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.
You've brothers & sisters sharing your rage, you know?
Seek them out at FreeRepublic's own, CCRM.
You're vision, anger, & input is badly needed as this behavior can only get worse.
...& it can get worse.
Otherwise a good piece. Thanks for watching PBS and reporting on it -- I can't stomach viewing it myself.
Had the misfortune to listen to a radio broadcast of "60 minutes" last Sunday, and heard them do a similar trick:
(a) First Mike Wallace blamed GWB for not signing on to some treaty banning chemical and biological weapons (riiiiight, like signing that treaty would stop terrorists from using them ---bwahaha!); then
(b) Wallace expressed shock that the chem and biological weapons inspections had been halted in Iraq for the last 3 years -- NEVER MENTIONING WHO cancelled the inspection program --Bill Clinton of course!
with regard to sick willie, they really let him go on the fact that there was never any evidence that the factory he bombed was anything other than an aspirin factory, or that this co-incided with ML's testimony.
They are attempting to protect Shrillary, no doubt from anything that casts her in an unfavorable light
Bingo! All of the "math", geometry, stone architecture, and agricultural knowledge that was present in the middle ages sprang from a much, much earlier civilization that arose probably around 12,000 years ago or so, when the climate stabilized. This early civilization was definitely worldwide as has yet to be properly identified or respected by "mainstream" archeology. Most archealogy is mired in the ridiculous idea that the Great Pyramid is a 4500 year old tomb (even though it was found sealed empty) built with ropes and copper chisels.
I only viewed the first segment, and missed the second, so I can't comment on the implications of comparative coverage between Reagan and Clinton. However, in the first segment they did give quite a bit of explanation about how the Vietnam experience colored the perception of the high ranking military advisors. Numerous times they referenced the military's demand that clear and concise mission and goals be presented before committing them. With the exception of the attack on Libya, the Reagan administration addressed terrorism as a policing, rather than military operation. Suspects were identified, arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned. The problem with that approach, as noted by Frontline, was that it only addressed the low level participants in direct action. It did nothing to address the high level players who remained free to continue their agenda of terror. Credit was given to the raid on Libya for actually suppressing world terrorism for several years after the attack.
The impression that I got from viewing the show was that President Reagan was deeply concerned about the welfare of hostages and struggled to conceive a policy that would achieve its goals in a way that minimized collateral damage. His cabinet was divided and he made the best decisions he could, which in retrospect weren't altogether effective.
I have a deep respect for President Reagan and felt that the first segment treated him fairly while making an accurate analysis of why the policing model is ineffective against worldwide terror organizations. If anything it went a long way towards justifying President GW Bush's current policy of using military operations to go after entire terrorist organizations and the regimes that support them.
Well, actually, it stopped about 450 years ago, when the Muslim empires were so convinced of their military, scientific superiority that they withdrew into insularity. Meanwhile, Europe underwent a massive renaissance...
a couple of hundred years later the Muslim empires were in for a rude awakening.
As far as this business about Reagan being inept, it's obvious that the media simply cannot help letting its ideological bias creep into to anythng related to him. Few people realize how profound Reagan's efforts were in the destruction of Communism.
Fear not, 30 years from now, the history books will call him Ronaldus Magnus.
I read on a previous post, that they stole base-ten and zero from the Indians.
The Qu'ran is NOT inspired writing. Their allah is a manufactured god. Their god is NOT my God.
who watches the "People Brainwashing System" anyway.
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