stevo

Members of the TFP that frequent politics like to post news stories from the MSM they feel show what is going on in Iraq and what we are doing. But when right-leaning members like myself refute the stories or at the very least ignore them, we are blind sheeple regurgitating talking points. Well, I would like to tell you a story of why I don't believe the American press, why I put no weight into the stories that roll off the AP and into the NYT. I'll tell you why I think they have an agenda and their stories hold no water.

A friend of mine recently graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD (alongside my brother, might I add). He just received his Master's degree. His course requirements for the degree required him to take several classes overseas. He visited the middle east, egypt, turkey, and several other countries. He studied in Japan. While he was in the middle eastern countries he was suprised at how well he was received by everyone. He was suprised by the support he actually saw for what the US is doing in Iraq from the locals. He was suprised by what he saw on the news. He told me that in middle eastern countries the news includes more good things than bad about what is going on in Iraq. there are nes stories about how much better life is getting for iraqis, about schools opening and hospitals getting equipment and doctors that are helping to save lives. There are news stories that tell about the new iraqi army and police force gaining more strenght and independece. Stories you won't see on american TV or read in american news papers. he had a wonderful time there.

He was required to take a class at the American University in Japan (I apologize for not remembering the exact name, I'll talk to him later today and correct the name). The class was in Hiroshima, and the day he arrived coincided with the 60th anniversary events of the bombing of hiroshima. When he stepped off the plane he was greeted by protesters. not japanese protesters, but american ones. They handed him an anti-war t-shirt and welcomed him to the protest, no knowing he was there to study.

He also met many japanese people. Every one was gracious and respectful of his American Citizenship and did not think less of him because of his military ties.

But the people that suprised him the most were his classmates and the american protesters. Often one in the same, but some protesters were not in his class. His instructor taught them, in a museum dedicated to anti-americanism, that the true freedom fighters were the 9/11 hijackers and that america deserved what it got. (now this instructor is an american professor from an american university, stateside) Now, the class was open for debate, but he was the only one debating agaisnt the instructor. Every other one of his classmates was on the anti-american side. for 2 weeks he countered everything the instructor said, and on more than one occasion he was spit on. literally spit on by his classmates. They called him a baby killer and a blood thirsty tyrant.

What suprised him was that the people he was taught in america that hate him - the victims of "american imperialism" - the middle eastern folks, the japanese - were respectful, polite, and genuinely nice to him, while his fellow countrymen treated him like garbage, spat on him and called him names.

-------------------------------

I here this story and I hear stories like it from other people I know who have been over seas and have been victims of anti-american protests. I hear their first-hand accounts and then I read what the MSM tells us. Which one am I going to believe? Am I going to believe my friends who have seen first hand what we are doing in Iraq and how we are thought of in the middle east, or am I going to believe a story written by a person I've never met, who more than likely does not like bush or the war in iraq? Am I going to believe a friend of mine who I know has no agenda other than just finishing his class and graduating or am I going to believe a journalist, whose agenda I don't know? After hearing what goes on in the news in the middle east and comparing that to the news I see on Comcast channel 40, which should I believe? When my friends come back from over seas and they tell me not to watch the new here because it is wrong, should I tell them they are wrong because thats not what the news says?

I ask of you to not be so beholden to what the NYT says and not be so sure of yourselves. Because you think something is right, doesn't make it so. You claim to be progressive and open-minded, the open you mind and allow for the possibility that what you read in the press every day might not be the whole story. Open you mind to the idea that maybe those "GOP talking points" actually have some merit and are not empty babble put in the way to stiffle debate. Maybe this "conservative mind-set" is because we see things differently, and accept that there is more to the story than what Wolf Blitzer tells me.

__________________
"If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser