is a travesty.
Ronaldus Magnus BUMP
BTW;
Where can I get a;
There is a God.
Allah ain't Him.
Mohammed ain't His prophet.
bumper sticker.
Preferably in English and Arabic.
Money would be better spent on a couple hundred more cruise/tomahawk missles.
Yes, during the middle ages, the Arab world was more enlightened than Europe.
It has, obviously, languished and been surpassed by western civilization in it's achievements.
As my buddy Abe (who grew up in Morrocco) was taught, the Arabs "invented the zero and stayed inside it".
Let's not forget that Clinton also had Janet Reno - and a VERY INEPT set of GOP "gumpies" in so-called leadership (vacant-LOTT) and oversight (viz., judical committees - booby-HATCH) positions.
Of course, they built on what they had. People, when allowed to educate themselves and pursue their dreams, will do that.
But inventing algebra? I laugh! Neither did Archimedes invent trigonometry! Trig workbooks (clay tablets) have been found in what may have been a temple school in Babylon from four thousand years ago! Criminey, even lead-acid storage batteries have been discovered from the same period. How else did the ancients make gold and silver platted jewelry?
Bias by the staff, long time socialists, is so apparant that you cannot not miss it.
Republican bashing is common fare.
That is why when I lived in Germany, I spread the FR name far and wide, those poor soldiers have either AFN or Euro TV (although I do like the British Sky News).
I figured that by giving them url's for conservative sites, they could at least balance out the info load. Hopefully I converted some of the la-la-land liberal civilians who ironically work for the U.S. military over there, and there are a bunch!
Why would you think that Allah was not God? Do you believe that Abraham taught each of his sons to worship a different God?
In my opinion, there is only one reason to have hope that a solution exists. That reason manifest itself in acknowledging that the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael are brothers.
Not just for its left-leaning coverage but because it is unneccessary in the age of cable. One can watch similar fare nightly on stations such as CNN, FOX, Bravo and A&E.
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