COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

The Columbia Journalism Review's Mike Hoyt asks the question.

No time to do a detailed blog today. Off to AT in the morning.

Discuss.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Columbia Journalism Review, Iraq, The media, Tom RIcks, Warfighting, Washington Post, writers

MONUMENTS

We are not statues

Standing among the trees,

A tribute to what has passed.



We are not statues,

Though our faces are stone,

Chiseled by time, shaped by history

That we are now part of,

As it is part of us.



We are living monuments,

Stoic in the shadows

As the world around us moves.



Colin Halloran, 23, senior

Central Connecticut State University

More here.

Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, New York Times, Poetry, soldiers' issues, the Arts, veterans

Looks like a good movie coming out depicting EOD folks in Iraq.

I got a kick out of the actors describing how hard it was in 20 pounds of gear in 115 degree heat every day. And how almost everyone had a nervous breakdown during the filming.

And it wasn't even real.

Hollywood doesn't attract people like Jimmy Stewart anymore, I guess.

Labels: Iraq, movies, soldiers' issues, the Arts

Over seven years of war, and the Boston Globe doesn't know shit from shinola when it comes to covering the military.

Following a meeting with Gen. Ray Odierno cq, the top US commander in Iraq, and talks with Iraqi leaders, Obama arrived at a former palace of Saddam Hussein to decorate 10 troops with the Medal of Valor.

In the Globe's defense, on the other hand, this looks like a blog post that didn't make it through the copy desk/fact-checking system. If the newspaper has one.

Layers, and all that, wot?

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Boston Globe, Iraq, Media, Obama, soldiers' issues

Torture!!!!!!1111!!!11!!eleventy!!

Oh. And the Telegraph apparently doesn't know the difference between the Army and Marine Corps. However, I'm cutting them slack, since they're not a U.S. paper.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: detainees, Humor, Iraq, Saddam, torture

An old friend sends me this piece on the old "White Phosphorus Is Used Against Civilians" chestnut written by Juliet Lapidos over at Slate:

Actually, though it's obvious the reporter does better than a lot of folks in reporting the issue, the two hours she spent reporting this piece wasn't enough to make up for her utter lack of background knowledge on the topic.

As a result, she can't tell shit from shinola when assessing her source documents, and therefore seems to place the idiotic allegations of Human Rights Watch at the same level with military doctrine and the Law of Land Warfare and the long experience of fire support experts.

Finally, she falls flat on her face with this passage:

White phosphorus has an iffy legal status.

No, dumbass. It doesn't. It's perfectly legal to use on the battlefield. As you yourself note:

No treaty bans the use of white phosphorus against strictly military targets, although there is a debate over whether it ought to be classified as a chemical weapon and prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Yes. The debate is between sober, informed people who understand the munition and its uses on the battlefield on one hand, and ignorant morons on the other. Your problem, Julia, is that you still can't tell the difference.

Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons outlaws the use of "incendiary weapons" on civilians or on military targets located within a concentration of civilians. The protocol, however, specifically excludes munitions that "may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signaling systems."

And herein you falsify your own assertion. White Phosphorus, as used by U.S. and Israeli forces in the smoke/signal/illumination role, is exempt from the convention.

Why?

Because on the urban battlefield, white phosphorus saves lives, you dolt!

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Iraq, Israel, law, Media, soldiers' issues, The Left, The media, Warfighting

I'm phobically allergic to the conservative Republican types the military is rife with, but I've only been in country four months and already I hate liberals.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: bloggers, Iraq, Media, Warfighting

Now this is interesting:

CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn't convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

Not convinced? Well, if he's not convinced by the combined advice of Gates, Petraeus and Adm. Mullen, speaking with one voice, then obviously, Obama's been convinced by someone or something else. He's basing his decisionmaking on some other source of information and advice he considers more reliable.

The question is, if he doesn't accept the considered professional judgment of Petraeus, Gates and Mullen, then who's advice is he taking?

I guess this is that retreat from empiricism I've heard so much about. Or more precisely, it's Ready, Fire, Aim decision-making (RFA-DM).

On a more meta level, it's interesting trying to parse who's doing the leaking here. If it's DoD people doing the leaking, then Obama deserves better than what he's getting from the DoD. That's unacceptable.

Likewise, if it's White House people doing the leaking, then Obama's staff is deliberately undercutting the perceived authority of our senior military leadership - authority they were so exquisitely hypersensitive about when it came to the sainted General Shinseki. And that's unacceptable, too.

It will be hilariously funny to watch the libtards, who were so orgasmic when a few Generals Eason, Sanchez, Zinni, Newbold, Swannack, and the others were publicly critical of the Bush Administration, fly into high hysterics when retired flag officers state what they really think about President Obama's leadership.

But if Obama continues on his present course, and a bitch fit ensues between Gates/Petraeus and the White House, then rightly or wrongly, you are going to see a Generals' revolt that will make the problems the Bush Administration faced 2006 look like a parade ground exercise.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Army, generals, Iraq, Obama, Warfighting

The media, of course, looks for the negative spin.

The turnout in Iraq's provincial elections yesterday was just over 50 per cent, lower than expected, after confusion over voter registration prevented many people from casting a ballot.

Some Iraqis also blamed a ban on vehicles, saying that their polling station was too far away to reach on foot.

Of course, had Iraq not banned vehicular movement, the threat of car bombs would have had its own depressing effect on voter turnout.

To put it in perspective, Iraq's 51 percent turnout came about during provincial elections. The U.S. only manages to come close to Iraqi participation rates in presidential election years -- and sometimes not even then. And that's without the constant threat of terrorist attack and the proven ability and willingness of terrorists to murder scores of people at a time. And that only after a marathon media blitz.

To compare, here are the turnout percentages over the last five midterm elections in the United States:

2006.... 37.1%
2002... 37.2%
1998... 36.4%
1994... 38.8%
1990... 36.5%

Iraqis turned out to the tune of 51%.

There is a farging miracle happening in Iraq, and all these dorks can do is pull at threads.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Iraq, Media, The Left

CNN discovers Colby Buzzell - four years after the fact.

Labels: Army, bloggers, CNN, Iraq, Media

This is the time on Countercolumn when we try to guess the Ass. Press headline from the text in the news story.

Are you ready? Ok, here's the text from the story:

The al-Qaida in Iraq leader was killed Friday elsewhere in northern Baghdad. American troops also killed the man's wife in a firefight as they tried to capture him, the military said.

Mahir Ahmad Mahmud al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Assad or Abu Rami, was accused of directing an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for nearly simultaneous car bomb and suicide attacks Thursday, according to the statement.

Iraqi police and hospital officials have said some two dozen people were killed in Thursday's attacks targeting two Shiite mosques in Baghdad.

Those attacks and others that struck during Ramadan have raised fears that al-Qaida in Iraq is trying to provoke Sunni-Shiite reprisal killings as U.S.-led forces begin to draw down.

Al-Zubaydi was among the most senior insurgents killed by U.S. forces as they seek to shore up security gains that have driven the level of violence to its lowest point in more than four years.

Sooooo.... can you guess the headline?

If you guessed "U.S. Military: Iraqi Killed in Helicopter Collision," you'd be right.

Ratfucks.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Al Qaeda, Iraq, The media

Compare and contrast this paragraph

Barack Obama's White House campaign angrily denied Monday a report that he had secretly urged the Iraqis to postpone a deal to withdraw US troops until after November's election.

...with this paragraph from later in the same story:

In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a "Strategic Framework Agreement" governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office, she said.

So it is true.

Obama was freelancing, engaging in his own personal foreign policy without co-ordinatng with the executive branch. Indeed, according to his own spokesperson, he was engaging a foreign government in actively trying to subvert and sabotage the foreign policy of the United States.

If this is true, then in my view, it is potentially grounds for impeachment.

It proves, also, that Obama does not have the maturity to be President of the United States. He certainly does not respect the constitutional role of the executive in formulating and carrying out foreign policy.

Legislators should not be visiting foreign governments and actively trying to weaken the hand of United States negotiators. Period. Obama wouldn't stand for it if he were president, either.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: foreign policy, International relations, Iraq, law, Obama

The United States officially passes control and responsibility for Al Anbar back to the Iraqis.

Harry 'The war is lost' Reid could not be reached for comment.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Iraq

Scroll into the comments to see what the baying lefty jackals at Balloon Juice were saying about Petraeus last year.

Labels: Iraq, Petraeus, The Left

According to Howard Kurtz, CBS correspondent Lara Logan "had spent the previous two months involved in negotiations that freed a kidnapped CBS videographer, Richard Butler."

But Butler wasn't freed by negotiations. He was freed by an Iraqi Army raid. At least, according to previously published reports.

So what's the backstory here?

What was the settlement? What did CBS give away? And to whom? What did they offer? Was it a promised story or angle? Cash? Did they just turn every CBS journalist on the planet in to a walking, talking certified check?

More, please, Mistuh Kurtz!

Splash, out

Jason

ASIDE: Originally, I planned to write a post, basically saying let he who is without the first sin cast the first stone here. Lara is human, as is her paramour. I congratulate her on her pregnancy, and I propose that slack should be cut for her.

Labels: Iraq, Media

The decisive point in the Iraq war is now in and around the city of Mosul. That's where the fight is, that's where the action is, that's where the story is.

So how does the New York Times cover the news?

By sending the dumbest reporter in the country to Baqubah!


Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Iraq, New York Times, The media

The soldier in this famous photograph, Joseph Patrick Dwyer, is dead.



From the Army Times:

During the first week of the war in Iraq, a Military Times photographer captured the arresting image of Army Spc. Joseph Patrick Dwyer as he raced through a battle zone clutching a tiny Iraqi boy named Ali.

The photo was hailed as a portrait of the heart behind the U.S. military machine, and Doc Dwyer’s concerned face graced the pages of newspapers across the country.

But rather than going on to enjoy the public affection for his act of heroism, he was consumed by the demons of combat stress he could not exorcise. For the medic who cared for the wounds of his combat buddies as they pushed toward Baghdad, the battle for his own health proved too much to bear.

On June 28, Dwyer, 31, died of an accidental overdose in his home in Pinehurst, N.C., after years of struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. During that time, his marriage fell apart as he spiraled into substance abuse and depression. He found himself constantly struggling with the law, even as friends, Veterans Affairs personnel and the Army tried to help him.

Contrary to the opinion of blogs like Crooks and Liars, who have no compunctions about using a soldier's tragic death to score cheap political points against the VA and the Administration, evidence be damned, this isn't a case of a soldier not getting helped by the VA. He was hospitalized at least twice for psychological issues, at least once in a military facility, at government expense. He promised to go to counseling, and counseling was available for him.

If the hospital services are made available, and counseling is made available, a guy is going to huff anyway, you can't then blame "the system" for his death. Only a moron would blame VA cutbacks for his death.

He lived as a soldier and as a hero. And he died as a human, but he died under his own power. The Bush Administration had nothing to do with it.

Let us thank God that men such as him lived.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Iraq, Psychology, PTSD, soldiers' issues

That's how the Times of London puts it:

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.

The clincher: Al Qaeda has been expelled from the city itself and driven into the countryside, where US and Iraqi firepower can be brought to bear and where it is impossible for them to disappear into a crowd.

American and Iraqi leaders believe that while it would be premature to write off Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul and its remnants have been largely driven into the countryside to the south.

Al Qaeda has a lot of flexibility and resilience. But it's hard for me to imagine that Ayman al Zawahiri would want to throw good fighters after bad and reinforce failure. For that reason, so long as the US remains steadfast, I don't see Al Qaeda making any major comebacks. They may find a home in another town, and 1,200 people can cause a lot of trouble. But 1,200 people are a lot of people to hide, as well.

Instead, I believe Al Qaeda will attempt to open another front. The Horn of Africa seems like an obvious choice, but if I were in there shoes, I'd look for someplace as landlocked as possible. Perhaps Uzbekistan and Chechnya are due for a heat-up.

But Al Qaeda in Iraq is just about finished.

Harry "The war is lost" Reid could not be reached for comment.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Iraq, War on Terror

I meant to get to this a while back...

Phil Carter, the proprietor of Intel Dump and a partisan Obama supporter, gets it dead wrong here in criticizing Stand To, a sort of news and opinion clearinghouse that the Army publishes, for the crime of linking to a blogger voice critical of Obama.

And more to the point, why is the Army's official in-house public affairs shop linking to this kind of stuff? Just a few weeks ago, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told all hands to stay out of politics: "As the nation prepares to elect a new president, we would all do well to remember the promises we made: to obey civilian authority, to support and defend the Constitution and to do our duty at all times.... Keeping our politics private is a good first step." He added: "The only things we should be wearing on our sleeves are our military insignia."

Unfortunately, the message didn't get to through to the Army.

Let's be clear: It is okay for the services to have a message. Both the Early Bird and Stand To speak for the Pentagon and the Army as institutions, and that's okay. They generally support the troops, the military, the chain of command, and the current endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nothing wrong with that.

And I have no objections to what Mr. Hooah wrote, besides the fact that I think it's factually wrong. He has his opinion; I have mine.

But the Stand To page is different -- and Tuesday's edition crosses the line. This isn't some citizen's blog or website. It's the in-house public affairs digest of the United States Army. It should not be amplifying partisan political attacks, nor should it be airing them at all. This appears like yet another example of the unusually cozy relationship which has developed over the last generation or so between the military and the right wing of American politics -- an unhealthy development, to say the least.

Last time I checked, soldiers and civilian officials didn't swear an oath to either political party or to their current president. Rather, they swear their fidelity to the Constitution, and the ideals it embodies, including the subordination of the military to civil authority. Adm. Mullen is right: As we enter a contentious election year, where issues of national security are likely to dominate the debate, the military needs to stay on the sidelines.

Sorry, but Carter's just flat wrong here - in essence, he's confusing acknowledging and linking with an endorsement.

First of all, a bit of background: Not every military network allows unfettered access to blogs. There have been many times when I could not access Countercolumn, either to read it, or update it, from a military network, because of various net controls. (They also don't let you access Web email accounts, either, and I cannot check email to Countercolumn from many government connections).

Furthermore, because of the long hours many military people work, especially overseas, many of them simply do not have time to access a dozen different newspapers and read news and opinion sites from all over the world. Stand To is a valuable service, collecting Army related news and opinion from various news outlets and bloggers. (When I was in Iraq, I relied a lot on BuzzFlash).

Carter, however, is outright calling for the censorship of conservative or anti-Obama opinion on the Army's web portal.

In my view, he's wrong on three counts:

1.) Government officials in editorial positions have no duty to suppress any point of view whatsoever in their duties.
2.) Government officials in editorial positions, I would argue, have an affirmative duty to be inclusive of a broad spectrum of opinion.
3.) Linking does not equal endorsement.

The bottom line is that the vast majority of milblogs are pro success in Iraq. Now Carter, having picked up a sweet mainstream media bloggership at the Washington Post, would like to have the military insulate their members from the point of view of their own community. Because given the rightward slant of most milblogs (this one included, natch), if Carter has his way, the Army would have to put out a policy severely restricting the inclusion of milblogs from Stand To.

I've been a digest newsletter editor myself, for a mainstream media outlet (in my case, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Time, Inc.). As managing editor of a subscription newsletter called Investors Digest, I made it a point to represent a variety of market and investment perspectives, from bulls to bears to outright paranoid Ron Paul-worshipping goldbugs.

To assume that just because I included a Ron Paulian nutcase like The Mogambo Guru in my twice monthly roundups meant I supported or endorsed him is simply absurd. As editor of a Digest or roundup it was my duty to give my readers an entertaining sample of a full cross section of opinion.

If Carter has evidence that the Public Affairs guys responsible for Stand To and/or Early Bird are systematically excluding rational voices critical of the Administration, he doesn't bother to bring it up here. But such a deliberate exclusion in favor of pro-Administration voices would seem to be a neccessary component of his endorsement argument.

Carter, an Obama supporter himself, who already has a sweet deal with the Post, would like to restrict the milblogger reach into the military community. Or at least predicate their exposure to the military audience via Stand To on the condition that they refrain from criticizing Carter's favored candidate.

I think that is wrong.

Carter, consciously or unconsciously, is trying to "shape the battlefield" to limit the effects of milbloggers, and conservative bloggers, generally. All well and good. He's got his soapbox for his views, and they are pretty close to those who make up the ranks of the MSM. Only he's not nearly as ignorant as they are. But to those of us who take the long view of the Long War, and reject Obama's instinct for abandoning the field (though Carter denies that Obama wants to do so), seeking to expunge the largely partisan milblogging community from Stand To, and seeking to intimidate its editors into so doing is battlefield shaping just as surely as the Fairness Doctrine seeks to eliminate the impact of talk radio on the political scene, and consolidate the power of the pulpit in the hands of a few coastal media companies.

If military bloggers skew right, then so be it. If they skew left someday, then so be it as well. Let the Democrats make the case and convince the military bloggers of their point of view honestly.

It's always curious to me when those who you would think would support the notion of a free marketplace of ideas seek to suppress them when they become inconvenient.

The military should not endorse, nor be seen to endorse, one candidate over the other. I agree with that notion, as far as it goes. And when I'm on duty, working with troops, no one knows my views unless they happen to read Countercolumn. I'm a member of the Green party. Army Green.

But the military sure as shit should not be hostile to such expressions, either, nor should they have a policy of sheltering their readers from any part of the full gamut of American political opinion.

They should not endorse partisan speech, but they should not adopt a policy that is hostile to it either. Military readers deserve access to a full rainbow of opinion. And Stand To should continue to link to The Nation, The Free Republic, Michelle Malkin, Juan Cole, Phil Carter, BlackFive, Mudville Gazette, and everyone else their editor believes addresses military-related issues of interest to its readership in an engaging, informative or provocative way, be it left or right.


Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, Iraq, Obama, soldiers' issues

...and of course, has a few things to say about the pathetic coverage afforded to the former by our high-status libtard media centers, compared to McClellan's book.

If you want to read a serious book about the origins and consequences of the intervention in Iraq in 2003, you owe it to yourself to get hold of a copy of Douglas Feith's War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. As undersecretary of defense for policy, Feith was one of those most intimately involved in the argument about whether to and, if so, how to put an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein. His book contains notes made in real time at the National Security Council, a trove of declassified documentation, and a thoroughly well-organized catalog of sources and papers and memos. Feith has also done us the service of establishing a Web site where you can go and follow up all his sources and check them for yourself against his analysis and explanation. There is more of value in any chapter of this archive than in any of the ramblings of McClellan. As I write this on the first day of June, about a book that was published in the first week of April, the books pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe have not seen fit to give Feith a review. An article on his book, written by the excellent James Risen for the news pages of the New York Times, has not run. This all might seem less questionable if it were not for the still-ballooning acreage awarded to Scott McClellan.

That oxygen thief, McClellan, is a walking argument against political appointments and patronage.

Rather than being a thoughtful and articulate spokesperson for the Administration, McClellan was content to be a punching bag for the White House press corps. Even worse, he probably thought it was his JOB to be a punching bag, the poor pathetic twit.

I look forward to reading Feith's book. As for McClellan, I can't imagine any writer more likely to be a waste of time.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Iraq, Politics