The Thanksgiving Gift From Al-Qaeda

'The Thanksgiving Gift from al-Qaeda'  A collage I made for this article.

"A homicide bomber blew up his car outside a hospital south of Baghdad on Thursday while U.S. troops handed out candy and food to children, killing 30 people and wounding about 40, including four Americans."  is the news report according to Fox News:

According to the ever biased NYT, the whole part about "handing out candy and food to children" is omitted, replaced by "near an American convoy" and a totally different picture painted, appearing that this was not a civilian, but a military target. Why am I not surprised:

"A suicide car bomb exploded Thursday near an American convoy at the entrance to the main hospital in the volatile town of Mahmudiya, killing at least 30 Iraqis and wounding dozens of others in a burst of fire and shrapnel."

The boys over at Camp Katrina had the story and I went over to their site to make a comment, which turned into this post, as I got more and more outraged with the points of view of some:

".. in general, the U.S. army should have a blanket policy on handing out candy to kids because it endangers them."

In response, Charlie Colorado quite rightly says: “In general, al-Qaeda should have a policy of not blowing up kids."

I just heard the news, and my fingers cannot type fast enough to write this post. I am so outraged with the incident, and incensed that anyone can now even remotely put the onus back on our soldiers. Shame on you.

Why is it that when you guys are against the war you always appear that you are against the US? Because perhaps inadvertently you are. You are more interested in your left political agenda (NYT) than what is in the interest of all the Americans who do not wish to succumb to the blackmail of terrorism.

You want to throw leaflets and not bombs at the terrorists. You want to come to a gunfight armed with a knife. Well good luck, you can kiss goodbye to that liberty you hold so dear, and treasure as the banner on your flag of democracy.

We are the the most powerful nation in the world, whether we like it or not, the father and the mother to some, and as all parents, it is our responsibility to look after our children, even when it means having to endanger ourselves.

The al-Qaeda watches every move of the infidels, and every move points to our strengths and weaknesses. If we left, the Iraqis would not have a Civil War as some have suggested, but a BLOOD BATH.

Would you want that for YOUR children?

"This kind of evil has become routine in what is described, far too politely, as the "insurgency" in Iraq."

The word insurgent meaning 'arising', has it's origins from the mid-18th Century Latin (via French actually). From the verb Insurgere. In - 'toward' and surgere - 'to rise'.

How inapropriate really. It gives the impression of a noble uprising, instead of the terrorists' atrocious acts of abomination, peppered with Islamofascism.

On language and the interpretation issue from the left-leaning blogger, The Heretik (comments section):

"We so often find ourselves limited by the labels some apply to others, whether it is Fox's changing of AP suicide to homicide and leaving the AP tag on it or who does or does not have nobility. Somewhere in this is some humanity.

Nobility is word riven with class and used by some like me to class others either up or down. Whether this is the aristos of Plato or the natural aristorcracy of Jefferson or the savage noble or Rousseau, some already know. If we remain always what we are, the world will always be as it was. Those who see this as for the best will see this as the better way. Those who seek change will see a world for the worse. Beyond the ideal of the mind where all is as we would most wish is a world real, made of flesh that bleeds. Somewhere in this is our humanity.

Language is how we convey both the ideal and the real when a smile or a tear won't do. The extent to which language is degraded in service to what is not real, to what is not true, offers opportunities fair and foul for tears and occasionally for a smile and a laugh. Oy. We are all the same, for better or worse, in our humanity."

WaPo gets it 'Right' for once, telling us further that the explosion was at the gate of the hospital, making rescue efforts even more difficult.

My friend in Italy @ The Right Nation: "Can you sink any lower than this? Yes, you can."

A message from The Mudville Gazette:

"Here's a hypothetical question for the "anti-war" readers of this site. Suppose you have a terrorist in your custody. He tells you a similar attack is planned for tomorrow, but refuses to divulge additional information. Would you say:

A. Bush lied!

B. Fire Cheney!!

C. The US used white phosphorus in Fallujah!!!

D. How dare you question my patriotism!?!!!

Write your answer on a 3x5 card and send it to someone who gives a damn. The rest of us have a war to fight."

HEH.

The Dinocrat with an interesting segment of the Thanksgiving edition of CBC radio news which he happened  to listen to:

"What happened next was incredible. The next thing on the radio was apparently a translation of Saddam Hussein, rehearsing his defense strategy for his upcoming trial, on a leading New Media program. We have excerpted what we believe is an of what he said. It’s a little scary, since it sounds to us like an excellent defense strategy, basically following the line of criticism of Bush and the Iraq War as wrong and illegitimate as outlined by Congressional Democrats" [Excerpt follows]

I took out the Dinocrat link to Rush Limbaugh, who claims to have the acurate transcript as I have not been able to either read or verify it, which immediately tells me that our young Dinocrat is having us all on. Still makes a laughable read though.

From Charlie Johnson @ Little Green Footbals via The Discerning Texan talking about the Iranian President (whom I feature here):

"So what are we to make of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s actions over the past 5 months? Here’s a partial list of what he has said and what he has done since the election:

* Before even taking office, he said the Islam will conquer the world: “Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world,” he said. “The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world.”

* Denied taking part in the takeover of the US embassy in 1979 despite bragging about his involvement on his website.

* Restarted the Iranian nuclear program while negotiating with the EU to curb Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

* Reiterated his belief that “Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world.”

* Continued to support the terrorists killing our troops in Iraq.

* Vowed not to stop the conversion of uranium into bomb-grade material no matter what the Europeans and Americans did.

* Promised to share nuclear technology wit the rest of the Islamic world.

* Promised to to abandon co-operation on nuclear matters if his country was threatened with penalties due to its work on making a nuclear bomb.
At an anti-Zionist conference, he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

* Defended those remarks and engineered massive protests in support of them.

* Offered a solution to Iran’s stock market crisis by saying that “if we were permitted to hang two or three persons, the problems with the stock exchange would be solved for ever.”

* Continued to purge perceived moderates from his government, especially in the foreign service.

* Has now closed all nuclear sites to UN inspections."

A round up of the comments on the main story from the rest of the Blogosphere. Thank you to The Right Nation and Memeorandum: 

The Corner, Powerline, Michelle Malkin California Conservative Balloon Juice, The Sundries Shack, Mudville Gazette, Gina Cobb, Ex-Donkey Blog, Camp Katrina, A Blog For All, RantingProfs, YARGB, Dinocrat, Paxalles, Rhymes with Right, The Discerning Texan, JoshuaPundit, Rants, The Strata-Sphere, Countercolumn, Unclaimed Territory, LyfLines, PC Free ZoneGazette, RightWing Nation.

LATEST UPDATE ON IRAQ AND AL QAEDA ISSUE: Joe Binden, nicknamed by me 'The Manchurian Senator', writes an op-ed for Washington Post on the subject of 'when will the troops come home, and the favorite topic of The Pullout Timetable'.

Hugh Hewitt comments. Read the entire excellent article, which slam dunks 'Talkin' Ted Koppel' calling him a con man, and listing some powerful questions a serious interviewer such as himself would have posed:

"So the "Bush lied-people died" refrain is a canard?

You knew Saddam had no connection to al Qaeda? Based on conversations with intelligence sources? What did they say? How could they know?

Did you say anything on air at the time since you were convinced?

Why didn't you say something at the time?

Even if you believed that at the time, since you didn't say a peep, isn't it, well, disgraceful to posture this way as you go out the door?

Why use the construction "Bush's son?" Do you be refer to "Clinton's wife" when Senator Clinton adopts a policy different from President Clinton's?

"I couldn't see that there was any urgency." Do you think terrorists would use WMD against the United States if they obtained them? If you thought there had been a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, would that have provided the urgency?"

Ed Morrissey @ Captain's Quarters weighs in with a brilliant article:

"Senator Joe Biden writes an op-ed for today's Washington Post that gets the entire war on terror fundamentally wrong -- and demonstrates why the Democrats have entirely failed to provide any leadership on Iraq and the wider war. Along the way, Biden slices off half-truths out of context to argue for the worst possible spin on Iraq, and ignores the tremendous progress that has been made by Coalition forces in developing Iraq into a democracy.
[...]
Iraq provides a single theater in a global war, one in which we must succeed if we are to reduce the Islamist threat from a state-sponsored military wing to impoverished rock-tossers living in caves as the world passes them by towards greater freedom and prosperity. If Biden and the Democrats have a better plan for accomplishing that, we'd be glad to hear it. It won't happen with demands for exit timetables and collapsing the hard-won American gains in the Middle East with defeatism and withdrawal."

The Heretik coming in from the left makes this comment in response:

"Who Attacks Biden today may not realize who they attack is the Bush of tomorrow." Then smartly observes: "Biden is just doing what is inevitable for a Democrat who follows polls to plot positions  . . .  run for president."

FURTHER UPDATE: Jay @ Wizbang weighs in on Dafydd's great article 'The Afghanistan Effect, and my dear friend @ Media Lies summs it up beautifully:

"Dafydd, keying off John's analysis, discusses the "Afghanistan effect" and opines that, as our troops return from the war and tell family, friends and neighbors the truth about Iraq, the destruction of the old media's hegemony will be a fait accompli."

Don't miss reading Dafydd Ab Hugh's and John Hinderaker's article limked sbove. The The Washington Times piece he is discussing in case you would like to check it out is here.

And finally That Old Black Magic has us in a spin: "U.S. Starts Laying Groundwork for Significant Troop Pullout From Iraq"

Comments

[Wes Ponder]

Gotta check this out:
Lapel Flags

[jeff stiles]

Obviously, our two Joe-blows only have time to cut-and-paste links to doubtful websites. How sad.

[Joseph Marshall]

Well Jeff, I think I just told you where I "got this crap". The site is called GlobalSecurity.org, the address is in my last post, and to go there you copy and paste it into the address box of your browser and then press the button marked "Go".

[jeff stiles]

"The army that George W. Bush started with was designed to fight two quick wars, winning them with overwhelming force, at the same time. He did this--one was in Afghanistan, one in Iraq."

Baloney, Joe, Where do you get this crap?!

[jess1dering]

Joseph Marshall, Would you crunch the numbers again, but this time figure in all of the branches of the United States Military, then let us know how things look. Old Joe Biden and you must have an awful lot of time on your hands if you're able to to undertake such comprehensive analysis that you feel capable of criticising the military advisors to the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. Old Joe must be something else. After all, this nations military advisors have devoted their lives to the study of matters such as these. I am no expert , but I think I'll trust them, AND unlike you, I believe that the irresponsibility of the MSM in reporting slanted views at best and absolute lies at worst is treasonous, especially in time of war. I think that your little invite to go elsewhere for the news is like saying, ' so you don't like it that they're poisioning the water, go to a different faucet and drink.' Thanks for the suggestion , but no thanks. I think the greater service is to stop the poison from entering the system. Lies are poison. Deliberately misleading the public through slick editing, tricky adjective interjection and subtle manipulation of words is poison. Labeling certain groups of people and holding them out as objects of scorn, as though their convictions render them unworthy of the right to try to impact the political realities of their country is poison. I believe that is the right of every citizen of the United States. I applaud anyone who fights against lies BECAUSE I believe that truth is an eternal value. I believe that it is worth infinitely more than many people today realize.

[AriadneW]

AriadneInWonderland

Hey Spirit, my system has a conflict. I have no access to email temporarily. Here are the lyric pages I mentioned. See the difference from your example? Give me some time to correct the email but sooner or later I'll read whatever you have sent.

http://www.twin-music.com/azlyrics/s_file/seger/town/still.html

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob-seger/21911.html

[Joseph Marshall]

JS

You may call what we are doing in Iraq what you like. My point was that we do not have enough people there to do it effectively. The insurgency has not been stopped, the insurgency has not even been slowed down.

This has relatively little to do with soldier morale, however high it is among your friends, it has everything to do with military capacity.

The total size of our army has not increased materially in many years. It has about 350,000 persons deployed abroad in all theaters. The actual combat deployment of the Army and ANG units abroad [Iraq & elsewhere] is three times the level of pre-9/11--approximately 16 brigades [12 Army, 4 ANG] now as opposed to five then. Their total numbers in Iraq are now about 150,000.

All of these deployed forces require extensive non-Iraq, but foreign based, logistical support for combat, so the actual personnel commitment involved in Iraq is more than the boots which happen to be there on the ground now. These personnel are separate from the combat brigades.

Each of the 12 combat brigades abroad can only stay in the field 12 months. After that time their equipment, particularly in harsh desert conditions like Iraq, deteriorates enough to make real inroads on their ability to perform the mission.

It also takes 12 months to get a division that has been rotated out of combat retrained and re-equipped for further deployment--so at any given time about 12 more combat brigades are at home retooling. These are also essentially are committed to the overseas combat rotation.

That brings the Army total up to 24 combat divisions actually committed to the rotation.

Further, the rotation in and out has to be phased systematicly, a few brigades at a time, so approximately another 12 combat brigades have to be fully ready to deploy through the rotation. That makes 36 brigades tied up abroad in one fashion or another.

There are 37 [!] total combat brigades in the entire Army.

The figures above can be fudged a little bit by the Puzzle Palace Wonks--planning drawdowns here and build ups there, adding a month to the rotations abroad, subtracting a month from the retooling, ect. But there really isn't that much wiggle room with a combat commitment of 12 brigades out of 37, abroad.

Our Army is running flat out. It has been running flat out for 3 years. No institution, no matter how much money is flushed through it, can continue this indefinitely.

Not to mention the fact that there is no longer any margin for another war anywhere else.

The army that George W. Bush started with was designed to fight two quick wars, winning them with overwhelming force, at the same time. He did this--one was in Afghanistan, one in Iraq.

But it was not designed to do what it is now doing, and it is under tremendous strain.

If you want facts, rather than war stories, you can find them here:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/global-deployments.htm

[spiritofecstasy]

BREAKING via Memorandum.com/ via The Washington Post:

"Senator Ted Kennedy breaks into Senate Floor with new information from Iraq. The Mass. Senator said he has definitive proof that a detainee in Iraq, who confessed to putting bombs in childrens' toys and targetting civilians as a member of Baathist Al-qaeda, broke a finger-nail during questioning by US Coalition Troops."

"Kennedy called for an immediate Troop Withdrawal from Iraq, the Impeachment of the President, the pro tempore Presidency of Howard Dean and the declaration that the last Presidential Election be invalidated."

"The entire transcript of the Senator's remarks, 487,000 words, will be available shortly at Dan Rather's website as hosted by Mary Mapes while Rather also recovers from a broken finger nail."

Illogictimes.com/

"The Senator, according to anonymous sources, also raised the issue of civilian casualties in Iraq but quickly retracted the statment after the Logictimes.com blog reported that such claims were demonstrably provable as false."

Logictimes.com/

[jeff stiles]

"The effective military readiness of our all volunteer military is slowly frilling away under the pressure of trying to do a job, military occupation, which it was never designed to do."

Baloney, Joseph. Our soldiers are not doing a "military occupation" of Iraq -- they are simply helping back up the brand-new Iraqi army as a new democratic government is established.

The FACT is, the training our troops is receiving in Iraq is so much better than their once-a-weekend training back home that they will now be totally prepared for anything they might ever face State-side. Every National Guard and Navy soldier I talked to this past weekend (who had returned for Thanksgiving break) was anxious to get back in the fight, and totally optimistic about their goals.

The only said par was, I found myself apologizing to them for all the wimps back here who are calling for their return before their mission is completed.

[Joseph Marshall]

Okay, let's take it in order:

"Please don't tell me that you truly believe that Saddam was not cooking up a cocktail storm over there."

Frankly, and in all honesty, from the very first moment the US troops stepped across the Iraqi border, I was completely convinced that no WMD's would be found. Nor any serious link to Al Queda. Neither of these have been found.

Not only had none been found by the UN before the invasion, not only had Saddam's military and and economic capacity had one half destroyed and the other half strangled rendering him functionally incapable of serious weapons accquisition, but also the reasoning of the people who thought he had WMD's was completely ludicrous.

It went like this: Saddam was a bad man who wanted WMD's. Saddam had WMD's once. Therefore Saddam must obviously have them again, no matter what the circumstances.

I frankly don't give two hoots who bought into this logic, George Tenant, Bill Clinton, George Bush,Tony Blair, whomever. It was flawed logic on the face of it.

Now as to the good Captain:

"We need to cut off the transit lines across the Middle East for Islamist terrorists, and Baghdad used to provide a highly convenient crossroad for such traffic."

This is simply Looney Toons. The Captain appears not to have heard of commerical airline flights and thinks that terrorists have to travel like Lawrence of Arabia.

We are not talking about the movement of armies, we are talking about small groups of men and women who look just like everybody else. If they have secure papers (real or false) nothing in the world will prevent them from flying in and out of Bagdhad any time they choose no matter what the government of Iraq is like.

"We need to isolate terrorist-sponsoring nations such as Syria and Iran and force them to withdraw back inside their own borders."

I will grant the Captain that we have solved the relatively minor problem of Syrian presence in Lebanon. But not only is Iran already confined within its own borders, the problem with Iran is what they are doing behind those borders: acquiring nuclear weapons.

If they do acquire them, it will be for one reason and one reason only: we have hamstrung our own military threat to Terhan by our pointless adventure in Iraq.

And if they succeed in going nuclear, a "state haven for Islamic terrorists" will be a permanent fixture of the Middle East for the forseeable future.

"Nations do not deploy their troops in order to engage in timelines for their return. They send their men (and women) abroad to tackle specific missions, and the only timetable that matters is victory."

At the moment we do not have victory. We do not have anything near victory. We have stalemate. We have this because we have too few troop to control the country.

The insurgents can obtain munitions at will from across the borders and can simply move elsewhere when we mount our overblown and completely telegraphed "operations" against them. They can see us coming and they don't have to stay there. That's why the bombings haven't decreased one jot. And that's also why they are not likely to decrease no matter how democratic the government of Iraq gets.

Finally, the good Captain misses the most salient point of the Biden article:

"That is because we cannot sustain 150,000 Americans in Iraq without extending deployment times, sending soldiers on fourth and fifth tours, or mobilizing the National Guard."

The effective military readiness of our all volunteer military is slowly frilling away under the pressure of trying to do a job, military occupation, which it was never designed to do.

The most dunderheaded thing about my good conservative friends on this issue is their refusal to face this fact. And this is the reason that neither the Captain nor you will go anywhere near the McCain proposal. If you hide from the fact that there is a problem, you don't have to face the unpleasant aspects of the solution.

[Alexandra]

Al,

It would be incredible if you could find it. I am not so familiar with 'Slow Joe's written word, but if it so it would be typical that he couldn't find someone better to copy verbatum. Ad nauseam as another Latin expression comes to mind.

[Alexandra]

Jo,

"They're busy helping to hone bomb making skills in Bagdhad. Sorry."

Please don't tell me that you truly believe that Saddam was not cooking up a cocktail storm over there. Come on let's set the partisanship aside and get real on this issue. Even Clinton knew it. Why now do you seriously think that he was unfairly treated, please.

"And, of course, the people who are scheming and planning new outrages are actually in places like Saudi, Iran, eastern Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia and so on."

You forgot the heart of England, France, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, not to forget your next door neighbor. But that is the nature of the global war on terror, and is a holy separate issue to the creation of a stable Iraq.

What I really want you to do, having read about your "101st Fighting Keyboardists" is to read Ed Morrissey's article, I quote above, and give me your take. There are some seriously brilliant bloggers out there. His piece is not to be missed, and I am quoting that one as it is the most recent, and quite comprehensive on the issue.

[Al Bee]

I read Bidens op-article and I swear he copped it from someone else. He has the history of borrowing verbatim from others.

[jeff stiles]

Jo: The reason the so-called "101st Fighting Keyboardists" have been so successful at exposing the real news about the war in Iraq (that we are winning the fight, that reconstruction progress is being made, that democracy is coming to a Middle Eastern nation) is that we have our eyes open to see that Islam is truly a religion of violence.

The horrible bombing of a hospital and killing of innocents is yet more proof of that fact.

[Alexandra]

The Heretik,

I am mortally embarassed. I am immediately correcting it.

It seemed so impersonal to simply quote you as The Heretik, so I played a little joke, but I guess it did not go down too well. Sorry. Tim Russert should know who The Heretik is, but I guess information is scarce in the MSM. LOL!!!

I loved your article btw.

[Joseph Marshall]

Well, first of all, we should shut down their fancy new live fire and bomb construction training ground in Iraq.

It is a training ground which we have created by kiting out 158,000 easy targets and leaving the borders of Iraq so porous that explosives and non-Iraqi fighters (who need the practice so they can go to places like London or Amman or maybe even here) can come in by the truckload.

The two alternatives above, Murtha's or McCain's, are about the only way I can see to stop this. And, frankly, I'm actually much more inclined to look at the McCain solution than you might think. I notice also that you don't touch on the McCain solution at all, for all your anti-terrorist ferocity.

This is what comes from refusing to open your eyes to the problem.

I don't see any of the media warriors on the net making any serious effort to even address the issue, which is perfectly plain to anyone with eyes if you stop reading the newspaper to castigate its bias and start reading it for the news.

Then, of course, there is the problem of our own borders, which also leak like a sieve. Why is this such a big deal? Consider the number of hazardous chemical plants which are upwind from major American cities and have no serious security around them at all.

A chemical cloud released by an Oklahoma City sized Ryder Truck bomb would kill thousands. Of course, the lobbyists for the chemical industry think this is just fine, so apparently our Republican government does also. I don't. And the 101st Fighting Keyboardists haven't even thought about it at all.

How do we secure our incredibly long borders? The same way you deal with things like Hurricane Katrina--with the state National Guards. Oh, oops! They're busy helping to hone bomb making skills in Bagdhad. Sorry.

And, of course, the people who are scheming and planning new outrages are actually in places like Saudi, Iran, eastern Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia and so on.

There's a whole band of places they might be that streches from Morroco to the Phillipines. How do we deal with them? Well certainly not by tooling around in Iraq in humvees, waiting for the next car bomb to explode. You need spooks, and plenty of them, and you need a spookhouse that is in good repair.

If you read the news, instead of the newpaper, it is perfectly plain that our own spookhouse is in devasting disarray. The mistakes they made prior to 9/11 have not been addressed in any significant way, and are actually being covered up in such cases as the Able Danger affair, which you can find out about by reading the news instead of the newspaper. Or watching the news, instead of watching the Cable News Network. Try Lou Dobbs, if your interested.

Moreover,the morale of the people doing the work in the spookhouse has been completely undermined by the very clear standard that if the policymakers don't like the message you bring, even if it is true, they are likely to destroy your career as a messenger.

This is the sort of thing you can read about in the news. This is the sort of thing that is actually material to "fighting terrorism". And this is the sort of thing you almost never see on the webpages or the comments of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists.

It's a real shame. The web is so great an opportunity to air out the relevant public issues and actually digest the meaning of the news that we all lose out with these distractions of how this paper or that paper covers a story.

[The Heretik]

You clearly have both a graceful way with both the word and the image. Such style is always appreciated in the more mordant moments of this artless age. But about this Tim Russert aka The Heretik?

Who is this Tim Russert fellow? And how is he aka The Heretik? The last I heard this Heretik was aka The Nobody. But I could be misinformed.

[Huan]

Just one more thing. In case anyone ever wonders who the terrorists are killing for, they are killing innocent civilians to appeal to those who are willing to cut and run. If the terrorists we really fighting for a military victory, they would go against the occupation troops. They are not now are they? They cannot force a military retreat so they are seeking a political retreat from Iraq. Those that are resolute the terrorists know they cannot sway. They seek to sway those squeemish and weak in resolve. So if you think we should retreat from Iraq, be comforted in knowing that the continued deaths of innocents are meant for your considerations.

[Huan]

JM,

It really isn't about filtering the news. None would want the bad news not to be reported. We are unhappy though that only the bad news is reported, and reported with a bias. Why not ignore it and seek agreeing news? Because it is not about agreable but about information. It is crucial that in a free democracy that the citizens are informed. Only then can the people make the system work. The mainstream media has been derelict in this regard. Instead of doing its role and doing its role well, that is informing the public at large with all aspects of the news, the mainstream media has chosen instead of being the news, directing the news, and in due course sway public opinion. Not to say news sources should not have opinion, but they should keep it to the opinion section rather than permeate the news with bias.

I think it is incredibly naive and uneducated to use body counts as any sort of measure of progress. It reflect the misconception that war is about killing rather than about resolving the political crisis, and the people involved. When was the last time you read that the terrorists have carried out military actions against the occupation forces? That the terrorists are targetting civilians speak volumes as to the politics they espouse. And the intended audience for their voice are people like you who goes squeemish as the going gets tough. And again, by propagating the voice of the terrorists, the mainstream media is either willingly or unwittingly abetting the terrorists.

So in the end, when the mainstream media continue to espouse a political ideation more and more in line with the terrorists goals, then they will have to be addressed. Because war is not about killing but about achieving a political goal, a goal being degraded by the mainstream media, the mainstream media must be corrected.

Once the mainstream media served as watchmen in our society.
Now we must all watch the watchmen.

[Alexandra]

Jo,

You got a little stuck on the "The Associated Press Deficit Disorder". As far as that's concerned you and I have had a running on that subject before on the darling Anchoress site.

My war with the MSM is not going to stop, most of all because there are readers out there who need to know about their skullduggery on an ongoing basis, and the war with NYT is just a small part of it.

The story today is not about that. It is about the war against al-Qaeda, which is conspicuously absent from your comment.

I understand your view regarding the Murtha Mantra, it is to be expected. So is your view on the pullout strategy. I am however more interested in your view on how we should handle al-Qaeda. Are you in favor of throwing leaflets at them?

[Joseph Marshall]

I really wonder how long indignation will sustain your efforts, and your cohort's efforts, to micromanage the news business. If you don't like the filter, find one you do like. If you can't find one you do you like, read the wire reports directly. I do. And if the wire reports fail to satisfy you, hop on a plane and go cover it yourself.

I myself prefer macromanagement. If a news source does not cover what I want to know, I find another one that does. But I can see why my micromanaging friends would not like it--they would then have to confront the implications of the news rather than heaping vituperation on the news source. And the implications of the news are not very reassuring.

If you look at the bombings, all the bombings, together, you have to actually confront the question of whether what we are doing in Iraq is working. It isn't.

It is both much more entertaining [and less disturbing] to get all in a huff about whether a major newspaper actually reported the GI candy distribution.

The most compelling thing about the stories of car bombings, when looked at globally, is the fact that the car bombings haven't stopped. They haven't even slowed down. There's a new one in the news this morning.

After years of tooling around destroying cities [Bagdhad with Shock and Awe bombs, Fallujah with white phosphorous, ect. ect.] and ruining the lives of all the people who live in them and not just "the terrorists", the bombings haven't even slowed down.

Now a reflective man might think that if you destroy the lives of whole cities worth of people, who weren't your enemies before, they might just become your enemies, then. An occasional Hershey Bar distribution is not going to materially change this.

Nor, say, is Cindy Sheehan camping out in Crawford, Texas.

Nor is the coverage of news, whether or not it puts our troops "in a good light" or "in a bad light". It is a matter far beyond fiddling with the lights.

We have just enough troops in Iraq to maintain a stalemate with the insurgency and nowhere near enough troops to suppress it.

Both John McCain and John Murtha have made sensible suggestions about this: either finally send in enough troops to actually occupy Iraq, rather than merely visiting it to distribute some ordinance or some candy bars, or withdraw the troops and put them to work doing something more productive.

Unfortunately, both of those suggestions come with long term costs that we may not like and are not willing to face. It's much better, really, to pretend that these alternatives aren't there, that all us roughshot patriots of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists "have a war to fight".

Except, of course, our Dick Cheney's of the future who still have "other priorities".

You have a war to fight, all right, but it's a war with the Copy Editor of the New York Times over a few pieces of candy.