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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Thursday, March 27, 2003
   
   

LA Times Spouts Iraqi Propaganda as News

Bill O'Reilly pointed out this LAT propaganda piece news story on The O'Reilly Factor this evening. Have a look.

'EVERY DAY GETS WORSE AND WORSE'

Along a busy Baghdad street struck by missiles, shocked residents curse the United States and mourn.

By John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writer

March 27, 2003

BAGHDAD -- It began with the bombing of state television and radio, passed into the midday missile strike on a street filled with restaurants, car-repair shops and apartments, and ended with the steady thump, thump, thump of explosions far in the distance.

It was the seventh day of war in Baghdad.

"Every day gets worse and worse," Sahar, a 23-year-old with a birdlike voice, said with a sigh Wednesday. "I can't imagine what will be next week."

Sahar, who did not give her last name, had been assigned by the Information Ministry to guide, translate and keep an eye on foreign journalists. She had just returned from Al Shaab, an outlying district on the north side of Baghdad, where two missiles hit a busy street at 11:30 a.m., killing at least 15 people and injuring 30.

She said she had witnessed the burnt corpses and strewn body parts, the missile craters, the twisted automobiles and the vacant faces of dozens of people who had lost loved ones or were left homeless by the twin blasts. It was, she said, the worst thing she had ever seen.

Got that? There it is, an ALL-CAPS headline: "EVERY DAY GETS WORSE AND WORSE". Really? Did somebody actually say that? Why yes, indeedy. And who is it who actually said that? Why, somebody named Sahar. No last name given. And why does the oh, so intrepid reporter even know this Sahar person? Why, because she "had been assigned by the Information Ministry to guide, translate and keep an eye on foreign journalists".

Got that? An ALL-CAPS headline in the LA Times quotes an agent of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Let that sink in for a while........

And they wonder why we think they're anti-American.

P.S. This sure provides an... interesting... contrast to the immediately preceding blog, doesn't it?

P.P.S. Thanks to Media Minded for the notice.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 09:30:14 PM
Categorized as Media.


   
   

"Pacifist Says 'I Was Wrong'"

Iraqis told him: "We cannot wait anymore. We want the war, and we want it now."

Rev. Ken Joseph's story of being converted from anti-war activist after a visit to his relatives in Iraq made the rounds of the Blogosphere last week. He tells the story himself at UPI today:

I was wrong. I had opposed the war on Iraq in my radio program, on television and in my regular columns -- and I participated in demonstrations against it in Japan. But a visit to relatives in Baghdad radically changed my mind....
A few weeks ago, I traveled to Iraq with supplies for our Church and family. This was my first visit ever to the land of my forefathers. The first order of business was to attend Church. During a simple meal for peace activists after the service, an older man sounded me out carefully.
Finally he felt free to talk: "There is something you should know -- we didn't want to be here tonight. When the priest asked us to gather for a Peace Service, we said we didn't want to come because we don't want peace. We want the war to come."
"What in the world are you talking about?" I blurted.
Thus began a strange odyssey that shattered my convictions. At the same time, it gave me hope for my people and, in fact, hope for the world....
"Everything will be all right when the war is over," people told me. "No matter how bad it is, we will not all die. Twelve years ago, it went almost all the way but failed. We cannot wait anymore. We want the war, and we want it now."
When I told members of my family that some sort of compromise with Iraq was being worked out at the United Nations, they reacted not with joy but anger: "Only war will get out of our present condition."
This reminded me of the stories I heard from older Japanese who had welcomed the sight of American B-29 bombers in the skies over their country as a sign that the war was coming to an end. True, these planes brought destruction -- but also hope.
I felt terrible about having demonstrated against the war without bothering to ask what the Iraqis wanted. Tears streamed down my face as I lay in my bed in a tiny Baghdad house crowded in with 10 other people of my own flesh and blood, all exhausted, all without hope. I thought, "How dare I claim to speak for people I had not even asked what they wanted?" ....

P.S. This sure provides an... interesting... contrast to the immediately succeeding blog, doesn't it?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 07:10:02 PM
Categorized as Political.


   
   

"A Little Perspective, Please"

Jonathan Last throws some facts at the doom-and-gloom crowd at today's Weekly Standard:

.... Remember the Grenada cakewalk? The United States invaded on October 25, 1983 and hostilities ended on November 3. If conquering Grenada (133 square miles) took 10 days, shouldn't commentators take a wait-and-see attitude towards Iraq (169,000 square miles)? The same was true for the invasion of Panama. Begun on December 20, 1989, Manuel Noriega didn't surrender until January 3, 1990. That's 15 days.
The first Gulf War was no easier. The allies began the air campaign on January 17, 1991 and didn't reach a cease-fire until February 28 -- 43 days. And if you back up a few months, Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. In an invasion that spent no time on the niceties of war which the United States insists upon, Saddam's forces didn't secure their small, militarily inferior neighbor until August 8. It took Saddam 7 days -- and loads of civilian casualties -- to conquer a neighbor with only 2.1 million people.
You say that's ancient history, that we're in a new era? Okay. How about this: In Afghanistan the United States started bombing on October 7, 2001. The last Taliban forces didn't leave Kandahar until December 7 -- a 63 day campaign.
Today, each of these military actions is considered a rout....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 06:39:23 PM
Categorized as War.


   
   

"Saddamizing America"

By Craig McMillan at WND today:

.... An attitude of national tolerance has served the left well. They have silenced their critics, while expanding their pet perversions into the national mainstream. An army of bastard children, abortion on demand, sexual perversion, murder, rape and robbery have resulted. All of this we as a nation have grown to tolerate. We have learned the left's values from their patient instruction and made them our own.
Perhaps that's why I'm confused. I thought that value judgments were the only sin left in modern America. But now I see professional leftists pouring out of our educational institutions and into our streets. The reason? They've made a value judgment: War with Iraq is evil, and must be stopped. Saddam Hussein should be allowed to use Iraq as his personal playpen, to develop chemical biological, and nuclear weapons, and to treat the Iraqi people like so many guinea pigs or white rats....

(Thanks, Karen.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 06:32:02 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.


   
   

Three Phrases I Would Really Like to Never Have to Hear Again

In no particular order.

  • Hans Blix
  • Saddam Hussein
  • Security Council

I can dream, can't I?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 01:48:06 PM
Categorized as International.


   
   

"Avoid Media Stew of Malice"

Or, "The triple war".

A reader calls to my attention a David Warren article in today's Ottawa Citizen, which is also available at his website:

.... But while the allies move from victory to victory on the first two "fronts", they are suffering serious and mostly unavoidable setbacks on the third, propaganda, one. I am tempted to stop and argue with the barrage of media reports -- the "24/7 battery of lies" to which I referred in a former article; a remark which filled my inbox with hate mail from my fellow journalists. But there is too much of it for one writer to deal with.
It begins on the small scale with remarks made in sheer ignorance. For instance, an Abrams tank with its treads blown off has not been "destroyed"; its crew is alive, and the tank can be fixed. Or, Apache helicopters grounded by a sandstorm have not been "turned back by Iraqi defenders". A frequent misunderstanding is about sandstorms themselves, which present a net advantage to U.S. forces. At the battle of Najaf, Monday into Tuesday, they were annihilating Iraqi fighters by the hundred. The U.S. soldiers could see them clearly as heat signatures on their equipment; whereas the Saddamites could not see the Americans.
But it gets much worse than this. To present civilian deaths, such as those in a Baghdad market, even as a U.S. "mistake", on the basis of Iraqi sources only, is to disseminate Saddamite propaganda. In this case alternative possibilities include an Iraqi inside job, to create a much-needed atrocity story (something they have repeatedly tried elsewhere); a misguided Iraqi surface-to-air missile; or an American cruise missile or bomb deflected from a nearby target by Iraq's recently-acquired Russian GPS-jamming equipment. And even if it were an American mistake, Western journalists participating in the subsequent Iraqi media tour of the site are directly assisting in a propaganda stunt, designed to inflame anti-American opinion throughout the Arab world, and beyond it.
On the large scale, we have the persistent display of doubts about tactics and strategy from journalists without any qualifications to judge them: who know no military history, indeed hardly any history at all; nor are they in possession of many current facts. Their motives are, moreover, clear enough: for many are people whose anti-Bush and anti-American attitudes were on display long before the war.
We also have, in vast doses, a somewhat less political morbid sentimentality that should have no place in war reporting, for it clouds all judgement on matters of life and death.
As Andrew Sullivan has pointed out, the shamefully inaccurate broadcasting of the BBC has a direct military consequence. "One of the key elements ... in this battle is the willingness of the Iraqi people to stand up to the Saddamite remnants. That willingness depends, in part, on their confidence that the allies are making progress. What the BBC is able to do, by broadcasting directly to these people, is to keep the Iraqi people's morale as far down as possible, thereby helping to make the war more bloody, thereby helping discredit it in retrospect."
The BBC is hardly the only source of disinformation on the war; it is everywhere in the "liberal" media, filling the front pages of papers such as the New York Times: pure editorializing founded on half-ignorant, half-intentional misinterpretations of facts and non-facts. The attitudes of these journalists are exposed in the tone of the questions they ask at e.g. Pentagon and CENTCOM press conferences. In the BBC's case, an internal memo from the network's own defence correspondent has come to light, in which he assails his colleagues for persistently leading newscasts with reports that are, in his own capitalized words, "NOT TRUE".
I want to tell my readers directly: do not be discouraged by, and avoid wallowing in, this rich stew of malice. The media front may look grim; but the war itself is going very well.

I watched the news conference of George Bush and Tony Blair this morning. Bush showed himself to be a man of the people: he is getting as impatient with arrogant, hostile, ignorant, and stupid questions from reporters as the rest of us are.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 12:14:21 PM
Categorized as War.


   
   

"Ten Points on the War: Questions and Answers"

A good article by John Derbyshire at NRO today.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 11:06:41 AM
Categorized as War.


   
   

"Stand Up for America Speech"

By Beth Chapman, Alabama State Auditor, Feb. 2003.

Paul has sent me this speech by Beth Chapman at a Stand Up for America Rally in Pelham AL:

I’m here tonight because men and women of the United States military have given their lives for my freedom. I am not here tonight because Sheryl Crowe, Rosie O’Donnell, Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, the Dixie Chicks, Barbra Streisand, the Beastie Boys, George Clooney or Phil Donahue, sacrificed their lives for me.
If my memory serves me correctly, it was not movie stars or musicians, but the United States Military who fought on the shores of Iwo Jima the jungles of Vietnam, and the beaches of Normandy.
Tonight, I say we should support the President of the United States and the U.S. military and tell the liberal, tree-hugging, hippy, Birkenstock wearing, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and music and whine somewhere else....

See Global praise - Chapman's speech touches 'soldiers, mothers, wives, sisters, fathers'.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 10:12:58 AM
Categorized as Political.


   
   

"War American-Style"

Margaret brings to my attention this Tony Blankley column in yesterday's Washington Post:

.... The American personality might be characterized as an easygoing, sentimental, fair-minded ruthlessness. We tie yellow ribbons round the old oak tree at the same moment that we dispatch a wing of B-52s to carpet bomb the enemy. No murderer in the world gets as many appeals from his conviction as an American murderer. But when we have finished being fair (about the same length of time that a French murderer has to spend in prison before being released), we fry him. More recently, to show our gentle side, we have taken to killing our murderers with a painless lethal injection.
Even amongst our law-abiding citizens, we shock the Europeans with both our generosity and ferocity. We provide for every kid with a pulse to go to college, and then let them sink or swim in the workplace. American workers are lucky to get two weeks of vacation a year, and if an American is out of work, he is, after a few months, out of luck. In 1996 we repealed the right to welfare payments. Poor people in America have the choice of going to work or going to h*ll. A few nitwit school boards have outlawed dodgeball: But for most Americans dodgeball is a way of life — and we aim at the head....
Americans are fair, and more than fair. We will even accept a few unnecessary casualties to give the other side time to do the right thing. We understand the need to have as many Iraqis as possible friendly when the shooting stops. But even more importantly, we understand that if Saddam and his gang are still on their feet when the shooting stops, all the goodwill of the Iraqi people would be worth nothing.
And expending the lives of American soldiers in order to save the lives of Iraqi civilians is not a transaction Americans will look kindly on for long. Woe betide the American president who is not prepared to be as murderously ruthless as the American people when we are finished being easygoing, sentimental and fair-minded.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 08:56:28 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.


   
   

"Top Ten Myths About the War in Iraq"

A good point-by-point rebuttal by James Dunnigan at StrategyPage yesterday:

War brings forth strenuous efforts to report what is happening and why. It also brings forth many persistent myths. Here are ten of them. There are more, but you get the idea.....

(Thanks, Alan.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 08:51:07 AM
Categorized as War.


   
   

The BBC is Anti-War

No surprise there.

The BBC has come under fire (heh, heh) for anti-war bias in its news — from its own "front line defence correspondent". From yesterday's Sun:

THE BBC was last night sensationally condemned for “one-sided” war coverage — by its own front line defence correspondent.
Paul Adams attacks the Beeb for misreporting the Allied advance in a blistering memo leaked to The Sun.
And he warned the BBC’s credibility is at risk for suggesting British troops are paying a “high price for small victories”.
On Monday, he wrote from US Central Command in Qatar: “I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering ‘significant casualties’.
“This is simply NOT TRUE. Nor is it true to say — as the same intro stated — that coalition forces are fighting ‘guerrillas’.
“It may be guerrilla warfare, but they are not guerrillas.”
Adams’ memo was fired off to TV news head Roger Mosey, Radio news boss Stephen Mitchell and other Beeb chiefs.
It adds stunning weight to allegations that BBC coverage on all its networks is biased against the war.
In one blast, he storms: “Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving ‘small victories at a very high price?’
“The truth is exactly the opposite.
“The gains are huge and the costs still relatively low. This is real warfare, however one-sided, and losses are to be expected.”
The BBC has come under attack for describing the loss of two soldiers as the “worst possible news for the armed forces”.
One listener asked: “How would the BBC have reported the Battle of the Somme in World War I when 25,000 men died on the first day?”

Note, what the BBC is doing is anti-war editorializing by the way it reports the news. Susanna calls this "framing bias": the bias comes through in how the stories are framed and, antecedently, what stories are chosen to cover and what stories are chosen to ignore. This goes on all the time, every which way.

See also this Guardian article.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 07:32:02 AM
Categorized as Media.


   

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