This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Media

  • Al Jazeera; US casualties in Iraq reach 44,000

    This is just too good to not repeat. Hat tip to Grim at Blackfive who calls this, from CNS News, “Another Grim Milestone”;

    At this point, according to the BBC translation, the moderator interrupted Al-Shammari. “Excuse me, the figure you have is 44,000?” the moderator asked.

    “The Americans do not count those who have Green Cards,” explained Al-Shammari.

    “The Americans do not count those who die in explosions on a daily basis. The Americans do not count deaths among the logistic support teams and other Green Card holders, as I said,” he added.

    “They only count holders of U.S. nationality. Our people in the Islamic Army had found earlier some of the mass graves for U.S. soldiers in Al-Iskandariyah area, Al-Habbaniyah, and elsewhere; and there are recorded videos of these,” he said.

    “Do you have an accurate calculation and a clear follow-up on this issue that allows you to announce the figure 44,000?” asked the moderator.

    “Yes, we in the military office have precise statistics that are highly professional in calculating the daily losses and casualties of the enemy,” said Al-Shammari.

    So apparently, we’re handing out green cards, sending the new recipients straight to the front lines where they’re then used as sand bags. It’s no wonder that Al Jazeera enjoyed better access than I did at Winter Soldier.

  • Muqtada al Sadr threatens to call off ceasefire

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    Iraqi Army soldiers take take part in a military operation in Basra, Iraq, 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Saturday April 19, 2008.

    al Sadr sounds serious this time (AP/Yahoo link);

    “So I direct my last warning and speech to the Iraqi government to refrain and to take the path of peace and abandon violence against its people,” al-Sadr said in the statement. “If the government does not refrain and leash the militias that have penetrated it, we will announce an open war until liberation.”

    Associated Press must feel relieved that there’s something besides good news to report since they rushed this particular story out but it’s mostly bluster on al Sadr’s part. He’s still in Iran hiding out, and his “army” is being worn down to a nub. You don’t know because the media is only reporting the bad news. They’ve neglected to rush out stories like what Bill Roggio reported yesterday;

    In today’s New York Times, Michael Gordon writes about the wall being built to partition Sadr City. Buried in the article, we learn that the Mahdi Army assaulted a police station and the Iraqi forces were running low on ammunition. As the U.S. military prepared to reinforce the position, the Iraqi Army beat them to the punch:

    The militias’ main effort on Thursday was focused on dislodging Iraqi forces from a police station. American advisers took up positions with the Iraqi unit.

    As the fighting intensified and there were reports that militia fighters had closed to within 100 yards, Colonel Barnett moved tanks into position so they could rush to the Iraqis’ aid. Stryker vehicles also moved forward.

    But two Iraqi T-72s and four other Iraqi armored vehicles arrived on the scene before the American tanks were needed. The Iraqi Army has rushed ammunition to Sadr City, including machine-gun rounds and rocket-propelled grenades to give its units more firepower and address complaints of shortages.

    Moving armor into Sadr City while under fire is no small feat, particularly for the young Iraqi Army. The Iraqi Army outperformed their American betters on that day. Isn’t that worth a headline as well?

    Well, not really, Bill, it doesn’t fit the template. AP still thinks it’s 2006 and they write that the Iraqi Army is just a participant in the battle, notice the caption under the photo above. You have to reap into the story to find the Iraqis are leading the battle against al-Sadr;

    At least 14 people were killed and 84 wounded in Saturday’s fighting in Sadr City, police and hospital officials said. Sporadic clashes were continuing after sundown, with gunmen darting through the streets, firing at Iraqi police and soldiers who have taken the lead in the fighting.

    al Sadr is out numbered by his own countrymen, even the Shi’ite leadership has thrown him under the bus. Bluster won’t save him this time.

  • New York Times’ narrow view

    This morning, the New York Times‘ headline screamed that Iraqis were abandoning their posts in Sadr City. The truth is that only a few dozen green troops got cold feet;

    A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.

    The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led to a tense series of exchanges between American soldiers and about 50 Iraqi troops who were fleeing.

    You have to read down a few paragraphs to discover that another Iraqi unit took it’s place immediately. Then, after complaining that the Iraqis are all cowards, the NYT complains that they’re too agressive;

    One big problem is that the Iraqi troops have responded to militia gunfire with such intense fusillades that the soldiers have endangered civilians, American soldiers and even their own forces.

    So which is it? Of course, the whole point of the New York Times article is that it’s a useless fight for Americans. That the Iraqis are the Keystone Kops of our war against terror. That judging by these incidences, we should just turn tail and run like a few dozen green Iraqi troops. Where are the New York Times stories about the other thousands of Iraqis who are standing their ground and doing the heavy lifting?

    Someone send the NYT a copy of Michael Yon’s new book “Moment of Truth in Iraq“.

  • AP swipes at McCain as “conservative”

    While the New York Times has failed to land a blow on John McCain, and while the two Democrat candidates for president swing wildly at each other, the Associated Press has decided to chip away at McCain surging popularity by declaring that he’s more conservative than we might think. They drag out stunning revelations that *gasp* he’s against abortion, that he thinks *gasp* states should make their own decisions about gay marriage. He also *gasp* voted against the ban of semi-automatic weapons. He also has voted to *gasp* support the President in the war against terror.

    Here’s a note to the Associated Press; those are minimum requirements for being in the Republican party. If Republicans had voted for someone without those four prerequisites, they’d have voted for a Democrat. AP concludes that;

     His conservatism could be a problem for McCain — particularly if this November’s contest is as close as recent presidential elections, which were decided by independent-minded voters in the center of the political spectrum.

    In other words, we’re all pretty stupid because we didn’t know McCain was conservative until AP just told us this morning.

  • Sadr City being reshaped

    If you’re only reading the traditional media, the only thing you know about the war in Iraq today is that “US GIs suffer worst week of ’08” and that “Iraq fires 1300 police and soldiers in south“. The Gateway Pundit posts this screen cap;

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    But, Bill Roggio reports at The Long War Journal that Iraqi troops and US troops are reshaping Sadr City;

    The Mahdi Army began seeding the streets of Sadr City with roadside bombs just days after Sadr declared the unilateral ceasefire. “Outlaw groups have planted roadside bombs and other explosives in most of the streets of Sadr City,” the Baghdad Operational Command reported.

    The Mahdi Army has attacked US and Iraqi patrols on a daily basis. The Sadrists are also advertising the results of these operations. “Witnesses and al-Sadr’s office said loudspeaker announcements broadcast from mosques offered updates about Mahdi Army attacks on US military vehicles,” CNN reported, indicating the truce called by Sadr at the end of February and again at the end of March is all but dead.

    US and Iraqi forces have begun to shape the battlefield in Sadr City by cordoning off the main entry and exit points, building new check posts, instituting a vehicle ban, conducting a series patrols and humanitarian missions, carrying out targeted raids against Mahdi Army and Special Groups leaders, and providing a blanket of aerial coverage from unmanned aerial vehicles and helicopters from US Army air weapons teams.

    The Mahdi Army has responded violently to the efforts to establish a presence inside Sadr City.

    Without Bill Roggio, we might get the impression that it’s 2006 all over again from the traditional media – that our troops are back in the Green Zone while the Iraq government is in disarray.

  • Winter Soldier coverage has FAIR’s panties bunched

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    Winter Soldier didn’t turn out so well. The stories were weak and pedestrian. The testimony didn’t cause the national outrage that the prima donnas of the anti-war had hoped. The IVAW had convinced the other bands of merry protesters to suspend plans for their protests in Washington so as not to distract the media from their antics at the National Labor College – that move may have affected the turn out for the anti-war protest later that week.

    Well, of course, it must be someone’s fault that Winter Soldier fizzled, right? Well, the Left has decided that it’s the New York Time’s fault. They’ve enlisted the leftist media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) to get to the bottom of why the Grey Lady didn’t bother to cover the Winter Soldier theater.

    First of all let me tell you, I saw reporters and technicians from countless news organizations. I wasn’t allowed to film the media or I’d show you how the back of the conference was packed with media. I saw media from the Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters, NPR even Al Jazeera (they all had media passes with their organization printed on them). It looked like the New York Times was about the only media not represented.

    But that’s not going to stop FAIR from “investigating”. They wrote a letter to NYT’s public editor asking for answers. Basically, the Times, in the personage of one Clark Hoyt, responded that they’d prefer their own reports from their paid staff than to rely on a pack of juvenile malcontents for their serious news.

    I’m no fan of the New York Times, but given the history of their recent problems with paid staff, I don’t think I blame them for being a bit more cautious. But that only angered the folks at FAIR;

    Hoyt’s claim that “news organizations like the Times, with its own substantial investment in independent reporting from Iraq, tend to prefer their own on-scene accounts of the war” is akin to asserting that reporters on the police beat prefer to write about crimes they have seen themselves rather than talking to eyewitnesses. Given that Times reporters, like all Western journalists in Iraq, have great difficulty travelling freely outside the Green Zone, it is hard to imagine that they could provide a full and accurate picture of the war without interviewing people who have participated in it. And of course the paper does often interview U.S. military personnel about what they’ve seen, though when they are whistleblowers trying to call attention to what they describe as “the human consequences of failed policy,” the Times suddenly has much less interest in what they have to say.

    Of course, to reach that conclusion, FAIR is assuming that the “whistleblowers” at Winter Soldier were rational people with no ulterior motives other than bringing the truth out. Although that may be the case for two people that I can name, I doubt the motives of the others, and they’ve not given me reason to doubt my initial impressions since. The New York Times may have decided that it wasn’t wise to stake the remnants of their reputation on a band of misfits who had already proven themselves to be unreliable sources.

    My buddy Denis Keohane of Obiter Dictum had another take on it in an email exchange we had today;

    I don’t think anyone could have foreseen that at the very time IVAW would hold their WSI, the Democrats would be engaged in a brutal nomination fight that could conceivably cost that party the next election. The MSM, including the NY Times, fears that and is trying to protect the Democrats chances for the fall. I strongly believe that is one reason why the WSI got virtually zero MSM coverage. If it was covered and got attention, someone may just ask Hillary or Barrack their view on it – and the organic material hits the oscillating device! Neither Democrat wants any association with the far left moonbats of IVAW or Code Pink, etc., but neither can either afford to alienate them since the far left can cripple any Democrat trying to get the nomination. Odd that it is the IVAW vets who are expendable to their side.

    That probably makes sense, too. Probably more sense than the NYT’s explanation that no one in the Washington bureau knew about the event, and that all of their national security reporters were busy that day. It certainly makes more sense than FAIR implying that the New York Times is biased against the anti-war movement.

    h/t to Michael for the tip

  • Martial bling

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    I read this at The Sniper, who got it from Curt at Flopping Aces who had the guts to read the LA Times in which some gumball named Mathew DeBord criticizes General Petreaus for wearing too many medals and badges.

    That’s a lot of martial bling, especially for an officer who hadn’t seen combat until five years ago. Unfortunately, brazen preening and “ribbon creep” among the Army’s modern-day upper crust have trumped the time-honored military virtues of humility, duty and personal reserve.

    Think about any of the generals you’ve seen in recent years — Norman Schwarzkopf, Barry McCaffrey, Wesley Clark (all now retired) and others — and the image you’ll conjure no doubt includes a chest full of shimmering decorations. In Petraeus’ case, most of them don’t represent actual military action as much as they do the general’s devotion to the institution of the U.S. Army and vice versa. According to an annotated photograph produced by the Times of London last year, the majority of ribbons on Petraeus’ impressive “rack” were earned for various flavors of distinguished service. As brave as he may be and as meritorious in general, is all that ostentation the best way to present the situation in Iraq to an increasingly war-skeptical public?

    Let me tell you, you smoldering ignorant turd, why the good General wears all of that stuff; because he earned it – and because somewhere there’s a sergeant major who knows he earned it and will verbally stomp a mud hole in the good general’s behind if he doesn’t see the general wearing each and every one of those badges and medals.

    There’s an Army Regulation that says he should wear them all – it’s called an AR 670-1 “Wear and Appearance of Army Uniform and Insignia”. Everything has a special place on the uniform – but I wouldn’t expect some half-witted goofball who can only find a job at the LA Times to know that, or bother even doing a Google search for some basic information.

    Which badges should he remove, DeBord? The Ranger Tab he got for 9 weeks of functioning as a combat leader under the most miserable conditions the Army can inflict? Or maybe his Master Parachutist wings? Maybe the German Parachutist wings? Or maybe all of the other stuff he earned and your stupid civilian ass couldn’t accomplish in a lifetime?

    If this what criticism of the war has come down to, maybe it’s time for all ya’all civilians to just leave the country. You’re really starting to grate on the rest of us’ nerves. No. Really.

  • Clinton income

    Every page on the internet seems to have a headline that the Clinton’s made $109 million since they left office. Like this story in the Washington Post;

    After leaving the White House, the Clintons earned $30 million from their best-selling books and brought in as much as $15 million more through an investment partnership with one of her top presidential campaign fundraisers, California billionaire Ronald Burkle. The disclosures came with yesterday’s long-awaited release of the Clintons’ joint tax returns, a move made in the thick of Sen. Clinton’s fight with Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) for the Democratic nomination.

    Sen. Clinton (N.Y.) initially resisted making her family’s finances public, but pressure on her to match Obama’s disclosure grew in February when she disclosed that she had dipped into her personal account to lend her campaign $5 million.

    The tax returns illustrate the rags-to-riches story of a couple who came to the White House from Arkansas with modest means and left facing an estimated $12 million in legal debts rung up during investigations of the Whitewater land deal, campaign fundraising and the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal. As she entered the Senate and he left the political spotlight, the Clintons transformed themselves into a successful global brand.

    If you’re interested in the break down of their income, American Pundit has the numbers.

    I suppose the story is intended to foment some class envy and make Clintonistas have doubts about their class heroes – but it really doesn’t affect me at all. For one thing, I doubt there’s anything that can lower my opinion of the Clintons further than the depths it has already reached. But, I’m certainly not going to envy someone for what they’ve earned – as long as it’s legitimate.

    If I could figure out a way to make you guys gladly pay for reading my posts here, don’t you think I would? If the Clintons have found a market for their drivel, more power to them, I say. Everybody has to make their way in the world, and if the Clintons make their way selling that Leftist snakeoil, I don’t hold it against them.

    Lord knows there’s enough to hold against them in the way of policy and politics, but I hate to see the conservatives and Republicans fall into the trap of class warfare that the media has laid out for us. Let Obama and his side beat her up for branding the Clinton legacy, we should be patting her on the back for proving to the world that capitalism works.