|
Banned
|
<b>Why does former CBS News foreign correspondent, Tom Fenton, "hate" America?</b>
Maybe it has something to do with American's "knowing what they Know", despite the "facts". Walter Pincus of the WaPo is one of the most earnest and reliable, political news reporters of our era, and he sez:
Quote:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...ushzarq10.html
Saturday, June 10, 2006 - Page updated at 12:56 AM
Al-Zarqawi served role in U.S. strategy in Iraq
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — From the moment President Bush introduced him to the American people in October 2002, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi served a crucial purpose for the administration, providing a tangible focus for its insistence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was linked to the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
After the invasion that toppled Saddam, and the rise of the insurgency against occupying U.S. forces, al-Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was cited as proof that the uprising was fomented by al-Qaida-backed foreign fighters.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described al-Zarqawi as "the leading terrorist in Iraq and one of three senior al-Qaida leaders worldwide."
In addition to his prominent role in the Iraqi insurgency, al-Zarqawi was always a useful source of propaganda for the administration. Magnification of his role and of the threat he posed grew to the point that some senior intelligence officers believed it was counterproductive.....
........At times, the conflicting messages seemed to overlap. In April, a top U.S. military official cited al-Zarqawi's failure to disrupt elections for a new Iraqi government as "a tactical admission" of defeat. Al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida, said 18th Airborne Corps commander Lt. Gen. John Vines, "no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism."
That same month, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick <b>Lynch told a Baghdad news briefing that more than 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq were carried out by terrorist forces recruited and trained by al-Zarqawi.</b>
Trading insults
Even as they were locked in genuine confrontation on the battlefield, al-Zarqawi and the United States engaged in public, tit-for-tat insults.
On April 25, al-Zarqawi brazenly showed his face for the first time in a video posted on the Internet. In a lengthy diatribe, he accused Bush of lying to Americans about U.S. military victories in Iraq. U.S. forces, he predicted, "will go out of Iraq humiliated, defeated." The video showed al-Zarqawi strutting across a desert landscape, wielding an automatic weapon.
Ten days later, the United States counterattacked. In Baghdad, <b>Lynch displayed what he said</b> were outtakes from the al-Zarqawi video, captured during a raid on an al-Qaida safe house in the city.
"Here's Zarqawi, the ultimate warrior," he said, "trying to shoot his machine gun." The gun apparently jammed, and al-Zarqawi was seen motioning to a masked compatriot to help him. The great "warrior leader," <b?Lynch mocked,</b> "doesn't understand how to operate his weapon system."
But the U.S. psychological operation appeared to backfire, according to one military study of how it played in the Arab and U.S. media. While some media outlets found al-Zarqawi ludicrous, <b>most wondered why he was so hard to capture or kill if he was so incompetent.......</b>
.........In a speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush outlined the "grave threat" Saddam posed to the United States. <b>Citing "high-level contacts" between Iraq and al-Qaida</b> "that go back a decade," he said that "some al-Qaida leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. <b>These include one very senior al-Qaida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year,</b> and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."
Bush never mentioned al-Zarqawi's name, but Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a speech to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, described him as the head of a "deadly terrorist network" tied to al-Qaida and harbored by Saddam.
The United States placed a $25 million bounty on his head, promised to whomever could provide intelligence leading to his capture or death. In recent weeks, a proposal surfaced within the U.S. military to decrease the reward. An announcement that he had been downgraded in importance, proponents suggested, might draw an insulted al-Zarqawi out into the open.
The State Department disagreed, and members of Congress suggested that the reward be doubled.
|
The Washington Post article, excerpted above, was published on June 10. Please click on the link and read the entire text, then read it again. Then read the posts on this thread. I'm no Walter Pincus, not by a long shot. But I'll go to my grave, trying to be someone as far from Tom Fenton's description of an <b>American who is fed that "which fits what they already know"</b> , as I possibly can be.......
How about you? You've made a special effort, you're reading a thread on a politics forum. Make the extra effort and take the extra time to never accept what the government tells you, just because it seems to fit what you think that you know. Unless you question everything, you'll just be a repository for what they've told you, and you'll be able to repeat it all like a parrot, but you'll only "know" what the government wants you to "know".
Quote:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cus...onDate&n=28315 : Reader Reviews....
Bad News : The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All (Hardcover)
by Tom Fenton
<a href="http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Broadcast_Media/News_Gap_BN.html">from Page 20:</a>
......Americans are too broadly underinformed to digest nuggets of information that seem to contradict what they know of the world. Yet whose fault is that, and whose responsibility is it to correct? Instead, news channels prefer to feed Americans <b>a constant stream of simplified information, all of which fits what they already know.</b> That way they don't have to devote more air time or newsprint space to explanations or further investigations..........
|
So which American do you think that you more closely resemble, the one who Tom Fenton describes on page 20 in his book, or are you more like Ray McGovern, who had this "in person exchange" with Rumsfeld, last month:
Quote:
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/n...n/14503836.htm
Posted on Fri, May. 05, 2006
Pointed queries stall talk
A war opponent who interrupted Rumsfeld's speech accused him of lying on Iraq. Associated Press
.........McGovern: This is America.
Rumsfeld: You're getting plenty of play, sir.
McGovern: I'd just like an honest answer.
Rumsfeld: I'm giving it to you.
McGovern: Well we're talking about lies and your allegation there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
Rumsfeld: Zarqawi [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the al-Qaeda in Iraq] was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact.
McGovern: Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That's also...
Rumsfeld: He was also in Baghdad.
McGovern: Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital.
Come on, these people aren't idiots. They know the story.........
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9831216/site/newsweek/
<b>Fabricated Links?</b>
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Oct. 26, 2005 - A secret draft CIA report raises new questions about a principal argument used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq: the claim that Saddam Hussein was "harboring" notorious terror leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi prior to the American invasion...............
........No evidence has been found showing senior Iraqi officials were even aware of his presence, according to two counterterrorism analysts familiar with the classified CIA study who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
An intelligence official told NEWSWEEK that the current draft says that "most evidence suggests Saddam Hussein did not provide Zarqawi safe haven before the war. It also recognizes that there are still unanswered questions and gaps in knowledge about the relationship.".........
...........The new report is only the latest chink in the armor of the alleged Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. Last year, the September 11 Commission found there was no "collaborative" relationship between the Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden; one high-level Al Qaeda commander—who had been cited by Powell as testifying to talks about chemical- and biological-warfare training—later recanted his claims. But the Pentagon and Cheney's office have been reluctant to abandon the case........
|
|
In response to a segment in an earlier post, on page #1 on this thread:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by reconmike
....As to what I believe or disbelieve in the information the US military "discloses" as you so put it, really doesnt matter, you see being that I retired from the US Marine Corps with over 20 years I know what they release and do not release.
And as much as you think you have the "right" to know what they are doing all the time, you do not so get over it. They will tell you what they want when they want.
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=14 |
The above probably is an accurate description of the attitude held by the Pentagon, and by the White House, too....but dammit....I'm not in the military and, neither are you, anymore, reconmike. Is it even "American" to quietly accept a situation like you described? A "right" has to be exercised, now and again, and maybe the response from the government will come in the form of tear gas, or a nightstick over the head, or even a rifle butt in the teeth, but if we don't bother to question them, and to speak our mind, then what did the soldiers who gave their lives at Iwo, or at Bastogne, fight and die to protect?
Last edited by host; 06-12-2006 at 03:27 AM..
|