The NYT's 'Dead Man Walking' (UPDATED)

 

UPDATE: Always good to know that we do make a difference after all. The NYT changes its caption and issues a correction.

Cross posted @ NewsBusters

What is it about the inimitable paper of disrepute, the mighty New York Times, that makes it constitutionally unable to tell the truth?

In these troubled times of rabid Pallywood, the NYT publishes what appears to be a staged photograph of a 'Dead Man Walking' in Tyre, Lebanon. The entire photo essay with audio, here. (note the caption has now been changed, see update above)

Have the left become so out of touch with reality in this war on terror that their unwarranted superciliousness and condescension overrides the most basic principals of journalism? Intentionally or not, they have become the driving force behind the propaganda machine of the mullahcracy of Iran in the West.

At this crucial time in history, when the world is at the brink of war with Islamofascism, nothing so illustrates the left's nihilism as does its stand against Israel and its willingness to lap up the incessant anti-Semitic propaganda spewed out by the international MSM. Die Welt's Blog wraps it up with a must read

Kofi Annan, having put his foot in it by joining the instant chorus of condemnation that followed the revelation of the deaths at Qana, is now causing pundits all sorts of metaphorical problems by painting himself into a corner.

Amid the carnage of Lebanon it seems incredible that people should feel the need to highlight one death as somehow more poignant, terrible or lamentable than another. But they do.

Children, for example. Apparently the death of a child weighs heavier than the death of an adult. Or a basement full of children. Apparently thirty deaths is worse than twenty, than ten, or five, or one.

Realising that this is the sort of thing that appeals to the media in the West, and galvanises public opinion, the temptation to exaggerate and fabricate has become irresistible.

Actually, there's nothing new about this. Propaganda and misinformation are time-honoured tools of war.

Propagandists are a macabre breed. The stuff they imagine people do to each other beggars belief. It's when they go into the anatomical detail that you really have to watch out you don't get sucked into their perverse world.

But a quick-witted bystander can have just as much impact by, for example, scattering a few baby clothes about a bombsite before the press arrives. Palestinians learned how to manipulate the press long ago. Not that they haven't been caught out though: young Mohammed al-Dura who was killed at the start of the second Intifada turned out to have been shot by a Palestinian gunman; the hundreds of civilian dead at Jenin were in fact around fifty hardened guerilla fighters; the family on the beach at Gaza were killed by a Hamas bomb.

Reuters has just withdrawn all the photos submitted by their man in Beirut, who had started to use a little artistic license in his reporting. And then there's Qana, where a Hizballah minder orchestrated a parade of dead infants gathered from the Tyre morgue. His tears as he carried body after body, again and again, were I hope tears of shame and remorse.

Yesterday another man on the verge of tears, Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, announced another massacre of forty people, only to retract his story soon after. Fortunately only one man was killed.

That's good isn't it? The death toll fell from forty to one.

Of course. But with all these allegations of the enemy's barbarity, it's the first story out that counts. Who remembers the corrected version? Who cares about evidence and testimony? Or rational explanations and deductions? Horror stories win every time.

But just so you know: the ethics is in the action. On a scale of moral culpability a death resulting from a deliberate conspiracy weighs heavier than a death caused by accident - for the perpetrator, not the victim that is.

This is what places terrorists beyond the pale: they deliberately target civilians. It's what Hizballah is doing right now. And it's not what Israel is doing.

Comments

[Crusader.NoRegrets.]

GD, you are peddling lies, lies and more damned lies. I guess that makes you a liar?

(1) Saddam was repreatedly firing at UN air patrols over his north. Weren't UN aircraft being damaged in the process, and weren't one or two actually shot down? A direct violation of his "parole".

(2) Saddam had kicked out the last of the weapons inspection teams by late 1998. A direct violation of his parole.

(3) The sanctions were being universally claimed to have "killed 500 000 Iraqi kids", and your favourite Secretary of State couldn't keep her damned mouth shut when some wingbat spat that (since thoroughly-discredited) number at her. She never did learn when to shut up by the way, and your admiration for her incompetence makes me believe that you are, in fact, Al Gore.

(4) Those very same sanctions were being systematically undermined by the French, Russians and Germans because they were "bad for European business" in particular, Total-Fina-Elf. And chemical weapons agents were being sold to Saddam, a direct violation of his parole.

So sorry, your lies notwithstanding, Saddam was not contained, he was re-emerging. And you should know better than to listen to the incoherent babblings of Arab government officials.

Now sod off!
Al...

[Ghost Dansing]

The Clinton administration was "banging" the WMD drum within a wholly different context... post-Gulf War UN sanctions and UN Inspections... not imminent-threat-requiring-preemptive invasion. Saddam was not in control of two-thirds of his country because US and UK military actions had coninued since the Gulf War in the North and South. Regime change was a long-term goal. Saddam was in a box.

Check out what Colin Powell (Secretary of State) and Condoleeza Rice (National Security Advisor) were saying about Iraq in 2001. Also check out what Paul Pilar says about this Republican administration's use of intelligence...all available on the internet.

Clinton knew he didn't have a case to invade Iraq...and he was already striking at al qaeda in Afghanistan (of course the Republicans were saying that was because of Monika).

Republicans want to paint Democrats as weak on defense, and chilly to military operations...yet Albright had to fight tooth-and-nail with the Republican-dominated Congress to intervene against genocide in the Balkans...in the heart of Europe.

The Republicans are big talkers...all hat, no cattle...and while big spenders on defense, it is money that largely goes to pork-barrel high profit projects like "star wars" that cost a lot and deliver little in terms of real conventional military capability.

The Republican Party is largely a product of its own propaganda and mythology...the ONLY thing they ever achieve in any arena is higher corporate profits at the expense of taxpayers.

24 February 2001 during Powell's visit to Cairo, Egypt the Secretary of State said:

"We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq..."

15 May 2001, Powell testified before the Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Several kind readers with access to Lexis-Nexis sent the full transcript of the questions-and-answers portion of Powell's testimony. Here's the relevant extract:

"Secretary Powell: The sanctions, as they are called, have succeeded over the last 10 years, not in deterring him from moving in that direction, but from actually being able to move in that direction. The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and nuclear -- I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There's no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago."

"So containment, using this arms control sanctions regime, I think has been reasonably successful. We have not been able to get the inspectors back in, though, to verify that, and we have not been able to get the inspectors in to pull up anything that might be left there. So we have to continue to view this regime with the greatest suspicion, attribute to them the most negative motives, which is quite well-deserved with this particular regime, and roll the sanctions over, and roll them over in a way where the arms control sanctions really go after their intended targets -- weapons of mass destruction -- and not go after civilian goods or civilian commodities that we really shouldn't be going after, just let that go to the Iraqi people. That wasn't the purpose of the oil-for-food program. And by reconfiguring them in that way, I think we can gain support for this regime once again."

But Powell wasn't the only senior administration official telling the truth before the truth became highly inconvenient. On 29 July 2001, Condoleezza Rice appeared on CNN Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer..

King asks her about the sanctions against Iraq. She replies:

"But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

King doesn't think to ask Rice, if Hussein hasn't been getting arms and his forces weren't rebuilt after the 1991 Gulf War, why Bush considers him a threat.

And...oh by the way, what was the new Vice President, Dick Cheney doing in 2001?

"An influential energy task force headed by Vice President Cheney has broached the possibility of lifting some economic sanctions against Iran, Libya and Iraq as part of a plan to increase America's oil supply. According to a draft of the task force report, the United States should review the sanctions against the three countries because of the importance of their oil production to meeting domestic and global energy needs."

"A cross-section of the energy industry, including oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and production services companies such as Halliburton, have been pressing Congress and administration policy-makers under Bush and former president Bill Clinton to give them access to Libya, Iran and Iraq. Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton before Bush tapped him to be his running mate last year."

[George Berryman]

You have no idea what Kerry or Gore would have done...and I'll bet you anything that after the twin towers, they would have gone after al qaeda in afghanistan, because it was the logical thing to do...and nobody ever faulted dubya for going there.

I am not so sure. I've always been of the mind that had Gore actually won in 2000 we'd still be hitting Afghanistan with some tough sanctions.

No, I mean it. Really tough.

They probably wouldn't have selected Iraq as the next most important effort...because it wasn't...

And yet from 1996 (a full term before George W. Bush even won the 2000 election) through 2002, Democrats couldn't bang the WMD/Regime Change drum loud enough - including Gore back when he was Vice President. Hell, it was the Clinton Administration that made Regime Change official U.S. policy in Iraq. To say that a Democratic administration would not have gone into Iraq after Afghanistan is completely disingenuous since the Democrats were the ones who'd been setting the stage for an Iraqi invasion since before Bush was elected in 2000.

[Ghost Dansing]

Oh come on Kenny...Dubya is remarkably incompetent and you know it. And here you guys are talk'n all tough and stuff, and Dubya is out of juice 'cause he went charging off in the wrong direction...

So...you want America to back Israel in their great struggle against the hisballa, syria and iran...great...you got it. That and $1.25 will get you a cup of coffee in most restaurants. This Republican administration has nothing to offer militarily or diplomatically to the entire affair.

You have no idea what Kerry or Gore would have done...and I'll bet you anything that after the twin towers, they would have gone after al qaeda in afghanistan, because it was the logical thing to do...and nobody ever faulted dubya for going there.

They probably wouldn't have selected Iraq as the next most important effort...because it wasn't...and if they did go for Iraq, the would have been using good plans from General Zinni and Shinseki with the right amount of troops and proper objectives...instead of shaping the numbers and requirements to sell the war, and only worrying about taking Baghdad...which it seems is still in the hands of the enemy after three or so years.

Also, mixing the conditions of various Presidents in disingenuous...Dubya can be judged throughly incompetent along any dimension, against most any measure given the circumstances that had at hand...domestic or foreign policy...the guy is a bust, and it isn't just him...he is the logical product of the ideological inbreeding that is modern Republicanism...they don't like a government that does anything but ensure profits for corporations, and that is pretty much what dubya and his fellow Republicans bring to the table...nothing...brain-dead ideologues.

[Kenny Pierce]

Here's a question that it's just occurred to me I've never heard you answer:

Do you think the Democrats are as incompetent as the Republicans?

God knows I think George Bush is incompetent in a great many ways, several of them well documented in my comments here at ATB. But as I said not long ago, every time I get really furious with Dubya, I remind myself that the alternative to the drama we've seen play out under Dubya's watch, would have been a tale in which Al Gore or John Kerry was America's point man -- and, in the immortal words of Spike, that would be a "story that would make your balls shrink to the size of raisins." That Bush has been less than up to the task, is something with which I agree, sometimes emphatically. That any human being short of one of history's giants -- another Washington or Lincoln or Churchill -- would be fully up to the task, is I think pretty debatable; it's an all but superhuman task in my opinion. That anybody who in the past five elections has had the slightest hope of becoming President, would be up to the task, is I think pretty much certainly out of court. And that anybody the Democratic Party can even imagine fielding as a Presidential candidate now that they've cannibalized Lieberman would be anything but a catastrophe...hoo boy, I shudder at the thought.

So, Ghost: who, in your opinion, would have been a real success where Bush, and Clinton before him, and Bush the Wimpy Democrat Elder, and Reagan, and Carter, all failed, and most of them worse than has Dubya? Or is your disproportionate fury with Bush just a matter of focussing on the guy who's currently in charge, and did you feel the same anger over Clinton's incompetence?

[Ghost Dansing]

In politics, left-wing, the political left or simply the left are terms that refer to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of, to varying extents, socialism, anarchism, communism, social democracy, progressivism, American liberalism or social liberalism, and defined in contradistinction to its polar opposite, the right.

In politics, right-wing, the political right or simply the right, are terms that refer to the segment of the political spectrum often associated with any of several strains of conservatism, the religious right, and areas of classical liberalism, or simply the opposite of left-wing politics.

The terms originate from the French Revolution, when liberal deputies from the Third Estate generally sat to the left of the president's chair, a habit which began in the Estates General of 1789. The nobility, members of the Second Estate, generally sat to the right. In the successive legislative assemblies, monarchists who supported the Ancien Régime were commonly referred to as rightists because they sat on the right side. It is still the tradition in the French Assemblée Nationale for the representatives to be seated left-to-right (relative to the Assemblée president) according to their political alignment.

As these original references became obsolete, the meaning of the terms have changed, and "the left" is now used to denote a broad variety of political philosophies and principles. In contemporary Western political discourse, the term is most often used to describe forms of socialism, social democracy, or, in the sense in which the term is understood in the United States, liberalism.

American liberalism—that is, liberalism in the United States of America—is a broad political and philosophical mindset, favoring individual liberty, and opposing restrictions on liberty, whether they come from established religion, from government regulation, from the existing class structure, or from multi-national corporations.

The term liberalism in America today most often refers to Modern American liberalism, a political current that reached its high-water marks with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. It is a form of social liberalism, combining support for government social programs, progressive taxation, and moderate Keynesianism with a broad concept of rights, which sometimes include a right to education and health care. However, this is by no means the only contemporary American political current that draws heavily on the liberal tradition. Libertarianism is rooted in what many libertarians call classical liberalism, support for a laissez-faire economic policy, minarchism, an emphasis on equality of process in contrast to social liberalism's concern with equality of outcomes, and a concept of rights that strongly favors property rights and rejects claims of rights that impose positive obligations on others.

Both of these currents, and many other currents in American politics, incorporate cultural liberalism: the freedom of the individual from the tyranny of the majority, especially in matters of religion and family. Nearly all significant American political ideologies support political liberalism: popular sovereignty, democracy, and the rule of law.

The United States was founded on classical liberal republican principles. The United States Declaration of Independence speaks of "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and that government may exist only with the "consent of the governed"; the Preamble to the Constitution enumerates among its purposes to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity"; the Bill of Rights contains numerous measures guaranteeing individual freedom, both from the authority of the state and from the tyranny of the majority; and the Reconstruction Amendments after the Civil War freed the slaves and (at least in principle) extended to them and to their descendants the same rights as other Americans.

Point number one...if you use the term "left" or "right" you will have to define exactly what you are talking about...because they are meaningless. A "communist" is not a "socialist (democratic or otherwise) and is not a "liberal".

Point number two...if your interpretation of "the left" is "liberalism", you still don't know what you're talking about, and if you are against liberalism, you are trully un-American in a way that is so profound that you probably don't understand.

So when one says "the left", is one referring to communists?

Karl Marx held that society could not be transformed from the capitalist mode of production to the communist mode of production all at once, but required a state transitional period which Marx described as the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. The communist society Marx envisioned emerging from capitalism has never been implemented, and it remains theoretical; Marx in fact commented very little on what Communist society would actually look like. However, the term "Communism," especially when the word is capitalized, is often used to refer to the political and economic regimes under communist parties which claimed to embody the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Now "the left" can be communist, but communism is categorically not liberal in any governmental manifestations. And "the right" can be fascist, but fascism is not liberal in any of its governmental manifestations. And both communism and fascism denied the viablity of liberalism as a political philosophy.

The only aspect of the American governmental structure that is eidetic is its inherent liberalism, in both political philosophy and governmental structure...

Since modern Republicanism also decries liberalism (often referred to as "the left") it aspires to anti-American modalities more similar to those of the communist and fascist. While dissembling behind superpatriotism it is in fact quite the subversive phenomenon.

In as much as modern Republicanism tends toward fascist modalities, it can in some identifiable sense be referred to as "the right" and be non-liberal.

However, wholesale reference to liberalism as "the left" makes little sense...liberalism itself being a philosphy of moderating process as opposed to a manifestation of any absolutist political philosopy.

You may be "the right"...but I am not "the left". We may, however, be at odds for reasons you do not comprehend.

And Kenny...it is easy for Republicans to be "seen as failing" when they ARE failing. It is not an illusion...it is a breathtaking display of incompetence from a political party that has been at its zenith in America for over a decade.

[Kenny Pierce]

Crusader,

[laughing] No, no, our Ghost is sui generis.

Liquid, the people you describe as "hating America and wanting to destroy her," do not of course see themselves that way. They see themselves as hating Republicans -- whom they will argue ought to be hated -- and as wanting to see the Republican Party destroyed -- as they believe it should be.

But of course that does mean that when Republicans are in control then it is very important that the Republicans be seen to fail, even though that means ipso facto that America must fail in whatever she tries to do as long as Republicans are in charge.

[Crusader.NoRegrets.]

Come on now, GD (or are you Al Gore?)

I thought you WERE the left.

[Ghost Dansing]

"Have the left become so out of touch with reality in this war on terror that their unwarranted superciliousness and condescension overrides the most basic principals of journalism? Intentionally or not, they have become the driving force behind the propaganda machine of the mullahcracy of Iran in the West."

Wow...I'm sure glad I'm not "the left"...they sound pretty messed up...and powerful too! "THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE OF THE MULLAHCRACY OF IRAN IN THE WEST"...

I'm gonna go find "the left" and tell them to change their caption right away!

[David]

"Have the left become so out of touch with reality in this war on terror that their unwarranted superciliousness and condescension overrides the most basic principals of journalism?"

Short answer: no. As the NYT phony "correction" (yeh, I read it and posted on it) demonstrates, they KNOW what's right but just choose to repeatedly lie... in ways that are as plausibly deniable as they can manage.

The entire pose—you rightly note the hat firmly clenched between left arm and body by a man posing as either unconscious or dead, posing poorly to any critical eye—is quite obviously intended to decieve.

Any honest editor would have noted that and refused to run the pic. As I said in my post on the NYT "(IM)plausible correction"—

"I can recall once—long ago—sitting on a jury while Cyril Wecht gave us, the jury, a short symposium on examining evidence. I’d need someone of his caliber to examine video footage of the actual event and compare it to actual injuries supposedly sustained before I’d credit the NYT’s NEW story."

Fake, fake, fake from top to bottom, front to back. And that includes the NYT's "correction".

[Alexandra]

UPDATE: Always good to know that we do make a difference after all. The NYT changes its caption and issues a correction.

[liquid]

This doesn't suprise me...
Seems nothing is sacred except martyrdom on their road of obsession to destroy Israel to them, because they think nothing about using their children for opportunity. Remember when Saddam would pull dead children's bodies out of refrigerators and use them over and over each week? Nothing is beneath their tactics and those that think they wouldn't desecrate the dead better take another look on how they value life to understand the perversion of their minds, because Allah over rides everything to them! We have to remember that within Islam it's okay to decieve and to lie if you mentally think you are doing it for Allah's holy war.

I think alot of the MSM is monopolistic of it too because it embellishes a story and helps with their own political agenda. The NYT has made it obvious they are helping our enemies...from providing them with leaked information to helping with deceit in their media propoganda. I think it's great that they are being exposed for it, but will it wake up the "lefties" in the USA? Heck no...they are beyond repair because it's become more fun to play the "they are the enemies to my enemy (Bush)game" Every day we are reminded that inside America we have a force that hates America and wants to destroy her!

Keep up the good work Alexandra and all the other bloggers out there that work so hard to uncover the devious propaganda! Let those that have ears hear it and those that have eyes see it to believe it! Unfortunately, the blind will march on to their own drum. Some things never change!

[Michael van der Galien]

Antimedia, good comment.

The New York Times quite clearly left out that the man on the person was not hurt due to the bombings. Also the way his head was moved, the look on the face of the other man, come.on..

This was a typical case of, as far as I can tell, let the image speak for itself so we can't get caught lying.

[FlooseMan Dave]

Thank you, Gang ...

I knew it was in there somewhere. Thanks for filling in the blanks. Awesome reading.

[North by Northwest]

This WaPo article by Ariel Cohen is another must-read (excerpt below):

"The current war launched by Hezbollah and Hamas -- and their Iranian sponsors -- is not just about Israel. Israel is a convenient target in the neighborhood: a "Small Satan," a proxy and a symbol of the "Great Satan" -- the U.S.

Jihadis openly and repeatedly proclaim to their faithful their double goal: a conversion of the whole Muslim world to their version of Islam, followed by enforced Islamization of the rest of world.
In modern jihadi warfare, the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Israel, are presented as aggressors whenever they are exercise self-defense -- not against a religion, but a radical, totalitarian ideology that wants to enslave the world. In that narrative, terrorists are victims. As George Orwell wrote in" 1984," "War is peace."

The terrorists have coldly played the victim card for years -- sending kids to throw stones at troops, shooting at soldiers while hiding behind the backs of women and children, wildly inflating casualty counts, hoping to provoke air strikes and artillery barrages to inflame the Arab "street" and whip up their version of "jihad." They also use U.N. peacekeepers as human shields -- they did it in 1996 in the same Lebanese village of Qana, and they're doing it this war as well.

After rockets and bombs fall, the terrorists invite gullible reporters for a guided tour. They send out town criers ahead of the press tours who voice rehearsed lines for the people to repeat -- always against America and Israel -- and point fingers.

There is more than the cynical use of grief and blood here. Terrorists are redefining warfare in the 21st century. A picture and a sound-bite are as potent as a bullet or a missile. Bloody imagery and scenes of mourning are exploited to gain the sympathy of the world, manipulate the political environment and gain new recruits. Israel and the West may be more militarily potent, but the terrorists outsmart them, getting media and public opinion on their side. And somehow, the U.S. and Israeli military and government keep missing the point and failing to respond effectively."

[Gang of One]

FlooseManDave,

Check this out:

The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Bui Tin who served on the General Staff of the North Vietnam Army and received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. During the interview Mr. Tin was asked if the American antiwar movement was important to Hanoi's victory. Mr. Tin responded "It was essential to our strategy", referring to the war being fought on two fronts, the Vietnam battlefield and back home in America through the antiwar movement on college campuses and in the city streets. He further stated the North Vietnamese leadership listened to the American evening news broadcasts "to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement." Visits to Hanoi made by persons such as Jane Fonda, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses." Mr. Tin surmised, "America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." Mr. Tin further advised that General Vo Nguyen Giap (Commanding General of the North Vietnam Army) had advised him the 1968 Tet Offensive had been a defeat.

For more info, go here, and here and then read this article.
It's enough to make you scream.

[rich]

From the online edition of that other New York paper:

Todays article from the front by Ralph Peters:

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/watching_the_war_opedcolumnists_ralph_peters.htm

Also, Has anyone noticed the French have turned treacherous again?

http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/france__out_now_worldnews_uri_dan__with_post_wire_services.htm

Chirac fits the definition of an honest politician: once he has been bought, he stays bought. I do not have any idea whether it is legal or illegal, but when the chips are down Chirac always seems to favor the terror states of the middle east.

You know what they say about diplomacy: Nations do not have friends, they have interests. That may be true about Chirac as well: Chirac does not have friends, Chirac has interests.

Ah the wonders of Euroweaseldom!

[Alexandra]

Flooseman,

Our lives do depend on it, and so does our freedom, which right now is interlinked with Israel's.

As bloggers, commenters and readers we can make a difference simply by standing up and voicing our UN-EDITED opinion, a luxury the MSM does not have, and hopefully encourage others to be more upright about voicing theirs.

[FlooseMan Dave]

You would think that, by now, the MSM would have placed itself on its own best behavior because the blogosphere is now intently looking over its shoulder. They are somehow insanely, absent-mindedly thinking that nobody will notice and they will get away with what they are doing to the news being reported in the GWOT. LGF started it. EU Reality is now in the mix. The MSM is the genesis of its own demise as long as the vigilant among us continue their vigilance.

As has been so excellently pointed out time and time again, by the elegant Alexandra as well as the others, this is every bit a propaganda war as it is a war of guns and bullets, of blood and gore. As long as the military continues to guarantee our freedom of speech by protecting us in the dirt, in the trenches and in the bomb craters, we who enjoy the protection they afford us must do our part to drag into the light the hypocrisy of the propaganda war as waged by the on-site stringers in the war zone, usually employed by the enemy, and the MSM that mindlessly uses their material to further their own political agenda on the hard news pages of their products.

So the light is finally starting to shine. We are making a difference. Ours is no less honorable or vital as is those living on the pointed end of the spear. We have been given the charge we must not take lightly or fail to perform. As long as we can live and breathe the fresh clean air of freedom we have a responsibility to win the propaganda war at home while our finest blood shields us on the field of battle.

Many of my generation will remember Viet Nam. Most will not realize that the military performed marvelously there even in the face of a conscripted force and a deplorable public image at home. That public image was held hostage by an essentially unchallenged media that controlled the images and the reportage. What they refused to report was that we won the war in the field of battle. Case in point: the Tet Offensive. When the fighting was over, 50,000 North Vietnamese/Viet Cong were killed to our 5,000. The figures are not exact, but the ratio was 10 to 1, not a bad kill ratio at all. I cannot recall the man's name, but years later after we had left Viet Nam and the North had overrun the South, the commanding general of the Communist forces confessed that he was badly outclassed by the American military. His only hope was to hold on for dear life until the propaganda war back in America could do its inevitable work and compell the removal of the American opposition, something he was incapable of doing.

So the military did its job back then. We at home did not. Perhaps this time we will learn the lesson from history and engage the propaganda war here at home. We are engaged this time and we are starting to make a difference. People like Charles Johnson at LGF, our Alexandra at ATB, Michelle Malkin, Captain's Quarters, Euphoric Reality for starters; all of these deserve and need our continued support so that the blood spilled overseas is not in vain.

Do not be deceived. Islamic terror will not stop until we stop it with force of arms. There is no other option. They know how to play the propaganda game but we are catching on. Quickly. So keep the pressure on. Don't let up. This is not a short 100 yard sprint; this is an ultra-marathon and it isn't ending anytime soon.

Our lives depend on it.

[antimedia]

Kenny, I'm less inclined to excuse the photographer, Tyler Hicks. First of all, the picture is quite obviously staged (the dramatic tilt of the head to the right - the closed eyes.) Secondly, the subject's eyes are closed in an obvious attempt to feign death. Hicks may have used a less revealing caption than what the Times chose, but the Times clearly used the caption that Hicks intended. Hicks is on record admitting his opposition to war and his intent to use pictures to compel people to change their minds, so he's as far from innocent as I am from Boston (thank God!)

[Gang of One]

Kenny,

Your point is of course well taken, and several bloggers have pointed out the same and have retracted their accusations. This in itself is telling -- when the right/conservative folks make an error, they are out front about it and clearly able to let the world know that an error in judgement or practice has been made. It is almost irrelevant that the leftosphere rejoices and points fingers when the right errs ... they miss the significance that humans make mistakes and humans with a conscience admit as much, unlike their own who not only lie and deceive but when called on it either minimize the violation or outright deny there was any. The worst of these people spin all manner of conspiracy theories that blame anyone from BushroveMchitlerburton to the neo-con cabal that pulls the strings of the Masons and Illuminati from their HQ in a synagogue basement in Englewood, New Jersey. I don't know which is worse: the liar or the fool who believes the lies. I am sure things will get much more surreal and ugly before things begin to shift. But it is now quite evident that the pendulum is now swinging the other way.

[Alexandra]

Kenny,

All those links are already in the main text, including the Malkin one with the NPR caption. It's one of the reasons why I openly blame the NYT.

I do however think that whether dead or knocked unconscious the guy is gripping his cap with his left arm very tightly, with his friend posing holding his arm up....umh...NYT has the caption for the photo of the quote from the Mayor of Tyre about the bodies still being buried under the rubble...to me neither the photographer who has been duped with the emotional sob stories, nor the NYT with their caption for effect look too good right now.

[Kenny Pierce]

Whoops, Dave already posted that link.

I don't know why my comments are suddenly showing up twice. Alexandra, please feel free to remove duplicates.

[Kenny Pierce]

Alexandra,

It's important to note that the photographer did not, apparently, claim the dude was dead; his own caption says something about the guy having gotten hurt while doing rescue work. The caption that clearly implies that the dude is dead and that the second guy is in the act of pulling him out of the rubble, was composed by the Times. Tyler Hicks seems to be innocent -- unless, of course, the guy wasn't even hurt.

By far the best round-up and analysis on the massive and widespread fraud that is Reutergate (though Reuters isn't the only media group involved) is here, I think. There's also interesting speculation on the motives Reuters might have for allowing themselves to be disgraced in this fashion.

[Dave]

Seems as if the world is spinning out or control:
Zombie also has a good round up and report:
here