Posted on 05/30/2003 6:49:56 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:05:36 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
BAGHDAD--"This is my brother," cries a man. "This is not my husband," wails his sister-in-law. They are arguing over a bag of bones, and it is hard to tell whether he is over-eager for closure or she in denial. The man says he recognizes his brother's dishdasha, or robe, but admits that he could be more certain if there were a skull and dental work to look at. Hundreds of identical plastic bags, likewise filled with the remains of Shiites who rose up against Saddam in 1991, litter the ground nearby.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Well yes, but all the tribal wild asses in Iraq aren't going to be easy to handle, and that's just for starters.
What are the newly freed Iraqi people to think - after decades of Iraqi Info Ministry propaganda? They're now presented with a steady stream of lies from smooth-sounding Western "journalists" who falsely accused us of bombing civilians in the marketplace, shooting children, intentionally killing journalists, the antiquities looting, quagmires, pauses, cake-walks, starving Iraqi children, humanitarian crises, "shoot to kill" orders - reporters who trumpet each casualty and bury Coalition victories daily.
The press must deliberately choose to keep good news from the Iraqi people and the world. As professional journalists, they can't accidentally ignore their primary source for war news - CENTCOM - proven to be the most trustworthy news source throughout the war. CENTCOM puts out a detailed daily report of Coalition good works. The press ignores it - daily.
So the Iraqis aren't being told about the progress made daily by over 150,000 Coalition troops helping the Iraqi people rebuild power plants and get the oil infrastructure repaired, build roads, secure cities, set up local police and courts (minus Saddam's thugs), open schools, destroy weapons' caches (press doesn't remind the reader that Iraqis CHOSE not to use the mountains of weapons provided for them by foreigners to attack US), provide food, medicine, clean water - or about the troops patrolling the streets and country, risking their own lives to find and remove Saddam's accomplices and terrorist-wannabes.
The Iraqi people don't know that our troops are arresting regime bad guys daily. The Iraqi people should know we're taking their torturers off the streets. For every Coalition casualty, the Coalition takes out a far greater number regime bad guys who ambush or fire at them - NO contest! CENTCOM puts out a daily security log - a lengthy list of the bad guys captured or killed, our efforts to secure Iraq for the Iraqi people (wanna bet the LA police log's longer?).
There are dozens of positive, newsworthy stories from CENTCOM daily - FACTS that paint a very different picture of Iraq and our peacekeeping efforts. What the Iraqi people don't know is hurting them, our troops - and the free world.
CENTCOM, this administration, trusted the AMERICAN mainstream press to do their jobs - to inform the people. To report the facts. The administration respects free press. We however, don't have a fair press - but we do have a voice - the internet, talk radio. Getting the word past Laci Peterson on FoxNews, past the flood of daily lies and anti-American misinformation in the international mainstream press to the Iraqi people is a challenge.
Fewer than 12 Coalition casualties per week, mostly accidental, since the liberation of Baghdad, in a nation of 24 million newly freed Iraqis, is NOT 'anarchy'.
Every casualty should be honored, and the way to honor those who fight and die for the world's freedom is by telling the truth about them - their good work in Iraq, their courage, about the nation they love - why they chose to fight. The press insults the troops - mocks their victories and their sacrifices - when they ignore the big picture and turn each casualty into an excuse to criticize our war efforts.
The press (and our enemies) know that stressing casualties and blaming us for 'atrocities' will turn the public, and the world against us. They already played that game in Vietnam, and throughout the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It's in the leftist playbook. Diversity is only skin-deep in the newsrooms of America.
The left wants our efforts to fail. We need to expose 'em, to tell the Iraqi people and the world about the bad guys we're taking out. Remind the Iraqi people and the world that OUR military - America and the COALITION will kick the butt of any terrorist or terrorist-supporter who threatens the lives of innocents. We need to repeat what should be known to all by now - that Saddam, 'big, bad Al Qaeda ' - hiding behind useful idiots, women and children (and the press) to deceive and kill unsuspecting innocents - the saber-rattling of lying terrorists can't be compared to our real, powerful, honorable military and the determination, courage and strength of the American people. The press should be horsewhipped for ever implying that our military, our nation can't handle these loathsome terrorist pests.
The Iraqi people need to know that Saddam will never, ever rule in Iraq again. The press, by implying otherwise, is insulting our military and terrorizing the Iraqi people. The press knows what they're doing.
They quote the NY Times, not bothering to verify facts or sources. Our enemies quote them. They cover up the mass-graves, ignore the imprisoned children, look away from thousands of Shiites mourning their dead, 'brush over' the teachers proclaiming "No more Saddam!" to happy classes - ignore our awesome rebuilding efforts in Iraq - while sowing fear and chaos, 24/7 doom and gloom - deceit.
The war made heroes of the American military and a Republican President, so the leftist press is distracting and deceiving.
We can only hope the Iraqi people, like the Russians after years of state-controlled propaganda, learn to look beyond the front pages for the truth - that the Iraqi people remember who bought and peddled Baghdad Bob's lies and who's actually in the arena doing the difficult work and risking their lives to save strangers.
“I cannot describe how I am glad. After so many years of dictatorship, we have chosen our own leader.”
Kemal Kerkuki, after participating in the election of Kirkuk’s new mayor, The New York Times, 5/29/03
“I’m not going to mention his name in class anymore. No more Saddam.”
Naheda Muhammad Nage, an Iraqi schoolteacher, The New York Times, 05/28/03
Survey shows Iraqi people support US Presence
MEMRI ^ | May 28, 2003 | Al-Sharq Al-Awsat via Memri
SURVEY CONDUCTED BY THE IRAQI INSTITUTION FOR DEMOCRACY IN BAGHDAD SHOWED THAT MOST IRAQIS SUPPORT CONTINUED AMERICAN PRESENCE UNTIL DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS ARE HELD IN IRAQ. (AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT, LONDON 5/28/03)
Thanks for stopping by, Meekie. (^:
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"Why is the media so kind to the Clintons? Because, at root, they all crawled out from under the same rock: They are 1960s leftists who are anti-American values, pro-drugs, pro-permissiveness, anti-military, anti-marriage, anti-tradition and part of a New Left that saw Moscow, Havana and Peking as romantic hotspots on the road to an egalitarian Utopia."
— John LeBoutillier ~~~
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"There are about 200 people between New York and Washington who are, quote, 'the national media.' They talk to each other, they go to each others' cocktail parties and they voted about 85 or 88 percent in favor of [Al] Gore and [Bill] Clinton." — Newt Gingrich
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From the "Garbage in – Garbage out" Department...
according to a compilation of recent opinion surveys of "journalists," 86% don't attend a place of worship, 90% support the "choice" of killing of unborn children, 75% support homosexuality, 53% approve of adultery, 80% support so-called "affirmative action" programs, 56% believe the U.S. exploits "third world" countries, 80% have never voted for a Republican president – yet only 54% identify themselves as left-of-center. Go figure! [reported in the 18 May 2001 Federalist] ~~~
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"In my humble opinion, law schools teach students how to lie to one person at a time, while journalism schools teach students how to lie to everybody at once." — Norman Liebmann
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"The lowest form of popular culture – lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives – has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage."
— Carl Bernstein ~~~
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Mark Steyn: Come on over the water's lovely
The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^| 06/01/03 | Mark Steyn
There's no dysentery or cholera, no sign of a human catastrophe, the roads and medical centres are empty and the countryside charming. Yes, writes Mark Steyn, there's no place like Iraq for a holiday
Why hasn't FOX done any kind of hour long special on what's really happening in Iraq? Instead we get Laci Peterson 24/7.
Hello-o-o, Scott Ritter!
There is no doubt that Iraqis have, as Vice President Dick Cheney predicted, welcomed us "as liberators."
The press mocks CENTCOM while they rely on untrustworthy sources and unverified facts. Mainstream reporters are blind, and/or willfully lying. Either way...it's a sick institution right now. "Objectivity" = BS if it means, as it does for this press, giving equal legitimacy to Saddam and George Bush or CENTCOM and the Iraqi Info Ministry. That used to be called "aiding the enemy".
There is no NEWS urgent enough to excuse such inaccurate reporting from the mainstream press. "According to the NY Times"....check the facts.
Saddam's Cash
The Weekly Standard ^ | May 5, 2003 | Stephen F. Hayes
Scores of journalists throughout the Arab world and Europe were on Saddam Hussein's payroll.
...."For years, the Iraqi leader has been waging an intensive, sometimes clandestine, and by most accounts highly effective image war in the Arab world," wrote Wall Street Journal reporters Jane Mayer and Geraldine Brooks in an exposé published February 15, 1991. "His strategy has ranged from financing friendly publications and columnists as far away as Paris to doling out gifts as big as new Mercedes-Benzes."
....That campaign continued until days before the regime was deposed. "If they're not bought and paid for, they're at least rented," says a top national security official, who adds that the administration has intelligence implicating big-name journalists throughout the Arab world and Europe.
U.N. Officials Admit They Were Powerless to Stop Iraqi Leader's Skimming
By Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz
L O N D O N, May 20— United Nations officials looked the other way as Saddam Hussein's regime skimmed $2 billion to $3 billion in bribes and kickbacks from the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, said U.N. officials who told ABCNEWS they were powerless to stop the massive graft.
....Most striking in the French coverage was the total absence of any criticism of government policy, or of President Jacques Chirac - a president who squeaked past voters in the first round of last year's elections with a little more than 18 percent of the vote, neck and neck with extreme-right leader Jean-Marie LePen. In normal times the opposition Socialist Party would have been all over Chirac, and France's lively opinion journals would have skewered his policies from all sides. But the French war coverage was not merely one-sided, it was viciously inaccurate and openly anti-American. Propaganda is too polite a term for the type of deliberate brainwashing conducted by the official state media. This reporter has seen nothing like it in 18 years of covering France.
THE REAL SCANDAL OF IRAQI RELIEF
New York Post ^ | 5/11/03 | JONATHAN FOREMAN
May 11, 2003 -- BAGHDADTHEY come from all over the world. Their supposed mission is to help the people of Iraq. Their concerned frowns and even their clothes all proclaim the message: "We're the good, caring people . . . and you're not."
But if actions speak louder than words, then many of the international charitable organizations called NGOs (non-governmental organizations) here are less interested in doing good works than in moral posturing and haranguing the army that won a war most of them opposed.
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Our troops are asked to do the near impossible - and they do it with honor. Not even a "thank you" from these so-called 'humanitarians' for freeing the children from years of imprisonment.How 'bout a field trip to the mass-graves. Let the press and NGOs dig for a few weeks under the supervision of the mourning relatives.
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