"support our troops" offensive to troops? - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

dc_dux · 02-01-2007, 04:40 PM

A predictable "non-response" response to the facts presented.

powerclown · 02-01-2007, 04:55 PM

I reject the issue as you would have it. I'm sure the soldiers are thankful to the media for telling them how to outfit their vehicles. The US Army owes an enormous debt a gratitude to CNN, wonderful. I wonder if CNN correspondents have offered themselves to be strapped to humvee front bumpers as IED triggers. Talk about helping out a brutha.

Back to the point: There is absolutely no excuse for a so-called prominent, responsible american newspaper to publish internet VIDEOS of american soldiers getting KIA.
Under any circumstances. Ever.
None.
Period.
End of story.
Wouldn't you say?

UNLESS, of course, you're an antiwar media empire pushing an antiwar sentiment.
Then it's cool.

dc_dux · 02-01-2007, 09:04 PM

The only absolute in journalism for as long as independent journalists have been covering US wars is to not reveal infomation of value to the enemy.

Mathew Brady took photos of KIA in the Civil War. There are news archives of US troops being shot landing on Normandy Beach and Peter Jennings and Ed Bradley brought Vietnam firefights to the evening news.

The only difference is that the news is now reported in real time. I would agree that today's war reporting requires a different set of ethics and standards that pays greater attention to the family of casuaties. In this case, without knowing the full story, I would agree that the NY Times may have stepped over the line in the timing of the story/video. But I would not say such reporting should be NONE....PERIOD.

YOu dont seem to place the same value or the need for independent war journalists as I do....and the coverage of the good, the bad and the ugly, so that Americans sitting safely at home can really understand the cost of war. Or perhaps, you believe they (NY Times reporters, CNN reporters, etc) have an ulterior motive in their reporting...but I would suggest that is your own bias.

powerclown · 02-01-2007, 09:33 PM

I think very highly of 3 NYT war reporters: John Burns, Dexter Filkins, and Michael Gordon. They very much put into perspective the likes of Arkin et al. These 3 have consistently been compelling, informative, enlightening, comprehensive and above all as neutral as possible, to my mind. I very much look forward to reading their articles. I also like Thomas Friedman, although he's not a war reporter in this war.

Ask yourself this question: If the NYT are simply providing a neutral public service, to whom are they servicing? What demographic wants to see american soldiers KIA? Would you have reservations about foreign news agencies airing americans KIA?

host · 02-02-2007, 12:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

I think very highly of 3 NYT war reporters: John Burns, Dexter Filkins, and Michael Gordon. They very much put into perspective the likes of Arkin et al. These 3 have consistently been compelling, informative, enlightening, comprehensive and above all as neutral as possible, to my mind. I very much look forward to reading their articles. I also like Thomas Friedman, although he's not a war reporter in this war.

Ask yourself this question: If the NYT are simply providing a neutral public service, to whom are they servicing? What demographic wants to see american soldiers KIA? Would you have reservations about foreign news agencies airing americans KIA?

You don't want news reporting, powerclown, you want a conduit for the broadcasting of the message that you already agree with....

powerclown, here's a "crash course" on why you probably like Dexter Filkins' "work". He trades "access" to exclusive information from the US military and political authorities, by acting as Tim Russert on MTP does. They are both reliable, uninquistive, non-confrontational "shills", and hence, satisfy you that they offer "fair and balanced" reporting. But....they are not news reporters.

The truth is, that they offer whatever is in the interest of the agenda of the military and government officials "SAOs" to disseminate. As Cathie Martin described, Russert is not even a propagandist, just a "stage manager" for the newest episode of the "Dick Cheney show".....

It is telling that you think highly of Dexter Filkins, powerclown. He doesn't probe or investigate, he simply has the same job as president Bush....self admitted propaganda "catapult".

It's a small world.....that "news world" of yours, powerclown....the narrow little "corner" of the NY Times where an embedded "mouthpiece" like Filkins can sooth you with reporting that "fits" your views.

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012501951.html
In Ex-Aide's Testimony, A Spin Through VP's PR

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 26, 2007; A01

Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.

This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

<h3>"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."</h3>

It is unclear whether the first week of the trial will help or hurt Libby or the administration. But the trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.

With a candor that is frowned upon at the White House, Martin explained the use of late-Friday statements. "Fewer people pay attention to it late on Friday," she said. "Fewer people pay attention when it's reported on Saturday."

Martin, perhaps unaware of the suspicion such machinations caused in the press corps, lamented that her statements at the time were not regarded as credible. She testified that, as the controversy swelled in 2004, reporters ignored her denials and continued to report that it was Cheney's office that sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate allegations of Iraq's nuclear acquisitions. "They're not taking my word for it," Martin recalled telling a colleague.

Martin, who now works on the president's communications staff, said she was frustrated that reporters wouldn't call for comment about the controversy. She said she had to ask the CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, which reporters were working on the story. "Often, reporters would stop calling us," she testified.

This prompted quiet chuckles among the two dozen reporters sitting in court to cover the trial. Whispered one: "When was the last time you called the vice president's office and got anything other than a 'no comment'?"

At length, Martin explained how she, Libby and deputy national security adviser Steve Hadley worked late into the night writing a statement to be issued by George Tenet in 2004 in which the CIA boss would take blame for the bogus claim in Bush's State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Africa.

After "delicate" talks, Tenet agreed to say the CIA "approved" the claim and "I am responsible" -- but even that disappointed Martin, who had wanted Tenet to say that "we did not express any doubt about Niger."

During her testimony, Martin, a Harvard Law School graduate married to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and a close pal of Bush counselor Dan Bartlett, seemed uncomfortable, shifting in her chair, squinting at her interrogators, stealing quick glances at the jury, and repeatedly touching her cheek, ear, nose, lips and scalp.

Martin shed light on the mystery of why White House press secretary Scott McClellan promised, falsely, that Libby was not involved in outing CIA operative Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. After McClellan had vouched for Bush strategist Karl Rove's innocence, Libby asked Martin, "Why don't they say something about me?"

"You need to talk to Scott," Martin advised.

On jurors' monitors were images of Martin's talking points, some labeled "on the record" and others "deep background." She walked the jurors through how the White House coddles friendly writers and freezes out others. To deal with the Wilson controversy, she hastily arranged a Cheney lunch with conservative commentators. And when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof first wrote about the Niger affair, she explained, "we didn't see any urgency to get to Kristof" because "he frankly attacked the administration fairly regularly."

Questioned by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Martin described how Hadley tried to shield White House spokesmen from the Niger controversy. "Everybody was sort of in the dark," she explained. "There had been a decision not to have the communicators involved."

But Martin, encouraged by Libby, secretly advised Libby and Cheney on how to respond. She put "Meet the Press" at the top of her list of "Options" but noted that it might appear "too defensive." Next, she proposed "leak to Sanger-Pincus-newsmags. Sit down and give to him." This meant that the "no-leak" White House would give the story to the New York Times' David Sanger, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, or Time or Newsweek. Option 3: "Press conference -- Condi/Rumsfeld." Option 4: "Op-ed."

Martin was embarrassed about the "leak" option; the case, after all, is about a leak. "It's a term of art," she said. "If you give it to one reporter, they're likelier to write the story."

For all the elaborate press management, things didn't always go according to plan. Martin described how Time wound up with an exclusive one weekend because she didn't have a phone number for anybody at Newsweek.

"You didn't have a lot of hands-on experience dealing with the press?" defense attorney Theodore Wells asked.

"Correct," Martin replied. After further questions, she added: "Few of us in the White House had had hands-on experience with any crisis like this."

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...040900890.html
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi
Jordanian Painted As Foreign Threat To Iraq's Stability

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006; Page A01

....The military's propaganda program largely has been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.

That slide, created by Casey's subordinates, does not specifically state that U.S. citizens were being targeted by the effort, but other sections of the briefings indicate that there were direct military efforts to use the U.S. media to affect views of the war. <b>One slide in the same briefing, for example, noted that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter based in Baghdad. Filkins's resulting article, about a letter supposedly written by Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the Times front page on Feb. 9, 2004.....</b>

Quote:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1002314713
A U.S. 'Propaganda' Program, al-Zarqawi, and 'The New York Times'

By Greg Mitchell

Published: April 10, 2006 3:00 PM ET

NEW YORK Midway through Thomas Ricks’ Washington Post scoop on Monday detailing a U.S. military “propaganda program” aimed at convincing Iraqis that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has a very prominent role in directing violence in that country, there is one specific tip on how the plan may have also targeted American reporters and audiences.

<b>Ricks found that one “selective leak”--about a recently discovered letter written by Zarqawi--was handed by the military to Dexter Filkins, the longtime New York Times reporter in Baghdad. Filkins's resulting article, about the Zarqawi letter boasting of foreigners' role in suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the front page of the Times on Feb. 9, 2004.</b>

“Leaks to reporters from U.S. officials in Iraq are common, but official evidence of a propaganda operation using an American reporter is rare,” Ricks observed. <h3>He quoted Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's chief spokesman when the propaganda campaign began in 2004: "We trusted Dexter to write an accurate story, and we gave him a good scoop."</h3>

<b>Filkins, in an e-mail to Ricks, said he assumed the military was releasing the Zarqawi letter "because it had decided it was in its best interest to have it publicized." He told Ricks he was skeptical about the document's authenticity then, and remains so now.</b>

But Ricks' article, if anything, underplays the impact of the letter in February 2004--<b>and if Filkins had qualms about its authenticity, it hardly deterred him and his paper from giving it serious, and largely uncritical, attention. </b>

In his February 9, 2004 front-pager, <b>Filkins</b> detailed the contents of the letter, and its significance, matter-of-factly for eight paragraphs. Only then did he introduce any doubt, suggesting that possibly it could have been “written by some other insurgent…who exaggerated his involvement.”

After that one-sentence brief mention, <b>Filkins</b> went directly to: “Still, a senior United States intelligence official in Washington said, 'I know of no reason to believe the letter is bogus in any way.''’ The story continued for another 1000 words without expressing any other doubts about the letter—which was found on a CD and was unsigned.

In his Post story today, Ricks also does not mention what happened next.

<b>William Safire, in his Feb. 11, 2004, column for the Times titled “Found: A Smoking Gun,” declared that the letter “demolishes the repeated claim of Bush critics that there was never a '’clear link’ between Saddam and Osama bin Laden.”</b> Safire mocked the Washington Post for burying the story on page 17, while hailing a Reuters account quoting an “amazed” U.S. officials saying, “We couldn’t make this up if we tried.”

Three days later, another Times columnist, David Brooks, covered the letter as fact under the heading “The Zarqawi Rules.” The letter was covered in this manner by other media for weeks. So clearly, the leak to Filkins worked.

A Web search of New York Times articles in the two months after the scoop failed to turn up any articles casting serious doubts on the letter. Two leading writers for Newsweek on its Web site quickly had a different view, however.

<b>Christopher Dickey, the Middle East regional editor, on February 13, 2004, asked: “Given the Bush administration’s record peddling bad intelligence and worse innuendo, you’ve got to wonder if this letter is a total fake. How do we know the text is genuine? How was it obtained? By whom? And when? And how do we know it’s from Zarqawi? We don’t. We’re expected to take the administration’s word for it.”

Rod Nordland, the magazine’s Baghdad bureau chief, on March 6 wrote: “The letter so neatly and comprehensively lays out a blueprint for fomenting strife with the Shia, and later the Kurds, that it's a little hard to believe in it unreservedly.</b> It came originally from Kurdish sources who have a long history of disinformation and dissimulation. It was an electronic document on a CD-ROM, so there's no way to authenticate signature or handwriting, aside from the testimony of those captured with it, about which the authorities have not released much information.”........

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/in...rssnyt&emc=rss

December 12, 2005
Boys of Baghdad College Vie for Prime Minister
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 9 - The priests have long since departed, but the elite Jesuit high school called Baghdad College still looms over the swirling world of Iraqi politics.

<b>The three Iraqi political leaders considered most likely to end up as prime minister after nationwide elections this week - Ayad Allawi, Ahmad Chalabi</b> and Adel Abdul Mahdi - were schoolmates at the all-boys English-language school in the late 1950's, fortunate members of the Baghdad elite that governed Iraq until successive waves of revolution and terror swept it away......

Between May 3, 2003 and July 9, 2006, Dexter Filkins filed 45 reports that mentioned Ahmed Chalabi. To Iraqis, Chalabi had the voter appeal equivalent to that of a Dennis Kucinich in the US. He is described in Filkin's 14 page article, published just three months ago, as a "close friend" to Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. How would an article of this length, with such gushing praise towards Chalabi, be received in the US, more than a year after a "no voter appeal candidate", like Chalabi...... was a losing candidate who received less than one precent of the popular vote in a US presidential race?

Filkins never bothered, in his years filing reports from Iraq, to do anything more than convey the reporting about Chalabi that satisfied the US administration. Three months ago, Filkins reported at length about a neo-con sponsored shill who held no influence in Iraq. Why? Who does Filkins and his editors think are interested in reading his long tribute to Chalabi?

Quote:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/...bi.php?page=13
Where Plan A left Ahmad Chalabi
By Dexter Filkins / The New York Times
Published: November 3, 2006

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/...abi.php?page=6
(Page 6 of 14)

.....And then there was the scandal at Petra Bank in Jordan, the outlines of which every Iraqi, no matter how dimly educated, <b>seemed already to know:</b> that Chalabi had been convicted in absentia for fraud and sentenced to 22 years in prison for embezzling almost $300 million. (Chalabi, who fled Jordan before he could be arrested, has long denied the charges, maintaining that they were cooked up by the Jordanian government under pressure from Saddam Hussein. Last year, the Jordanians signaled that they were willing to pardon Chalabi. But Chalabi insisted on a public apology, which the Jordanians refused to give.) <b>Even the small army of Iraqi exiles that Chalabi had raised before the war never grew to be much more than a personal militia. One poll, conducted in early 2004, showed him to be the least trusted public figure in Iraq - even less trusted than Saddam Hussein.</b>

<b>["host" asks the obvious question....why then, Mr. Filkins, three years later, are you giving us 14 pages about an Iraqi "leader" who no one aside from US neo-cons, and certainly almost no Iraqis, supported?]</b>

The suspicions that ordinary Iraqis harbored about Chalabi were never relieved by his industriousness. As oil minister and deputy prime minister, Chalabi worked night and day, often on the minutiae of Iraq's oil pipelines and electricity lines or the precise wording, in Arabic and English, of the Iraqi Constitution. I typically went to see Chalabi at night, sometimes at 9 or 10, and usually had to wait an hour or so while he finished with his other visitors. If it was true that Chalabi had returned to Iraq with the expectation of acquiring power, it was not true that he was unwilling to work for it. Chalabi, like all Iraqi political leaders, functioned in conditions of mortal danger at nearly all times. Even when he wanted to walk into his backyard, he had to be followed by armed guards. It's an exhausting and debilitating way to live. But while many Iraqi exiles either gave up and returned to the West, or now spend as much time outside the country as in, Chalabi stayed in Iraq almost continuously following Hussein's fall.

<b>For all the hard work,</b> his zigging and zagging across the political spectrum frustrated many of the Iraqi elites - his only natural constituency - especially after his flirtation with the Islamists. "I don't think Chalabi has any credibility left," Adnan Pachachi, the 83-year-old former foreign minister, told me before the 2005 elections. "He is not acceptable to Iraqis. People don't like him shifting all the time. This thing with Moktada - it's ridiculous.".....

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/...bi.php?page=12
(Page 12 of 14)
.....6. Baghdad, December 2005

A winter rain is falling. Chalabi is standing inside a tent in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum of eastern Baghdad. He's talking about his plans for restoring electricity, boosting oil production and beating the insurgency. People seem to be listening, but without enthusiasm. The violence here, worsening by the day, is washing away the hopes of ordinary Iraqis. Less and less seems possible anymore. People are retreating inward, you can see it in the glaze in their eyes.

As Chalabi speaks, I pull aside one of the Iraqis who had been listening. What do you think of him? I ask.

"Chalabi good good," the Iraqi man says in halting English.

Whom are you going to vote for?

"The Shiite alliance, of course," the Iraqi answers. "It is the duty of all Shiite people."

When the election came, Chalabi was wiped out. His Iraqi National Congress received slightly more than 30,000 votes, only one-quarter of 1 percent of the 12 million votes cast - not enough to put even one of them, not even Chalabi, in the new Iraqi Parliament. There was grumbling in the Chalabi camp. <b>One of his associates said of the Shiite alliance: "We know they cheated. You know how we know? Because in one area we had 5,000 forged ballots,</b> and when they were counted, we didn't even get that many." He shrugged......

(Page 13 of 14)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/...bi.php?page=13

.....But the truth seemed clear enough: Chalabi was finished. Chalabi, who could plausibly claim that he, more than any other Iraqi, had made the election possible, had been shunned by the very people <h3>he had worked so hard to set free.........</h3>

powerclown · 02-02-2007, 01:25 AM

What? You couldn't find anything negative to rake up about Friedman, Gordon or Burns? Christ host, I said I liked some of his reporting - I never said I wanted to fuck him. He's not my role model or someone I would blindly follow to the ends of the earth. And the NYT isn't my only source of information. The Grey Lady is usually my final source, when all other options have been exhausted, but not ever my only source. You really should give people more credit for their opinions.

host, why do you think the NYT shows snuff films of american soldiers?

loquitur · 02-02-2007, 06:21 AM

The NYT is the paper I read on the way in to work in the morning. It's the voice of the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan (more east than west, actually). I live in Queens, so it makes an interesting spectacle. I can only imagine what people living in Council Bluffs must think.

Host, if you think the NYT isn't liberal enough, well......... <shaking head>

dc_dux · 02-02-2007, 08:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

I think very highly of 3 NYT war reporters: John Burns, Dexter Filkins, and Michael Gordon. They very much put into perspective the likes of Arkin et al. These 3 have consistently been compelling, informative, enlightening, comprehensive and above all as neutral as possible, to my mind. I very much look forward to reading their articles. I also like Thomas Friedman, although he's not a war reporter in this war.

Ask yourself this question: If the NYT are simply providing a neutral public service, to whom are they servicing? What demographic wants to see american soldiers KIA? Would you have reservations about foreign news agencies airing americans KIA?

You appear to be part of the NYT demographic..and you dont live on the upper east side.

BUt I guess you like your compllellng, informative, enlightening, comprehensive and neutral coverage of the war also to be varnished of anthing that might offend your sensibliities.

powerclown · 02-02-2007, 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

BUt I guess you like your compllellng, informative, enlightening, comprehensive and neutral coverage of the war also to be varnished of anthing that might offend your sensibliities.

When it comes to offending my sensibilities, the NYT doesn't dissapoint. With people like Bill Arkin reporting, its pretty easy. I don't know about you, but watching american soldiers being killed is offensive to me. Maybe you enjoy it...maybe you think they're getting whats coming to them. Maybe you secretly root for the insurgency. Maybe you celebrate over every dead american soldier. It's not a stretch at all, going by the way some people talk here. Some people hate this country with a derision bordering on psychosis. This war has opened my eyes to a whole new level of anger, alienation and desperation I never knew existed. Some people will literally say or do anything. So nobody wants to address the NYT's snuff films...thats fine. Avoiding the question is an answer in itself.

host · 02-02-2007, 10:22 AM

...on edit, powerclown, after reading your last response to dc_dux, your technique of debating is so low that I regret that I showed you the deference to bother to post all of this. Your Orwellian "doublespeak" is what it is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

I reject the issue as you would have it. I'm sure the soldiers are thankful to the media for telling them how to outfit their vehicles. The US Army owes an enormous debt a gratitude to CNN, wonderful. I wonder if CNN correspondents have offered themselves to be strapped to humvee front bumpers as IED triggers. Talk about helping out a brutha.

Back to the point: There is absolutely no excuse for a so-called prominent, responsible american newspaper to publish internet VIDEOS of american soldiers getting KIA.
Under any circumstances. Ever.
None.
Period.
End of story.
Wouldn't you say?

UNLESS, of course, you're an antiwar media empire pushing an antiwar sentiment.
Then it's cool.

powerclown, I have to observe that, by posting the distraction of the NY Times photo/video reporting of a dying US soldier, KIA in Baghdad, you "pulled" a "Duncan Hunter ploy". I don't think that it worked for the yet to be indicted, Duke Cunningham co-conspirator and bribe taker, Hunter, and I don't think that it will work for you. It all comes down to what does demonstrably greater harm to the defense of the US and the safety and well being of "the troops". Is it a huge, corrupt, "quid pro quo" that included Duncan Hunter using his house committee chairmanship to force unwanted and expensive "programs" down the Pentagon's throat, in exchange for, at minimum....campaign contributions from Cunningham briber Wilkes, and rides on Wilke's executive jet....or is it the bullshit that you and Hunter trot out to divert the indignation where it obviously should be directed?

I'm astounded at the triviality that causes you such concern, and the appalling corruption, amounting to treason in a "time of war", that you choose not even to respond to:

The new NIE on Iraq, seems to agrees that our leaders have done what they promised not to do, keep our troops deployed in Iraq in the midst of a civil war:

Quote:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002470.php
NIE: Iraq Is in "Civil War"
By Paul Kiel - February 2, 2007, 11:11 AM

The NIE is unequivocal on the whole "civil war" debate, a phrase the administration has been desperate to avoid:

The Intelligence Community judges that the term “civil war” does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa’ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term “civil war” accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.

Quote:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002469.php
NIE: The Surge Can't Work
By Spencer Ackerman - February 2, 2007, 10:58 AM

Wow, this is grim. According to the just-released Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, political reconciliation is likely a bridge too far over the next year and a half.
http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20070202_release.pdf

The Sunnis remain "unwilling to accept minority status" and believe the Shiite majority is a stalking horse for Iran. The Shiites remain "deeply insecure" about their hold on power, meaning that the Shiite leadership views U.S.-desired compromises -- on oil, federalism and power-sharing -- as a threat to its position. Perhaps most ominously, the upcoming referendum on the oil-rich, multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk threatens to be explosive, as the Kurds are determined to finally regain full control over the city.

Interestingly, the listed prospects for reversing Iraq's deterioration contradict the NIE's assessment of where things actually stand. For instance, "broader Sunni acceptance of the current political structure and federalism" and "significant concessions by Shia and Kurds" could lead to stability -- but the NIE's earlier section viewed both these events as unlikely. To put this in the realm of the current debate, President Bush's "surge" is designed to give political breathing room to events that the intelligence community formally judges as unrealistic:

Quote:

...even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation in the time frame of this Estimate.

About Iran. This must have been one of the most controversial elements of the estimate: Iraq's neighbors are "not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal sectarian dynamics." There's the expected qualifications that Iran and Syria are up to no good, but this is the major point. In other words, no matter how much Bush wants to lay the blame for the disintegration of Iraq on the meddlesome interference of Iran and Syria, the U.S.-sponsored political process itself -- indeed, the new, U.S.-midwifed Iraqi political order -- itself sows the seeds for the country's destruction. Apparently Bush could attack Iran to his heart's content, and Iraq would still remain inflamed.

Oh, and one final thought: this is just what's unclassified. If past NIEs are any prologue, what remains classified is much, much grimmer than what we see here. More likely than not, this is the most optimistic presentation of the NIE possible.

<b>powerclown....you chose to dredge up yet another non-issue, just as Duncan Hunter did:</b>

Quote:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...itroom.02.html
THE SITUATION ROOM

Death Toll Climbing for American Troops in Iraq; CNN Sticks to Decision of Showing Dangers Troops Face; Is Do-Nothing Congress At Heart of Broken Government?

Aired October 23, 2006 - 17:00 ET

....BLITZER: Is -- is this appropriate, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Hunter, for the American public to see how awful, to see how brutal the war can actually be?

Because I -- I guess there has been criticism from the other side that we sort of whitewash, and we don't really convey to the American public the full extent of the brutality of the enemy. Do the American people have a right to know what war is like?

HUNTER: Well -- well, first, Wolf, the American people aren't made out of cotton candy. They understand, when you see 2,791 battlefield deaths, that people are killed, and they are killed in bad ways.

This is the first generation of Americans that could actually go online and watch an American be decapitated, have his head cut off by al-Zarqawi, as they watch. So, I would say that, contrary to what you are saying, this is a war in which more brutality is shown than probably any other.

But the point is that -- that this one killing of one American doesn't really tell any statistic. Of -- of the people killed in Iraq, 524 of our Americans have been killed in accidents, mainly automobile accidents. Now, you don't show automobile accidents, because it's not sexy. It's not violent. It doesn't draw a big audience. Showing the impact of a single bullet, a single shooting doesn't tell you anything. If you isolated one American going down on Omaha Beach at Normandy, what would that tell the American public?

BLITZER: Well, let me interrupt...

HUNTER: But how...

BLITZER: ... Mr. Chairman.

HUNTER: But -- but I guess my question to you is -- is, Wolf, how instructive would that be with respect to the conduct of the war? It tells you nothing, except an American was struck by a bullet and went down.

BLITZER: But we never actually showed the impact. And you can take a look at that five-minute report. And you will see that we never saw -- we went to black before that insurgent video, that propaganda video, which we ourselves called it a propaganda piece of footage...

(CROSSTALK)

HUNTER: Then -- then, what's the value, Wolf? What's the possible value, then?

BLITZER: The value -- some of -- some of the thinking -- and let me bring in General Grange on this.

When the Pentagon announces killed in action, they -- they don't refer to snipers specifically. They refer to small-arms fire. And there have been hundreds of American troops who have been killed in small-arms fire. And -- and one of the things that we saw in this video -- and, General Grange, let me let you elaborate -- is the nature of the enemy, how they stalk and try to kill American troops with these kinds of snipers.

But, go ahead, General, and -- and talk a little bit about that.

GRANGE: No, I mean, you can argue whether the tape should be shown or not.

I mean, I just looked back. Since 9/11, I mean, a different -- when you are asked to do a -- to make comment on a different segment, quite often, it's a decision you have to make, at least in my case, as a retired G.I., and working with the media periodically, that I always have a tough decision whether I should even comment or not.

In this case, this thing is shown overseas. And I knew it would be shown in some extent. Thank God that we show it in a -- in a better way than it is showed in its raw footage.

But point is that I guess I cheated a little bit, because we kind of -- my comments were kind of to turn it around and show the -- and capabilities of the enemy in this regard, and -- and how they use civilians for cover, and abuse civilian neighborhoods, and -- and just the way they operate, which is against the land -- rule of land warfare, to expose those things.

So, you know, in a difficult situation like this, showing it or not, I think it's also an opportunity to exploit these guys, and give the information to our people, so we can survive and take them down.

HUNTER: General, I look at it just the opposite.

I think showing Americans being killed by terrorists, with -- apparently, with impunity, because the film doesn't show the terrorists then being pursued and killed. And lots of terrorists who have shot at Americans took their last shot at the Americans, because they themselves were killed in turn.

But showing the world a film, and lots of terrorists out there watching their TV sets, a picture of an American being killed in a crowd by a terrorist who operates, apparently, with impunity, and gets away, is highly suggestive, I think, and highly instructive to them.

And I think it's dangerous to Americans, not only uniformed Americans, but also tourists, Americans who might go abroad and be in one of those crowds one day, when somebody who saw that film, how you just walk up and kill them while they are in a crowd, decides to replicate that action.

BLITZER: All right.

HUNTER: Well, sir, if I may, it's a point well taken. And -- and I recognize that.

And -- and I would say that, in the comments that were said in this, that, in my evaluation, they were not all -- they did not kill a lot of the Americans in this shot. They missed. There were some wounds. And, in fact, the -- they were not that good, and which would have been a different slant, the way it was shown internationally, compared to how it was shown by -- in the United States.

BLITZER: We're almost out of time, Mr. Chairman, but let me just wrap it up.

In your -- your letter, you suggest that CNN reporters no longer be allowed to be embedded with U.S. military forces in Iraq. We have several of our reporters all the time embedded, literally risking their lives, very courageous reporters, whether Michael Ware. John Roberts is embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq right now. And -- and we have -- we have -- we have been doing that for three-and-a-half years.

Are you at least open to this notion that good people, like you and General Grange, can disagree on this, without questioning the -- the credibility, the patriotism of CNN?

<h3>HUNTER: I think that -- I think the question I asked when I saw this, Wolf, is, does CNN want America to win this thing?</h3>

And, if I was a platoon leader there, as I once was, and I had a -- and I had a news organization which had shown, had -- had taken film from the enemy, showing them killing one of my soldiers, and they asked if they could be embedded in my platoon, my answer would be no.

I go back to the -- to the -- the days of guys like Joe Rosenthal, who filmed the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, and Ernie Pyle, who was a soldier's reporter, the guys who were on our side -- even though they reported the rough and the tough of the war, they were on our side.

You can't be on both sides. And I would say, if I was that platoon leader, I would say, absolutely not. Take CNN out of there. You can't be on both sides.....

<h3>The real problem that powerclown and Duncan Hunter exhibit no concern about. How many of our troops would be safer...unwounded....even alive, today, if these "patriots" in congress, had none traded precious defense dollars away for....what ???</h3>

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13006800...wsweek/page/2/
Man in the Middle
As a corruption probe heats up on Capitol Hill, the spotlight falls on a California defense contractor with some powerful friends.
By Mark Hosenball, Jamie Reno and Evan Thomas
Newsweek

June 5, 2006 issue

...According to published reports and congressional and law-enforcement sources who did not want to be identified discussing a sensitive investigation, the Feds are also reviewing Wilkes's ties to other powerful House leaders. Former GOP majority leader Tom DeLay, <b3>Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter and Appropriations Committee chairman Jerry Lewis all reportedly had dealings with Wilkes.</b3> None has been accused of any wrongdoing; a spokesman for Lewis said the congressman had not seen Wilkes for 10 years. <b3>Hunter's spokesman said his boss urged the Pentagon to ignore congressional pressure on contracting</b3>, and DeLay's lawyer had no immediate comment....

Quote:

http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/200...s_brand_o.html
<h3>Hunter's Brand of Congressional "Oversight"</h3>

<p>The <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=oversight">two definitions of the word "oversight"</a> have a neat symmetry.  One means "an unintentional omission or mistake," whereas the other, is nearly its exact opposite: "Watchful care or management; supervision."  Typically, the latter meaning of the word is meant when it appears in the phrase "congressional oversight."  But not always, with the minor caveat that the "unintentional omission" may, at times, been intentional...</p>

<p>Since there seems to be burgeoning interest in the real estate holdings of staffers-turned-lobbyists (-turned-staffers-again, <a href="http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051223/images/lewislowery.pdf">in some cases</a>) and defense contractors in Jerry Lewis’ orbit  (Laura Rozen provides a nice summation and one-stop shop of links <a href="http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/004353.html">here</a>), we think it’s worth revisiting a sub-rosa real estate relationship involving House Armed Service Committee chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA).</p>

<p>Almost exactly a year ago, the Associated Press <a href="http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050616/NEWS06/506160474&template=printart">did a nice roundup</a> of House leadership financial disclosure statements. Among the highlights for Hunter was his co-ownership of a rural Virginia cabin with “former Democratic U.S. Rep. Pete Geren of Texas.”</p>

<p>At first glance, no big deal.  Preston M. “Pete” Geren III, however, is not your average former Congressman. A <a href="http://www.c-span.org/guide/congress/glossary/bluedog.htm">Blue Dog</a> from the Texas 12th, Geren’s 1989-1997 House stint is still less-than-fondly remembered by some for his relentless championing of that ineffective sinkhole of a project brought to us by Boeing and Bell, <a href="http://www.pogo.org/p/defense/wwV22.html">the V-22 Osprey</a>.</p>

<p>More recently, Geren briefly served as <a href="http://www.hilltoptimes.com/story.asp?edition=217&storyid=6096">Acting Secretary</a> of the Air Force from July to November 2005, after Air Force Secretary James Roche resigned in the wake of the <a href="http://pogo.org/p/contracts/TankerLeasingDeal.html">Boeing tanker lease scandal</a>.  In February 2006, Geren was <a href="http://www.army.mil/leaders/leaders/usa/printbio.html">confirmed as Undersecretary of the Army</a>.</p>

<p>But Geren is no newcomer to the Pentagon. Between 2001-2005, Geren occupied an office <a href="http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?s_hidethis=no&p_product=DM&p_theme=dm&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_field_label-0=Author&p_field_label-1=title&p_bool_label-1=AND&p_field_label-2=Section&p_bool_label-2=AND&s_dispstring=pete%20geren%20AND%20date%2803/02/2003%20to%2003/02/2003%29&p_field_date-0=YMD_date&p_params_date-0=date:B,E&p_text_date-0=03/02/2003%20to%2003/02/2003%29&p_field_advanced-0=&p_text_advanced-0=%28%22pete%20geren%22%29&p_perpage=10&xcal_numdocs=20&p_sort=YMD_date

&xcal_useweights=no">"strategically next door"</a>  to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whom he served as <a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/geren_bio.html">a special assistant</a> responsible for "inter-agency initiatives, legislative affairs, and special projects." In written responses to questions posed by the Senate Armed Service Committee during his Army confirmation earlier this year, Geren noted that among his specific responsibilities as a Rumsfeld aide was acting as Pentagon liaison with Congress on detainee abuse issues that began with Abu Ghraib in 2004.</p>

<p>A less-charitable description of Geren’s Abu Ghraib duties, according to a knowledgeable congressional source, was “keeping Congress off Rumsfeld’s back”. Indeed, much to the Pentagon’s consternation, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner's (R-VA) was actually moved to investigate Abu Ghraib and hold multiple hearings on the matter. Not so with Geren's real estate partner, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Consistently dismissive of interrogation and detention excesses as isolated incidents, <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.congress05may05,0,659146.story?page=2&coll=bal-iraq-storyutil">Hunter actively discouraged Congressional investigation into Abu Ghraib</a>.</p>

<a id="more"></a>
<p>Absent from national press coverage of Hunter's antipathy towards
Abu Ghraib investigations, however, was the fact that Hunter's <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp?CID=N00006983&cycle=2004">top corporate</a> <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp?CID=N00006983&cycle=2002">campaign contributor</a>, San Diego-based defense contractor Titan Corporation, potentially had a lot to lose in the scandal. (Titan <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.asp?CID=N00007050&cycle=2004">gave generously</a> to Cunningham as well).</p>

<p>When Titan bought Virginia-based contractor RTG in 2001, it also
acquired a $10 million, five-year contract awarded in 1999 to provide
linguists to the US Army. In the wake of 9/11, Titan's linguist
contract was given a ceiling of $657 million, with the company
receiving $112.1 million from the contract in 2003--six percent of
Titan's total revenue. A May 21, 2004 report <a href="http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20040521-9999-1n21titan.html">by the <em>San Diego Union-Tribune</em></a>

revealed Titan’s contractor hiring and training practices to be
systemically lacking, and that far from supplying "skilled contract
linguists" as its contract stipulated, Titan was "hiring people who
speak limited English and have no professional experience as
interpreters and translators". Personnel from Titan were also singled
out in both the Taguba, Fay and Kern reports as participants in abuses
at Abu Ghraib. (Titan, along with Arlington, Virginia-based contractor
CACI, is currently facing multiple lawsuits.)</p>

<p>As Abu Ghraib was unfolding, Titan was also losing money in legal
bills as federal investigators were discovering Titan to be among the
most ethically bankrupt US contractors doing business overseas. The
matter of illicit campaign contributions-for-quadrupled management fees
in the West African nation of Benin didn’t sit well with the Justice
Department; a host of document falsifications and under-reporting
expenses didn’t sit well with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
(Lockheed Martin wasn’t thrilled, either; poised to buy Titan, the
company pulled out of the deal in 2004). On March 1, 2005, <a href="http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/25663-1.html">Titan pled guilty to three criminal counts of bribery</a>, and paid a total of $28.5 million in fines to the Justice Department and SEC.</p>

<p>Despite the brazenness and scope of Titan's actions, as part of the
federal government’s settlement with the company, the Defense
Department waived its right to disbar Titan from any contracts. Though
the Titan contract should have been re-bid by now, according to
transcripts of recent Titan shareholder conference calls, the company
(now part of L3 Communications, which bought it last year) will retain
the contract until at least next year.</p>

<p><h3>As a general rule, we tend to think that those charged with
oversight, and those overseen by Congress, shouldn’t be in business
together--and if they are, their respective disclosures should be
clearer. (<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/pfd2004/N00006983_2004.pdf">Hunter’s disclosures (pdf)</a>

make no mention of Geren’s Defense Department affiliation, and Geren’s
disclosures simply refer to the “Hunter/Geren partnership”--to look at
them, you’d have no idea that the “Hunter” chaired House Armed
Services). Would public knowledge of the business relationship between
the Pentagon’s Congressional point man for Abu Ghraib and the House
Armed Services Committee Chairman--and, as we noted earlier, champion
of an exceptionally ethically-challenged defense contractor--given
anyone pause in May 2004 (or any other time, for that matter)? Was
Hunter’s real estate partner in a position to help Hunter help any of
his defense contractor patrons?</h3></p>

<p>Whatever the case, Geren has done nicely for himself while in
government service. As his on-average 28 page public financial
disclosure reports reveal, though he resigned his position on several
corporate boards when he took the Army job, in his four years as a
Rumsfeld special assistant, Geren collected an approximate total of
$200,000 a year as a director of Anadarko Petroleum, Texas-New Mexico
Power Company, Cullen/Frost Bankers and RME Petroleum.</p>

<p>-- Jason Vest</p>

Quote:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...9-1n4adcs.html
ADCS founder spent years cultivating political contacts
By Dean Calbreath
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

and Jerry Kammer
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

December 4, 2005

.......Wilkes left Aimco in 1992 to take a job as a political consultant for Audre Inc., a Rancho Bernardo firm that specialized in automated document conversion systems, which converted maps and engineering drawings into a format that could be edited via computer.

Audre, which was nearly bankrupt at the time, was eager to get more federal contracts. Shortly after Wilkes' arrival, the 35-person firm, headed by San Diego businessman Tom Casey, began donating thousands of dollars to key members of Congress.

"Wilkes was a political operator," said former Audre engineer Dirk Holland. "He was pretty slick. He knew how to grease the wheels."

Said a former business associate of Wilkes: "He knew that it pays to get a sponsor. He knew that's the way the game is played, and he convinced Tom Casey that that's what it's all about."

Union-Tribune file photo
Congressmen Duncan Hunter (left) and Randy "Duke" Cunningham, shown here before a base-closure commission hearing in June 1991, have received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from various defense firms.
Between 1992 and 1997, Audre employees and family members donated $77,000 to members of Congress. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, who got $7,250, and Cunningham, who got $5,050, became prominent backers of automated document systems in Congress.

<h3>"Our job as San Diego congressmen is to do our best to make sure our guys get a fair shot," Hunter said recently. "And Brent Wilkes and Tom Casey were aggressive and enthusiastic promoters of a breakthrough technology."</h3>

Audre was able to increase its influence by teaming up with Evergreen Information Technologies, a Colorado company that specialized in computerizing federal contract information.

Casey had been one of the founders of Evergreen in the early 1990s and served on its board of directors. Evergreen gave $22,000 in political donations, often targeting the same politicians on the same dates as Audre.

According to charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, $20,000 of Evergreen's donations were illegal. Evergreen Chief Executive Barry Nelsen asked staffers to write $1,000 checks, leaving the "payee" line blank, according to SEC documents. Nelsen then gave the checks to lawmakers and repaid his workers in violation of federal law, the SEC charged in 1993.

Nelsen did not fight the charges and was fined $65,000. He says he made the donations – none of which went to Hunter or Cunningham – so Congress would push the Navy to work with his firm.

Getting noticed
"I went to Tom Casey and said, 'How do we get some money or political heat or something to make the Navy do what they should do?' " Nelsen said. "So up pops Brent Wilkes."

Nelsen said Wilkes identified which politicians should be given donations.

The lobbying by Audre, as well as that of other software companies, was effective. Congress created an automated document conversion program, which provided $190 million in contracts between 1993 and 2001.

Audre won more than $12.5 million of those contracts, largely provided through earmarks that let legislators add pet projects to the budget.

"An earmark is usually devoted to a particular company or particular project that is tied to a particular congressman," said Michael Surrusco, director of ethics campaigns at Common Cause, a government watchdog group.

Earmarks are typically added to budget bills after they have been passed by the Senate and the House and the differing versions are being resolved in a conference committee. Because those meeting occur outside public view, the earmarks can be a way of avoiding scrutiny or accountability.

The earmarks were included in the budget even though the Pentagon never asked for funds for automated document conversion. In 1994, the General Accounting Office, now known as the Government Accountability Office, which monitors federal spending, found that the military did not need automated systems because it already had its own systems to digitize documents.

That did not dissuade Audre's supporters in Congress.

Union-Tribune file photo
Tom Casey, founder of Audre Inc., a business that specialized in automated document conversion systems, hired Brent Wilkes in 1992 as a political consultant for the company.
"I operate under the idea that not all good ideas come out of the Pentagon," Hunter said.

Two dozen firms vied for funding from the automated document conversion program. Their success depended on lobbying influential legislators, said Richard Gehling, who headed Audre's federal sales in the late 1990s.

Once Congress has appropriated money for programs, Pentagon officials decide how to apportion the money among prequalified contractors. These officials are very mindful of the desires of members of Congress who were crucial in funding the program, contractors and program managers said.

Gehling described Audre's technique for obtaining government contracts during a deposition in a lawsuit he filed in 2000 to gain back pay from the company.

A successful sale to the military, he maintained, "normally boiled down to who the House or Senate member was and how much pressure they put on the undersecretary (of Defense) about getting the funding for their constituents."

Audre attorney Ian Kessler asked: "That, in turn, depends upon how much political muscle, how much influence (a company has) with a particular congressperson?"

Gehling: "The majority of the time, it's (whichever company) has the most clout."

Kessler: "You mean the most political clout?"

Gehling: "Who's paid more."

Kessler: "Paid more in terms of political contributions?"

Gehling: "Fundraisers. Sponsoring."

To build more political backing for Audre, Wilkes asked Casey in 1994 to budget at least $40,000 a month for lobbying, far beyond what the money-losing company had been spending, according to two sources at the company.

When Casey balked, Wilkes quit the firm. Six months later, Wilkes launched ADCS Inc., customizing a German system called VPMax to compete for contracts to convert government documents. It was a family affair. Most of the company's top executives were related to Wilkes or his wife, Regina.

<b3>The Pentagon rated VPMax as faster, easier and cheaper than Audre. VPMax cost $6,035 per unit, compared with $11,479 for Audre's PC system and $29,950 for its Unix system.

Even so, Hunter backed Audre, partly because it was a U.S.-made product.

"I did oppose having a German firm get the business," he said recently, although the German creator of VPMax was getting little more than licensing fees for the ADCS project.</b3>

Casey played on that sentiment. When talking to Hunter about ADCS, Casey called it "the German software." Hunter, in turn, asked Maj. Gen. John Phillips, the Pentagon's chief purchasing officer, to "whenever possible, use [document conversion] products that are made in the United States by American taxpayers."

In May 1995, just as Wilkes was launching ADCS, Hunter – who had just been named chairman of the Armed Services Committee – let Audre use his office for two weeks to demonstrate its newest release to Pentagon officials.

Two weeks after the demonstrations ended, Audre sold $1.2 million of the software to the military for testing.

1972 yearbook photo
Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo (top), now the CIA's executive director, was a friend of Brent Wilkes' at Hilltop High School in Chula Vista.
<b3>"When you're in a position like Hunter was, you have a lot of clout, and we're not supposed to rock the boat," said a former Pentagon procurement official who declined to be named.</b3>

At that point, Wilkes started donating money to Cunningham, who sat on a House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Pentagon budget. Since October 1995, he and his associates have given $71,500 to Cunningham's campaign and political action committee. Cunningham became an ADCS booster.

"The success achieved by ADCS Inc. is an asset to the San Diego business and technological communities," Cunningham said in a 1997 endorsement that was printed in ADCS' pamphlets and press releases. He predicted VPMax would lead to "a stronger, more efficient national defense."

<h3>In 1996, Casey pressed Hunter to find out why the military was not buying more of Audre's software. Hunter demanded a Pentagon investigation.

A report from the Pentagon's Inspector General responded that "little demand exists" for automated document conversion systems. Aside from a Navy base in Ventura County, Port Hueneme, no military installation said it needed the systems. Much of the software Congress had funded was languishing in storage.

Such criticism did not dissuade Hunter.

According to Gehling's deposition, Hunter pushed the military to buy $2.5 million in Audre software in February 1997.

"There were still problems with the software," Gehling said. "It's always been flaky. It's still flaky."

Under pressure from Cunningham, the Pentagon shifted the money from Audre to ADCS.</h3> At the time, Cunningham said he only wanted the military to pick the best contractor possible. Donald Lundell, who was then Audre's chief executive, accused Cunningham of being swayed by Wilkes' campaign contributions.

At the time, Cunningham rejected any criticism of his actions.

"I'm on the side of the angels here," he said then, adding that anyone who questioned his role "can just go to hell."

Questionable projects
By then, the document conversion program was drawing fire from Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who included it on a list of $5.5 billion "objectionable" earmarks that Congress had tacked onto the military budget.

<h3>In July 1997, McCain accused the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House National Security Committee, where both Hunter and Cunningham sat, of "virtually ignoring the request of the Pentagon and impeding the military's ability to channel resources where they are most needed."

McCain said that "with military training exercises continuing to be cut, backlogs in aircraft and ship maintenance, flying hour shortfalls, military health care underfunded by $600 million, and 11,787 service members reportedly on food stamps," Congress should not be funding "a plethora of programs not requested by the Defense Department."</h3>

McCain was largely ignored. Three months later, Congress earmarked $20 million for document conversion systems. The earmarks hit $25 million the next year, including ADCS' biggest project: a $9.7 million contract to digitize documents in the Panama Canal Zone, which was to be handed to Panama in 1999.

The idea for the project came about at a time that Hunter and Cunningham were both warning that the People's Republic of China might try to take over Panama once U.S. forces left. The project was based on the idea that the U.S. should have blueprints of public buildings in Panama in case of a Chinese takeover.

Wilkes began lobbying for the project in early 1998, targeting Rep. Robert Livingston of Louisiana, who chaired the Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Jerry Lewis of Redlands and Cunningham, who served on the subcommittee on defense.

As the Appropriations Committee earmarked the budget, Wilkes, his wife Regina, Wilkes' nephew and lobbyist Joel Combs, attorney Richard Bliss and Rollie Kimbrough, a Democrat who headed a Washington, D.C., company that partnered with ADCS on the project, contributed a total of $28,000 to the three Republican lawmakers.

The project passed without the Pentagon's support, since most of the documents in Panama had little military value. Many of the documents that were of military value already were being photocopied, faxed or scanned into computers.

But Wilkes got a contract to convert millions of documents into computer-readable format, including reams of papers that dated to the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt. By Wilkes' own description, ADCS was using its most expensive technology to scan engineering drawings from the 1870s and images of boats from the 1910s.

Louis Kratz, an assistant undersecretary of defense, tried to block funding for the project, arguing there were more pressing needs at the Army's Missile Command, the Air Force's Logistics Center and an Air Force Pacific Base project.

Kratz was rebuffed by Cunningham as well as Hunter, who wanted the Pentagon to give Audre a $3.9 million contract to perform document conversion on an Abrams tank project.

Kratz later told The Washington Post that he had never encountered such "arrogance" and "meddling" as he had from Cunningham and Wilkes. John Karpovich, who helped run the document conversion program at the Defense Department before his retirement, said Wilkes infuriated Pentagon staff by claiming that the document conversion money belonged to him.

"Brent came in and said, 'That's our money,' " Karpovich recalled. "He said, 'The congressmen put the money in there for us.' "

Kratz eventually freed the funds, delaying the Air Force and Missile Command projects. But he also asked the Inspector General to investigate how the projects got funding.

In June 2000, the Pentagon Inspector General reported that several important projects had lost funding because "two congressmen" pressured defense officials to shift the money to the Panama and Abrams tank projects. The shift in funding was causing some military officers to "lose confidence in the fairness of the selection process," the Inspector General reported.

Lavish living
The money from Panama and other ADCS contracts – ranging from Gateway computer systems to military sound technology – helped fund a heady lifestyle for Wilkes and his associates.

In 1999, Wilkes and his wife bought a $1.5 million home in the Poway hills. He soon bought a second home: a $283,500 town house in the Virginia suburbs near Washington, D.C. During his visits to Washington, he made his rounds in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. At the Capital Grille, a favored hangout of legislators and lobbyists, he rented a personalized wine locker with his best friend Foggo.

Wilkes spread his taxpayer-provided funds throughout his company, taking executives on periodic retreats to Hawaii and Idaho.

In Honolulu, Wilkes stayed at suites at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel or rented the beachfront mansion of the late hairstyling mogul Paul Mitchell, which typically goes for $50,000 a week.

In Idaho, Wilkes' team stayed at the posh Coeur d'Alene Resort, where Wilkes paid $2,500 a night for a 2,500-square-foot penthouse suite, featuring an indoor swimming pool and outdoor Jacuzzi, said former employees and sources in Idaho.

For dinner, Wilkes would take his team to Beverley's restaurant, where a group meal could easily cost several thousand dollars. For recreation, they would fish, Jet Ski or play at the resort's exclusive golf course, famed for its 14th hole on a man-made floating island in Lake Coeur d'Alene.

There were retreats to Hawaii and Idaho at least once a year, said one source inside the company, with visits to Idaho typically occurring in spring or summer and visits to Hawaii in fall or winter.

Wilkes made no bones about where his money was coming from. His jet-black Hummer bore a license plate reading MIPR ME – a reference to Military Interdepartmental Purchase Requests, which authorize funds in the Pentagon.

Wilkes shared the benefits of his largesse with the politicians who helped him. He took Cunningham on several out-of-state trips on his corporate jet. Cunningham has produced no records showing that he paid for food, lodging or transportation while traveling to resorts with Wilkes, although he does have receipts for several campaign trips on Wilkes' jet.

Wilkes also bought a small powerboat that he moored behind Cunningham's yacht, the Kelly C, at the Capital Yacht Club in Washington, D.C. The boat was available for Cunningham's use anytime Wilkes was not using it.

But what landed Wilkes in trouble with federal prosecutors was his gifts to Cunningham. According to Cunningham's plea agreement, "Co-conspirator No. 1," gave $525,000 to Cunningham on May 13, 2004, to pay off the second mortgage on Cunningham's home in Rancho Santa Fe.

Co-conspirator No. 1 also gave $100,000 to Cunningham on May 1, 2000, which went into Cunningham's personal accounts in San Diego and Washington, D.C. And he paid $11,116.50 to help pay Cunningham's mortgage on the Kelly C.

The plea agreement charged that in return for the payments, Cunningham "used his public office and took other official action to influence U.S. Department of Defense personnel to award and execute government contracts."

<h3>Wilkes befriended other legislators, too. He ran a hospitality suite, with several bedrooms, in Washington – first in the Watergate Hotel and then in the Westin Grand near Capitol Hill.

He also kept his donations flowing, targeting people with clout over the Pentagon budget: $43,000 to Jerry Lewis, who now heads the Appropriations Committee; $35,500 to Hunter, who heads the Armed Services Committee; and $30,000 to Tom DeLay, who flew on Wilkes' jet several times and has been a frequent golfing buddy.

Over the past three years, Wilkes' lobbying group in Washington – Group W Advisors – also paid about $630,000 in lobbying fees to Alexander Strategy Group, a firm headed by DeLay's former chief of staff Ed Buckham and staffed with former DeLay employees.</h3>

The firm has a well-publicized reputation in Washington as a conduit to DeLay's office.

"The Alexander lobbyists' sales pitch was, 'Either you hire me or DeLay is going to screw you,' " an anonymous source identified as a top Republican lobbyist told the Congressional Quarterly weekly last month. "It was not really a soft sell."

Besides donating money to DeLay's campaign, Wilkes also has given money to a political action committee that DeLay helped organize: Texans for a Republican Majority. The group is under investigation for allegedly breaking Texas law to divert corporate contributions into its drive to redraw the state's election districts.

DeLay was indicted in late September over his activities with the group.

One of the group's biggest contributors was PerfectWave Technologies, one of Wilkes' companies, which donated $15,000.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert also flew on Wilkes' jet several times, sources say, although Hastert's expense records show no payments for such trips.

Besides its military work, ADCS also vied for state and municipal contracts, both for document conversion services as well as mapping systems to help speed police, firefighters and emergency workers to crime sites or fires.

As Wilkes vied for contracts, he donated to state and local politicians, such as San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts and Assemblyman George Plescia of Poway. The kickoff for Plescia's political campaign was held in ADCS' headquarters; Plescia was about to marry Wilkes' government affairs manager Melissa Dollaghan.

Other than Wilkes' donations to federal campaigns, his biggest contributions went to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Besides helping coordinate the Schwarzenegger campaign's finance activities in San Diego County during the 2003 recall election, Wilkes and his wife donated $42,400 to Schwarzenegger, the maximum allowable. The next year, Wilkes allowed Schwarzenegger to use ADCS' headquarters as a local office for his 2004 workers' compensation initiative campaign........

powerclown you claim to "support the troops", but you diverted the discussion here by inserting the "no impact" NY Times video reporting of an American "KIA" in Iraq. You're on display here, objecting the "injury" to "the troops" of the least consequence, while they struggle in a deployment that the CIC knows, or worse....should know...but is too much in self-denial to admit, is impossible for the troops to "win"...whatever that word means to the CIC and others who use it in the context of Iraq. I'd advise you to spend time reading what I've posted, clicking on all of the links in the articles and reading what they contain, too. Then...examine what you are upset, or not upset about, and why??? Events have and will continue to unfold in ways that leave your posted positions exposed to even more scrutiny, unless you are prepared to whitewash this war, too, as a "noble" one, circa late '70's Reagan, on Vietnam.

Willravel · 02-02-2007, 10:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Back to the point: There is absolutely no excuse for a so-called prominent, responsible american newspaper to publish internet VIDEOS of american soldiers getting KIA.
Under any circumstances. Ever.
None.
Period.
End of story.
Wouldn't you say?

UNLESS, of course, you're an antiwar media empire pushing an antiwar sentiment.
Then it's cool.

Have you seen the recent wave of Army commercials? There are two types: one is the clever, low income teen trying to talk their parents into lettting them join up. They make their convincing arguments about how the military will lead to great opportunities in stable and impressive careers and such, then it's the parent's turn! What will the parent say? Go to www.goarmy.com to find out, apparently. The second type of commercial features someone flying a helicopter somewhere or testing a new type of super jet engine or working on a computer. No where do we see anyone in live battle or anything of the sort, they just portey it as an adventure with cool things to do and see and learn.

These are commercials. I expect that of commercials. They are there for the simple reason to sell a product, in this case to improve enrolment. They fudge and smudge the reality of military life in order to make it seem ideal, and because it's an advertisment, it can be biased and such.

The news is not commercials. The news isn't meant to have bias. The news is here to tell us what's going on. If thousands of soldiers are dying and tens of thousands are being injured, SOME of that has to leak through. When they, on very rare occasion, show military officers under fire or being injured or killed, they are showing what is actually happening. They are being honest. They aren't hiding the truth. When we vote and decide on who we want to command our military, we should be able to make an informed decision. We have a dishonest coward for a president, and a lot of people are drying because of it. Why hide that? To protect the secret of the Emperor's clothes.

It's not "anti-war sentiment", it's pro-soldier's lives sentiment. I don't want soldiers to die. I want them to live.
I want them to not be in a place where they don't belong, I want them to be home.
I want them to be able to do their job, protecting the US, effectively and efficiently.
I don't want them to die for nothing.
End of story, woudln't you say?

UNLESS, you're so blinded by partisanship that you place loyalty to a lying president over the lives of our troops.

reconmike · 02-02-2007, 10:53 AM

I personally think that some embedded reporters should fall "victim" to a few friendly fire incidents, maybe they would learn what should be published or not.

And Host why do you repeatedly quote Reagan on his Vietnam noble cause?
Perhaps you might not have noticed while you were hiding from the US government in those years, but a Democrat started that noble war and Reagan was just trying to remove the defeatest stygma we recieved from all the draft dodging, card burning, Hanoi Jane loving, losers in this country who would not allow us to win that war.

powerclown · 02-02-2007, 11:09 AM

It's becoming apparent that you have an uneasy obsession with Duke Cunningham and his merry band of weasels. You bring it up in almost every thread in politics lately, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the OP or not.

Venezuela? Let's mention republican corruption.
Health care? It's about republican corruption.
Sadaam Hussein? republican corruption.
Military expenditures? how bout that republican corruption.
China? never mind - republican corruption.
Tax incentives? No, republican corruption.
United Nations? yeah right, republican corruption.
Economic stimulus? republican corruption.
War on Terror? republican corruption.
Evangelism? republican corruption
Abortion? republican corruption
Gun control? republican corruption
Asteroids hitting earth? republican corruption.
Global warming? republican corruption.
Britney Spears crotch? republican corruption.
Harry Potter? republican corruption.
SUV sales? republican corruption
Endangered species? republican corruption.
Chocolate chip cookies? republican corruption.
Tub & tile cleaner? republican corruption.
Anal sex? republican corruption
Smoking? republican corruption
Dandruff? republican corruption.
Internet? republican corruption.
Heroin addiction? republican corruption.

No host, I won't be clicking on any of your links. Just more articles from those who sensibilities match your own. And since I disagree with you about basically everything concerning this war, by default your cut and pastes carry no weight with me. I understand what your are trying to point out, I just don't agree with any of it.

dc_dux · 02-02-2007, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

When it comes to offending my sensibilities, the NYT doesn't dissapoint. With people like Bill Arkin reporting, its pretty easy. I don't know about you, but watching american soldiers being killed is offensive to me. Maybe you enjoy it...maybe you think they're getting whats coming to them. Maybe you secretly root for the insurgency. Maybe you celebrate over every dead american soldier. It's not a stretch at all, going by the way some people talk here. Some people hate this country with a derision bordering on psychosis....

Without responding directly to the ignorant implied insult, I would simply suggest that maybe I place a higher value on the truth than you.

host · 02-02-2007, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

I personally think that some embedded reporters should fall "victim" to a few friendly fire incidents, maybe they would learn what should be published or not.

And Host why do you repeatedly quote Reagan on his Vietnam noble cause?
Perhaps you might not have noticed while you were hiding from the US government in those years, but a Democrat started that noble war and Reagan was just trying to remove the defeatest stygma we recieved from all the draft dodging, card burning, Hanoi Jane loving, losers in this country who would not allow us to win that war.

I quote Reagan because his "noble war" campaign rhetoric was symptomatic of the same politics of denial....the failure to observe, digest, learn from, and then avoid making the same mistakes that get our troops and innocent civilians in places like Vietnam, killed....for nothing....in avoidable "expeditions" that end up showing us what those of us who didn't fall under Reagan's fiction, already knew. Vietnam was a mistake, a series of mistakes, that subsequent generations of US leaders and the populace, could have learned mcuh more from....if not for the "story telling" of Reagan and of his supporters.

That crap is written all over your post, reconmike. The contradictions in your post make it incoherent. You've got a president who has given us another Vietnam, in or own generation, complete with US troops inserted in the midst of a civil war, in a country where the local boys who are of similar age of our own troops, refuse to make the commitment that our troops are ordered to make....to fight for a corrupt and ineffective national government that locals themselves are not willing to fight and die for....

....and you have it wrong, mike...what you refer to as "the defeatest stygma" is the lesson of prudence and discernment in deciding when and where to commit US troops...to place them "under fire", only when it is absolutely necessary.....thanks to the bullshit rhetoric of these two guys....commanding a gullible audience of "the faithful", much more impressionable and willing to believe than any that "Fonda" could ever attract (hell....you and powerclown still believe it.....)...the potential to learn those "lessons" was detoured:

Quote:

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/london.html
“‘Vietnam’ in the New American Century”

....During the 1980 election campaign, Reagan coined the "Vietnam syndrome" metaphor and, in the same speech to a Veterans of Foreign Wars conference, redefined the war as a "noble cause."[13]By 1982, then President Reagan was articulating a version of the history of the Vietnam War, every sentence of which was demonstrably false.[14]
By the end of the 1980s, the matrix of illusions necessary for endless imperial warfare was in place and functioning with potency.The two great myths--the spat-upon veteran and postwar POWs--were deeply embedded in the national psyche.What was needed next was erasure of memory of the reality....

......How did we get to Gumpify "Vietnam"?

Throughout the decades that the United States was waging war in Vietnam, no incoming president uttered the word "Vietnam" in his inaugural address.[15]Ronald Reagan, in his 1981 inaugural speech, did include "a place called Vietnam" in his list of battlefields where Americans had fought in the twentieth century.But it was not until 1989 that a newly-elected president actually said anything about the Vietnam War.What he said was: forget it.

It was George Bush the First who broke the silence with these words explicitly calling for erasure:"The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory."Note that by now "Vietnam" was no longer a country or even "a place called Vietnam," as his predecessor had put it. It had become a war, an American war.Or not even a war. It was an American tragedy, an event that had divided and wounded America. Bush's speech went on to blame "Vietnam" for the "divisiveness," the "hard looks" in Congress, the challenging of "each other's motives," and the fact that "our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other." "It has been this way since Vietnam," he lamented.[16]

Two years later, Bush began the war against Iraq with the promise that “this will not be another Vietnam.”[17]Inextricably intertwined with "Vietnam," "Iraq" has also become a construct of simulations, an illusionary reality continually being spun........

.....The fantasy “Vietnam” has proved crucial to launching and maintaining the war against Iraq.In 1991, the myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran was invoked to discredit the burgeoning antiwar movement and to create the emotional support necessary to start the war.How this was done is explored brilliantly in the 1998 book The Spitting Image, the landmark study of the spat-upon veteran myth by sociologist Jerry Lembcke, himself a Vietnam veteran.

The Bush Administration had offered many different reasons for going to war: "liberating" Kuwait; defending Saudi Arabia; freeing all those foreign hostages Iraq was holding (I bet you forgot that one); Saddam as Hitler; the threat to America's oil supplies; the 312 Kuwaiti babies dumped out of incubators by Iraqi soldiers (a fiction concocted by leading PR firm Hill and Knowlton); and so on.But the only one that succeeded in generating the required passion was "Support our troops!Don't treat them like the spat-upon Vietnam vets!"From this flowed the ocean of yellow ribbons on cars and trucks and homes that deluged the American landscape.The yellow ribbon campaign, with its mantra of “Support Our Troops,”"dovetailed neatly," as Lembcke wrote, with that other Vietnam issue "about which the American people felt great emotion: the prisoner of war/missing in action (POW/MIA) issue."[19]So finally the war was not about political issues but about people.Which people?Again in Lembcke’s words, "Not Kuwaitis.Not Saudis. . . .The war was about the American soldiers who had been sent to fight it."(20)

In March 1991, gloating over what seemed America's glorious defeat of Iraq, President Bush jubilantly proclaimed to a nation festooned in its jingoist yellow ribbons, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!"[20]Kicked?Syndrome?Had Vietnam become America's addiction?Its pathology?

The President's diagnosis proved more accurate than his prognosis.Sixteen months after claiming to have cured us of our Vietnam disease, George Bush was on national TV shouting "Shut up and sit down!" at MIA family members heckling him at the July 1992 annual convention of the National League of Families.....

....death to the press....shoot the messenger.....ignore Duncan Hunter and Duke Cunningham, and blow the insignificant press reporting, up beyond all rational scale, compared to it's impact.....way to go boys....I'm a yankee doodle dandie.....born on the fourth of july.....

read it again, reconmike.....the "party" line.....report on the war the way we tell you, or lose your embedded status.....or maybe be executed by reconmike......the "liberal press"...the hippies....."Hanoi Jane"....convenient scapegoats trotted out to ignore the spectacle of the Vietnam, "groundhog day", that is Iraq !

Quote:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...itroom.02.html
THE SITUATION ROOM

Death Toll Climbing for American Troops in Iraq; CNN Sticks to Decision of Showing Dangers Troops Face; Is Do-Nothing Congress At Heart of Broken Government?

Aired October 23, 2006 - 17:00 ET

....BLITZER: Is -- is this appropriate, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Hunter, for the American public to see how awful, to see how brutal the war can actually be?

Because I -- I guess there has been criticism from the other side that we sort of whitewash, and we don't really convey to the American public the full extent of the brutality of the enemy. Do the American people have a right to know what war is like?

HUNTER: Well -- well, first, Wolf, the American people aren't made out of cotton candy. They understand, when you see 2,791 battlefield deaths, that people are killed, and they are killed in bad ways.

This is the first generation of Americans that could actually go online and watch an American be decapitated, have his head cut off by al-Zarqawi, as they watch. So, I would say that, contrary to what you are saying, this is a war in which more brutality is shown than probably any other.

But the point is that -- that this one killing of one American doesn't really tell any statistic. Of -- of the people killed in Iraq, 524 of our Americans have been killed in accidents, mainly automobile accidents. Now, you don't show automobile accidents, because it's not sexy. It's not violent. It doesn't draw a big audience. Showing the impact of a single bullet, a single shooting doesn't tell you anything. If you isolated one American going down on Omaha Beach at Normandy, what would that tell the American public?

BLITZER: Well, let me interrupt...

HUNTER: But how...

BLITZER: ... Mr. Chairman.

HUNTER: But -- but I guess my question to you is -- is, Wolf, how instructive would that be with respect to the conduct of the war? It tells you nothing, except an American was struck by a bullet and went down.

BLITZER: But we never actually showed the impact. And you can take a look at that five-minute report. And you will see that we never saw -- we went to black before that insurgent video, that propaganda video, which we ourselves called it a propaganda piece of footage...

(CROSSTALK)

HUNTER: Then -- then, what's the value, Wolf? What's the possible value, then?

BLITZER: The value -- some of -- some of the thinking -- and let me bring in General Grange on this.

When the Pentagon announces killed in action, they -- they don't refer to snipers specifically. They refer to small-arms fire. And there have been hundreds of American troops who have been killed in small-arms fire. And -- and one of the things that we saw in this video -- and, General Grange, let me let you elaborate -- is the nature of the enemy, how they stalk and try to kill American troops with these kinds of snipers.

But, go ahead, General, and -- and talk a little bit about that.

GRANGE: No, I mean, you can argue whether the tape should be shown or not.

I mean, I just looked back. Since 9/11, I mean, a different -- when you are asked to do a -- to make comment on a different segment, quite often, it's a decision you have to make, at least in my case, as a retired G.I., and working with the media periodically, that I always have a tough decision whether I should even comment or not.

In this case, this thing is shown overseas. And I knew it would be shown in some extent. Thank God that we show it in a -- in a better way than it is showed in its raw footage.

But point is that I guess I cheated a little bit, because we kind of -- my comments were kind of to turn it around and show the -- and capabilities of the enemy in this regard, and -- and how they use civilians for cover, and abuse civilian neighborhoods, and -- and just the way they operate, which is against the land -- rule of land warfare, to expose those things.

So, you know, in a difficult situation like this, showing it or not, I think it's also an opportunity to exploit these guys, and give the information to our people, so we can survive and take them down.

HUNTER: General, I look at it just the opposite.

I think showing Americans being killed by terrorists, with -- apparently, with impunity, because the film doesn't show the terrorists then being pursued and killed. And lots of terrorists who have shot at Americans took their last shot at the Americans, because they themselves were killed in turn.

But showing the world a film, and lots of terrorists out there watching their TV sets, a picture of an American being killed in a crowd by a terrorist who operates, apparently, with impunity, and gets away, is highly suggestive, I think, and highly instructive to them.

And I think it's dangerous to Americans, not only uniformed Americans, but also tourists, Americans who might go abroad and be in one of those crowds one day, when somebody who saw that film, how you just walk up and kill them while they are in a crowd, decides to replicate that action.

BLITZER: All right.

HUNTER: Well, sir, if I may, it's a point well taken. And -- and I recognize that.

And -- and I would say that, in the comments that were said in this, that, in my evaluation, they were not all -- they did not kill a lot of the Americans in this shot. They missed. There were some wounds. And, in fact, the -- they were not that good, and which would have been a different slant, the way it was shown internationally, compared to how it was shown by -- in the United States.

BLITZER: <b>We're almost out of time, Mr. Chairman, but let me just wrap it up.

In your -- your letter, you suggest that CNN reporters no longer be allowed to be embedded with U.S. military forces in Iraq. We have several of our reporters all the time embedded, literally risking their lives, very courageous reporters, whether Michael Ware. John Roberts is embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq right now. And -- and we have -- we have -- we have been doing that for three-and-a-half years.

Are you at least open to this notion that good people, like you and General Grange, can disagree on this, without questioning the -- the credibility, the patriotism of CNN?</b>

<h3>HUNTER: I think that -- I think the question I asked when I saw this, Wolf, is, does CNN want America to win this thing?</h3>

And, if I was a platoon leader there, as I once was, and I had a -- and I had a news organization which had shown, had -- had taken film from the enemy, showing them killing one of my soldiers, and they asked if they could be embedded in my platoon, my answer would be no.

I go back to the -- to the -- the days of guys like Joe Rosenthal, who filmed the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, and Ernie Pyle, who was a soldier's reporter, the guys who were on our side -- even though they reported the rough and the tough of the war, they were on our side.

You can't be on both sides. And I would say, if I was that platoon leader, I would say, absolutely not. Take CNN out of there. You can't be on both sides.....

When asked by Blitzer, Duncan Hunter, corrupt war profiteer and peddler of the influence of his high office, in a "time of war", was not able to,

Quote:

Are you at least open to this notion that good people, like you and General Grange, can disagree on this, without questioning the -- the credibility, the patriotism of CNN?

....disagree.....and neither is reconmike or powerclown....instead, out comes the broad brush...to paint all of those who want the new Vietnam to stop....
as non-patriots who don't support "the troops"......

dc_dux · 02-02-2007, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown
This war has opened my eyes to a whole new level of anger, alienation and desperation I never knew existed. Some people will literally say or do anything.

“The open-minded see the truth in different things: the narrow-minded see only the differences.” ~ chinese proverb

Seaver · 02-02-2007, 11:39 AM

Well Host, the spitting on vets in Vietnam might be hard to pin down, but this war isn't. How about trying these on for size?

http://www.kirotv.com/news/9765757/detail.html

Quote:

New Questions In Case Of Attack On Guardsman

POSTED: 4:33 pm PDT August 30, 2006
UPDATED: 9:21 am PDT September 1, 2006

PARKLAND, Wash. -- Authorities are continuing to investigate a National Guardsman's claim that he was attacked earlier this week in Parkland and called "a baby killer."

A witness who came forward after the incident told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News a different story about what happened on Tuesday morning, but deputies said the witness later changed that story when they interviewed him.

The witness told police he saw several men in uniform beat a man in civilian clothes, but later changed his account to back the guardsman.

Investigators said the witness's stories were inconsistent with the guardsman's, and they are back to "square one" in the investigation.

The guardsman, Alexander Powell, said he was walking to a convenience store when a sport utility vehicle pulled up alongside him and the driver asked if he was in the military and if he had been in any action.

The driver then got out of the vehicle, displayed a gun and shouted insults at Powell. Four other suspects exited the vehicle and knocked the soldier down, punching and kicking him, calling him a "baby killer" during the attack, according to Powell.

The driver was described as a white male, 25-30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, heavy build, short blond hair, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, and armed with a handgun.

The vehicle's passengers were described as white males, 20-25 years old. Some of the men wore red baseball hats and red sweatshirts during the attack.

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004021.htm

Yeah, it's a political site but you post 10 a day so it'll have to do.

Quote:

Lots of readers watched Fox & Friends this morning and e-mailed about the disgusting greeting card a wounded soldier received while hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Thanks to reader Shari for taking these cell phone camera shots of the card displayed by co-host Brian Kilmeade:

The card front, decorated with patriotic and holiday stamps, was deceptively innocuous:

By the way, I won't post the dozens of anti-military posters which are posted during every single anti-war protest I've seen. Only one (and it's a relatively gentile one at that).

Willravel · 02-02-2007, 11:41 AM

This should be interesting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Venezuela? Let's mention republican corruption.

Rummy compared Hugo Chavez to Hitler last year.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Health care? It's about republican corruption.

Despite the fact that Federal Healthcare was actually introduced by a GOP Senator, the Rupublicans are opposed to most health legislation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Sadaam Hussein? republican corruption.

Bush gave him permission to attack the Kurds, then attacked him in response.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Military expenditures? how bout that republican corruption.

Well duh. Which party overwhelmingly supported the war and did so for years afterward?

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

China? never mind - republican corruption.

Expenditures = instability. Loans to China = instability.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Tax incentives? No, republican corruption.

Abramoff set up many tex-exempt organizations to raise money for the RNC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

United Nations? yeah right, republican corruption.

They're trying, but failing. And Bolton quit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Economic stimulus? republican corruption.

Well the republicans like to give money to those that horde it (Haliburton) instead of spend it, they make policies that take a while to take effect, and worsen the long term fiscal situation through spending and not taxing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

War on Terror? republican corruption.

Obviously. No self respecting democratic president would suggest a war on an ideal. Gore, according to several interviews, would have declaired the al Qaeda an enemy of the state and would have probab ly captured Bin Laden by now because he wouldn't have invaded Iraq, sending much needed troops away from the search.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Evangelism? republican corruption

No, but some republican corruption does have it's roots in extreemist Christianity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Abortion? republican corruption

They made it a religious issue which killed it. It should have been a logistical issue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Gun control? republican corruption

Huh?

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Asteroids hitting earth? republican corruption.

Instead of spending on defences, they have spent on a needless war.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Global warming? republican corruption.

Have you read the clean air act?

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Britney Spears crotch? republican corruption.

Using meaningless distractions to keep people to busy with tripe to be concerned about the big issues, like the war, is second nature to politics.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Harry Potter? republican corruption.

When did this become carcastic? Oh, right the whole thing was meant to be sarcastic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

SUV sales? republican corruption

Clean air act.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Endangered species? republican corruption.

Clean air act.

Enjoy, and /end threadjack

dc_dux · 02-02-2007, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

By the way, I won't post the dozens of anti-military posters which are posted during every single anti-war protest I've seen. Only one (and it's a relatively gentile one at that).

Seaver...I think if you were being honest (but you would have to violate the Michelle Makin propaganda policy), you would also acknowledge that those posters do not represent the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of the millions of Americans who oppose the war....but who respect or tolerate their rights to protest in that manner.

BTW, UStwo would use the same technique with graphic posters of a few angry muslims shaking their fists. ..and somehow from that..the Muslim religion is out to kill us all...which "justified" the invasion of Iraq.

roachboy · 02-02-2007, 12:55 PM

so you see in powerclown and seavers' posts how this "support our troops" nonsense plays out. so as for the arguments about the characteristics and functions of these claims, q.e.d.

powerclown · 02-02-2007, 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

It's not "anti-war sentiment", it's pro-soldier's lives sentiment. I don't want soldiers to die. I want them to live.

I hear what you're saying, but you should understand something:

It is a soldiers job to fight for his country and his people, to the death if necessary. This is a soldier's purpose in life. It is arrogant, patronizing and condescending to imply that a soldier doesn't know what he is getting himself into when he signs up for service. Don't you think soldiers want to live, too? Do you think they join the service because they want to die a horrible death in a foreign land, away from friends and family?

I wonder why it is that you don't want american soldiers to die?

What do you know better than the fighting men know?
Have you experienced war yourself? Do you know what it's like?
Who are you to tell a soldier he doesn't know his business?
Are you sure you just don't want them following the war orders of their commanders? ARE YOU SURE?

Seaver · 02-02-2007, 01:23 PM

Quote:

so you see in powerclown and seavers' posts how this "support our troops" nonsense plays out. so as for the arguments about the characteristics and functions of these claims, q.e.d.

I've never said you either support the war or hate the troops. If you read my post it was pointing out Host's argument that nothing like this ever happened in Vietnam, that it's made up by the Right (like everything else).

Quote:

Seaver...I think if you were being honest (but you would have to violate the Michelle Makin propaganda policy), you would also acknowledge that those posters do not represent the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of the millions of Americans who oppose the war....but who respect or tolerate their rights to protest in that manner.

I've never said these sentiments were the majority of the anti-war crowd. I don't want to be grouped up with Jerry Falwell (sp?) or Anne Coulter, so I don't do that to others. Once again, my post was about Host claiming that no soldiers were ever spit on, that it was a Reaganite's wet dream.

reconmike · 02-02-2007, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I quote Reagan because his "noble war" campaign rhetoric was symptomatic of the same politics of denial....the failure to observe, digest, learn from, and then avoid making the same mistakes that get our troops and innocent civilians in places like Vietnam, killed....for nothing....in avoidable "expeditions" that end up showing us what those of us who didn't fall under Reagan's fiction, already knew. Vietnam was a mistake, a series of mistakes, that subsequent generations of US leaders and the populace, could have learned mcuh more from....if not for the "story telling" of Reagan and of his supporters.

That crap is written all over your post, reconmike. The contradictions in your post make it incoherent. You've got a president who has given us another Vietnam, in or own generation, complete with US troops inserted in the midst of a civil war, in a country where the local boys who are of similar age of our own troops, refuse to make the commitment that our troops are ordered to make....to fight for a corrupt and ineffective national government that locals themselves are not willing to fight and die for....

....and you have it wrong, mike...what you refer to as "the defeatest stygma" is the lesson of prudence and discernment in deciding when and where to commit US troops...to place them "under fire", only when it is absolutely necessary.....thanks to the bullshit rhetoric of these two guys....commanding a gullible audience of "the faithful", much more impressionable and willing to believe than any that "Fonda" could ever attract (hell....you and powerclown still believe it.....)...the potential to learn those "lessons" was detoured:

....death to the press....shoot the messenger.....ignore Duncan Hunter and Duke Cunningham, and blow the insignificant press reporting, up beyond all rational scale, compared to it's impact.....way to go boys....I'm a yankee doodle dandie.....born on the fourth of july.....

read it again, reconmike.....the "party" line.....report on the war the way we tell you, or lose your embedded status.....or maybe be executed by reconmike......the "liberal press"...the hippies....."Hanoi Jane"....convenient scapegoats trotted out to ignore the spectacle of the Vietnam, "groundhog day", that is Iraq !

When asked by Blitzer, Duncan Hunter, corrupt war profiteer and peddler of the influence of his high office, in a "time of war", was not able to,

....disagree.....and neither is reconmike or powerclown....instead, out comes the broad brush...to paint all of those who want the new Vietnam to stop....
as non-patriots who don't support "the troops"......

Let me quote Reagan, Host "there you go again"

You are correct and wrong all for the same reasons,
we haven't learned from Vietnam, the powers that be should have learned that you do not let the american public decide how and where battles are fought.

Where does it say that reporters have a right to embedded status? Where does it say that the american public has a right to know what happens every minute of every battle? It doesn't.

And you can bet your ass that if a reporter captured something I did on film that I didnt want to be published and he didnt surrender the film, HE would be a casulity of war. Better a dead reporter the RM in prison.

Willravel · 02-02-2007, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

I hear what you're saying, but you should understand something:

It is a soldiers job to fight for his country and his people, to the death if necessary. This is a soldier's purpose in life. It is arrogant, patronizing and condescending to imply that a soldier doesn't know what he is getting himself into when he signs up for service. Don't you think soldiers want to live, too? Do you think they join the service because they want to die a horrible death in a foreign land, away from friends and family?

How many soldiers thought that Iraq had direct links to 9/11 when they signed up? It's not condescending to explain that everyone was fooled. I think that most soldiers sign up to protect their country. There are no soldiers in Iraq defending the US right now. Not one. They have been fooled or confused or indoctrinated. If it makes me arrogant to point that out, then maybe arrogance is what the soldiers need to hear in order to figure out what's really going on. I don't think I'm arrogant, I know I'm a realist. If soldiers can't take the sting of truth, how can they be expected to take the sting of battle?

Also, I know a lot of military officers. I'm not operating in a vaccum. I talk with my friends in Iraq all the time, and they will, on occasion, get read the riot act. I had one of my friends start to tell me how they scared the shit out of some Iraqi family one night, and I calld him on it immediatally. I think a lot of soldiers are scared and confused, and I think that a lot of the bullshit rhetoric that comes out of the white house is accepted as gospel by the troops because they want to believe that what they are doing isn't a waste. That's what we professionals call denial.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

I wonder why it is that you don't want american soldiers to die?

A meaningless death is probably the worst thing for any soldier. My grandfather, one of my biggest role models, was a career army officer. He was a big part of my development of the understanding of concepts like honor and sacrafice. When a soldier dies meaninglessly, it is as if their honor has been stolen from them. I can't imagine anything worse for someone who regards honor highly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

What do you know better than the fighting men know?

I'm seperated from groupthink, and you're trying to make an appeal of emotion argument, which is a fallacy. Support our troops doesn't mean our troops are always right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Have you experienced war yourself? Do you know what it's like?

I've been shot in the leg with a pistol, but no. I've not been a soldier, because I know that I would be required to answer to a president who usually doesn't know jack shit about war, but that's a personal position. I don't hold others to that specific belief necessarily. This has more to do with allowing the fog of confusion to allow our defensive fource to become a personal military to a few corrupt people.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Who are you to tell a soldier he doesn't know his business?

I'm Willravel, and I'm right. Don't pretend like a soldier is automatically right because he's a soldier, as that insults both of our intelects.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Are you sure you just don't want them following the war orders of their commanders? ARE YOU SURE?

I want them to defend the country as they want to do. Iraq has nothing to do with the defence of our country. When the want to fight in Iraq is based on misconceptions because of continued lies....well you can see the death count. You can see the fighting continue. You can see terrorism on the rise. Nothing good has come of this. We are killing more people than Saddam would have had he remained in power.

reconmike · 02-02-2007, 08:39 PM

Quote:

How many soldiers thought that Iraq had direct links to 9/11 when they signed up? It's not condescending to explain that everyone was fooled. I think that most soldiers sign up to protect their country. There are no soldiers in Iraq defending the US right now. Not one. They have been fooled or confused or indoctrinated. If it makes me arrogant to point that out, then maybe arrogance is what the soldiers need to hear in order to figure out what's really going on. I don't think I'm arrogant, I know I'm a realist. If soldiers can't take the sting of truth, how can they be expected to take the sting of battle?

Also, I know a lot of military officers. I'm not operating in a vaccum. I talk with my friends in Iraq all the time, and they will, on occasion, get read the riot act. I had one of my friends start to tell me how they scared the shit out of some Iraqi family one night, and I calld him on it immediatally. I think a lot of soldiers are scared and confused, and I think that a lot of the bullshit rhetoric that comes out of the white house is accepted as gospel by the troops because they want to believe that what they are doing isn't a waste. That's what we professionals call denial.

Who are you? Some "professional" that sits in an office playing arm chair quaterback?
Most who join the military and combat units do so because they are warriors,
I know it is hard to believe but there are still men out there that want to do that, be a warrior.
Whether you know this or not when someone joins the military they volunteer,
meaning they can get a contract stating what their MOS, (job, for you professional types) will be.
Who says you that what you speak is the truth, you aren't arrogant, but what the "professionals" call having delusions of granduer.

Most combatants there aren't scared or confused, most are seasoned veterans, who also know what to do under fire and how to do it.
They are "professional" soldiers, and trained in the arts combat.
Again sit in that office and speak for "most" of the people bearing what is going on there.

Quote:

A meaningless death is probably the worst thing for any soldier. My grandfather, one of my biggest role models, was a career army officer. He was a big part of my development of the understanding of concepts like honor and sacrafice. When a soldier dies meaninglessly, it is as if their honor has been stolen from them. I can't imagine anything worse for someone who regards honor highly.

Honor and sacrafice? Did you learn either of these from your grandfather?
What gives you the experience to know any of our troop's deaths were without honor. Sounds like selfeshness was learned also since you alone know the meaning of dying with or without honor.

Quote:

I've been shot in the leg with a pistol, but no. I've not been a soldier, because I know that I would be required to answer to a president who usually doesn't know jack shit about war, but that's a personal position. I don't hold others to that specific belief necessarily. This has more to do with allowing the fog of confusion to allow our defensive fource to become a personal military to a few corrupt people.

Were these the same views your grandfather, the career army / role model had? Because I am sure the during his tenure, he had one or two presidents that filled that descripton.

Quote:

I'm Willravel, and I'm right. Don't pretend like a soldier is automatically right because he's a soldier, as that insults both of our intelects.

Again who says your right? He asked you who are you to tell a soldier his business? Untill your on the business end of a firearm, bb guns excluded,
you haven't a clue what soldiering is about.

Quote:

I want them to defend the country as they want to do. Iraq has nothing to do with the defence of our country. When the want to fight in Iraq is based on misconceptions because of continued lies....well you can see the death count. You can see the fighting continue. You can see terrorism on the rise. Nothing good has come of this. We are killing more people than Saddam would have had he remained in power.

Terrorism on the rise? I am finding it hard to locate the terror attacks on the US post 9/11.

Death count on the rise? Really? Someone with such a strong military background should know this happens in war.

dc_dux · 02-02-2007, 09:28 PM

mike...I think your underlying assumption that most join the military because they are warriors is wrong.

I recall seeing a recent DoD survey that identified educational benefits as the number one reason for enlistment, followed by serving and protecting the country and learning a valuable or technical skill (I forget the order of these two reasons). Most have no interest or intent of becoming career soldiers.

Thats not to say that the volunteers dont also have a sense of patriotism and understand that they may be asked to put their lives on the line to defend the country.

But they(and their families and the country as a whole) should also expect that their Commander in Chief respect their commitment and their lives as well by never putting them in harms way based on lies or in pursuit of a political ideology that is not defensable by necessity or geo-political realities.

powerclown · 02-02-2007, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

I think a lot of soldiers are scared and confused, and I think that a lot of the bullshit rhetoric that comes out of the white house is accepted as gospel by the troops because they want to believe that what they are doing isn't a waste. That's what we professionals call denial.

It doesn't matter if they're scared, or confused, or in denial, or against the policy - none of that matters, the military isn't a democracy. When the commander gives an order, the soldier obeys without hesitation, or he/she is immediately discharged, court-martialed or otherwise removed from his post. Insubordination is insubordination in any walk of professional life, and magnified tenfold in the military - any military - for reasons of practicality and ultimately, survival. And again, the US military is a volunteer army.

Quote:

Support our troops doesn't mean our troops are always right.

Now were getting to the heart of the matter. If one is ready to acknowledge that a military force is an extension of government policy, than how are the two to be separated, ideologically speaking? Can one blame the troops for anything they do, when they are only following orders? If one disapproves with a government's decision to use military force, can one approve of those individuals directly responsible for implementing the government decision? I'm questioning the consistency of maintaining separate ideological positions relative to a central government and the military branch of that government.

Willravel · 02-02-2007, 10:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

Who are you? Some "professional" that sits in an office playing arm chair quaterback? Most who join the military and combat units do so because they are warriors, I know it is hard to believe but there are still men out there that want to do that, be a warrior. Whether you know this or not when someone joins the military they volunteer, meaning they can get a contract stating what their MOS, (job, for you professional types) will be.
Who says you that what you speak is the truth, you aren't arrogant, but what the "professionals" call having delusions of granduer.

Who am I? I already answered that. I'm Willravel, and I'm right (at least on this). It's really simple: why does the military exist? To protect the lives and liberties of it's citizens. Is that being done in Iraq? No. The logic has to start there. Before you tell me about warriors and how everyone in the military is a volunteer (duh), we have to start at the basics. Our soldiers are not protecting american lives or liberties. Those who have had the misfortune to lose their lives or be injured over there have not done so to protect american lives or liberties. Also, I am hardly the only one who has correctly been taught what honor is. I'm sure that plenty of people here would agree that this is a travesty and is stripping the honor away from the military.

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

Were these the same views your grandfather, the career army / role model had? Because I am sure the during his tenure, he had one or two presidents that filled that descripton.

He fought in Vietnam because he was orderd to, but he made it very clear to me that we had no business being there. He explained how many lives were wasted and that he prayed that it never happened again. I'm glad he can't see this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

Again who says your right? He asked you who are you to tell a soldier his business? Untill your on the business end of a firearm, bb guns excluded, you haven't a clue what soldiering is about.

Who said anything about a "bb gun"? It was a 9mm round that I'm told was probably from a Browning handgun (pistol is another word for hand gun, and is hardly a toy). It went clear through my calf. Have you ever been shot?

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

Terrorism on the rise? I am finding it hard to locate the terror attacks on the US post 9/11.

Since the War on Iraq, global deaths from terrorism have increased a great deal. Each year, the death count shows definate signs of increases globally. Terrorism is on the rise.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5889435/

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

Death count on the rise? Really? Someone with such a strong military background should know this happens in war.

Someone with two ears and a TV should know that the war was over years ago. Don't you remember the speech from the aircraft carrier by the president? Don't you remember "Mission Accomplished"? We won. Yay for us, eh?

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

It doesn't matter if they're scared, or confused, or in denial, or against the policy - none of that matters, the military isn't a democracy. When the commander gives an order, the soldier obeys without hesitation, or he/she is immediately discharged, court-martialed or otherwise removed from his post. Insubordination is insubordination in any walk of professional life, and magnified tenfold in the military - any military - for reasons of practicality and ultimately, survival. And again, the US military is a volunteer army.

Thank you for making a reasonable argument. I'm not asking anyone to disobey orders that they can't prove on the spot are a breach of the UCMJ or Geneva Conventions. Most of the peope over in Iraq are very honorable people, of that I have no doubt. The problem is that we, those who are still here on US soil, are not fighting hard enough to return our soldiers to defending the country, their job. I see many doing a lot, but it clearly isn't enough. 20,000 more brave souls are headed over there because the monkey in the oval office want's to salvage one of the most ignorant and selfish decisions made by a president in recent history. In order to "support the troops" we should fight to defend them with the same resolve that they fight to protect us. I have copies of letters I've sent to every Senator in the US on my computer. Each has been printed and mailed twice. I've recieved one response that basically read: "Don't call us, we'll call you."

The only main difference between Vietnam and Iraq is the draft. At the rate we are going now, Iraq will either end with the US leaving sooner, or the US having a draft and leaving later with an exponentially higher death count.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. If one is ready to acknowledge that a military force is an extension of government policy, than how are the two to be separated, ideologically speaking? Can one blame the troops for anything they do, when they are only following orders? If one disapproves with a government's decision to use military force, can one approve of those individuals directly responsible for implementing the government decision? I'm questioning the consistency of maintaining separate ideological positions relative to a central government and the military branch of that government.

I do blame a few of the soldiers for allowing some of the horrible corruption from the top to drip down on them, the rapists, the torturers, those that kill in cold blood, but most of the soldiers, as you have correctly pointed out, are good men and women who are stuck. I feel it's our responsibility to make sure that what they are fighting for is rightous and justified.

powerclown · 02-03-2007, 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

In order to "support the troops" we should fight to defend them with the same resolve that they fight to protect us.

Defend them by bringing them home in shame? Sorry will, I'm not seeing it. Especially when you had such virulent opposition to them from the start. People were clamoring for their return even during the early stages of the conflict. Some people want them out of Afghanistan as well. IMO, once the troops leave their barracks, the public should stand behind them for the duration, especially through hard times. Yet, the media and left had to keep droning on about petty foibles and trivialities from day one, in their efforts to sour the war effort. I don't think that is right. I don't think that is supporting the troops.

Willravel · 02-03-2007, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Defend them by bringing them home in shame?

Shame? Who said anything about shame? The only shame should be from being there in the first place. People should be proud that we are smart and just enough to leave. Going from invading countries to actaully defending our country should be a source of pride, not shame. Anyone who would feel shame from that need to reevaluate what's going on.

Do you agree the war was a mistake?

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

People were clamoring for their return even during the early stages of the conflict.

Do you know why?

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Some people want them out of Afghanistan as well.

Osama isn't in Afghanistan anymore. We probably should at least try to clean up the mess we made their, but the suspected mastermind behind 9/11, the reason we invaded, is no longer there. Intel points to Pakistan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

IMO, once the troops leave their barracks, the public should stand behind them for the duration, especially through hard times.

That's nuts. That's, and forgive the perfectly apt Godwin, like good germans supporting the Nazi soldiers despite being against the war. The Germans had no good reason to invade anyone, and neither does the US. If you want to support the troops, do so by helping them do their real job, defending the US. They aren't being ordered to do their job. They are being ordered to invade and occupy a soverign country.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Yet, the media and left had to keep droning on about petty foibles and trivialities from day one, in their efforts to sour the war effort. I don't think that is right. I don't think that is supporting the troops.

No WMDs and no al Quaeda links are the entire basis of the war, not trivia.

If your way of supporting the troops is allowing them to be in harms way for no reason, then I guess that's your call. I strongly disagree.

roachboy · 02-03-2007, 11:06 AM

seaver: i'd probably not have mentioned your post in another context. but in this one, i think it functions as i argue it does. the response you post concerning vietnam is at the (mythological) core of the historical narrative that lay behind how the meme "support our troops" is currently used.

maybe you'll see what i mean by my take on your post if you read through the thread at a bit of a remove. that's how i worked out my argument. what do you think?

powerclown · 02-03-2007, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

The only shame should be from being there in the first place.

I understand that this is the rationalization, but I don't support it. Again, once the troops were given the responsibility to fight, the american people had the responsibility to support their troops.

Quote:

Do you agree the war was a mistake?

I've said it before Ill say it again. No I don't think it was a mistake. It might have been poorly implemented, but not a mistake. No other country's army was "officially" involved in 9/11, yet someone had to pay, for a variety af reasons. No leading world power should be allowed to be attacked like that and not have the right to retaliation. It would set a terrible precedent.

Quote:

Osama isn't in Afghanistan anymore.

Everyone knows he's hiding along the border between Afgahnistan/Pakistan, but Pakistan won't let the US into the region, for its own political well-being. In other words, Pakistan is sheltering OBL and al-Qaeda and the Taliban. I am for a NATO presence in Afghanistan. The entire area is a cesspool of anti-western sentiment and religious fanaticism. Those systems are in dire need of reform, and I believe it can be done, in the same way South Korea, Germany and Japan were reformed. Something one nevers hears from the left, yet, they say they support their troops by god.

Quote:

That's nuts. That's, and forgive the perfectly apt Godwin, like good germans supporting the Nazi soldiers despite being against the war. The Germans had no good reason to invade anyone, and neither does the US. If you want to support the troops, do so by helping them do their real job, defending the US. They aren't being ordered to do their job. They are being ordered to invade and occupy a soverign country.

Again this goes back to the first question in this post. Something major needed to be done post-9/11. Every rational nation on earth condemned 9/11. There needed to be a paradigm change. The americans didn't hit Iraq out of an ambition to invade, conquer and enslave the entire middle east like the germans wanted to do to europe, so the german analogy doesn't stand. Globalization means defending the US is more than just standing at the border waiting for an attack.

boatin · 02-03-2007, 03:26 PM

But, but, but...

What the heck did Iraq have to do with 9-11? I know this has been done to death, how can anyone still connect the two?

I know many people who had no issue with the war in Afghanistan, but huge issues with Iraq. Are you saying "We were attacked, someone had to pay, we chose Sadam?" It looks like you are saying exactly that.

We randomly chose a villain, sent in our troops to fail, and when we object about how they are being wasted somehow we "aren't supporting the troops". It's kafka-esque...

Seaver · 02-03-2007, 03:43 PM

Quote:

seaver: i'd probably not have mentioned your post in another context. but in this one, i think it functions as i argue it does. the response you post concerning vietnam is at the (mythological) core of the historical narrative that lay behind how the meme "support our troops" is currently used.

maybe you'll see what i mean by my take on your post if you read through the thread at a bit of a remove. that's how i worked out my argument. what do you think?

Sorry, I re-read your prior post and still not understanding how you intended it but I'll take it on faith. However I fail to fully grasp your argument. Are you stipulating that the Vietnam anti-war stories (true or false) directly influence the support the troops defensiveness on both sides or just one?

If you are arguing that the stories directly affect both sides, the "I'm supporting the troops by pulling them out" as well as the "I'm supporting the troops by supporting what they're fighting for" crowds, then I would agree with you 100%. However to simply say that the conservative crowds are the only ones affected I could not disagree with more.

loquitur · 02-03-2007, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boatin

What the heck did Iraq have to do with 9-11? I know this has been done to death, how can anyone still connect the two?

Two symptoms of the same disease. Two tumors of the same cancer. The theory was, that if you show you're serious about shutting down bad guys, only the first couple of dominoes need to be pushed and then the rest will fall.

If your kids gets bitten by a scorpion in the backyard, do you go find that single scorpion that bit the kid, or do you hire an exterminator and make the yard inhospitable for scorpions?

The theory was a good one. The problem was in not following the Powell Doctrine.

roachboy · 02-03-2007, 05:54 PM

seaver: what i meant is that as a meme, as a device that operates in a context of opinion management, "support our troops" has a simple effect of creating false dilemmas. the logic of these false dilemmas should be obvious--they are not rocket science to work out. you support "our boys" then you support the war, the administration blah blah blah: if you oppose the war, then you oppose our boys, blah blah blah.

the meme has effects all the way around, but i dont see them as "evenly distributed"---those who are inclined to the right seem much more willing to internalize the meme-logic and to speak through it than those who are not so inclined. but it effects all sides in that it sets up a wholly fake set of questions/problems that you have to get through before you can have anything like a rational debate about the iraq debacle across political lines.

loquitor: that last post....its reasoning...is nonsense.
a reverse domino theory on top of it?
geez.
are you speaking on your own behalf, or working in some ironic way with assumptions that you know about but do not share?

i vote that you should answer (b).

loquitur · 02-03-2007, 06:08 PM

rb, if you can't remember what was being openly discussed four years ago, I can't help you.

I'll put this really simply: the idea was that there is some severe pathology in the Muslim world, particularly in the Arab world. That pathology was what led to 9/11. The boil had to be lanced. There was a very bad actor who was actually shooting at people, had invaded his neighbors, gassed his citizens, and refused to comply with UN ceasefire resolutions for a decade. He was a good candidate to be taken down and an example of civil society put into its place - the idea being that you'd only need to use force once, that once the momentum of healing the pathology took hold, it would spread.

Surely you remember all that? It wasn't kept secret. The president pretty much said so.

And as I said, in hindsight the mistake was not following the Powell Doctrine. The rest is history. But there is no mystery about why 9/11 led to the invasion of Iraq.

Willravel · 02-03-2007, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

I understand that this is the rationalization, but I don't support it. Again, once the troops were given the responsibility to fight, the american people had the responsibility to support their troops.

And how do we support our troops? By making sure that they don't die in vein.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

I've said it before Ill say it again. No I don't think it was a mistake. It might have been poorly implemented, but not a mistake. No other country's army was "officially" involved in 9/11, yet someone had to pay, for a variety af reasons. No leading world power should be allowed to be attacked like that and not have the right to retaliation. It would set a terrible precedent.

No evidence exists linking Iraq, Saddam, or any Iraqi official to 9/11. Does that register with you yet? Bush himself has said that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, desite what they said back in 2003 and 2004. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Iraq has never attacked the US. They lacked the means and the will. The "leading world power" invaded a soverign nation based on no real evidence. None. You couldn't be more wrong if you tried.

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Again this goes back to the first question in this post. Something major needed to be done post-9/11. Every rational nation on earth condemned 9/11. There needed to be a paradigm change. The americans didn't hit Iraq out of an ambition to invade, conquer and enslave the entire middle east like the germans wanted to do to europe, so the german analogy doesn't stand. Globalization means defending the US is more than just standing at the border waiting for an attack.

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and we invaded Iraq because of an ambition to instal a puppet government on one of the largest oil sources on the planet, so the german analogy is actually apt. No, we aren't trying to commit genocide, though a 150,000 death count in Iraq is hardly inconsequential, but we're the evil invaders in this tale.

loquitur · 02-03-2007, 06:21 PM

Btw, on the issue of returning troops being spat on, see this: http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu...27-CBS-17.html

I was apparently wrong: the stories aren't apocryphal. There's other stuff too.

roachboy · 02-03-2007, 06:58 PM

loquitor:

i asked about you about your relation to the information that you posted. which you did not answer.
do you think you could manage?

i did not set out a list of reasons why the argument for invading iraq floated by the administration are...um....worthless are (1) i couldnt work out the answer to the question above and (2) will has done a pretty good job of laying out that case in this thread already. so it'd have been redundant.

but hey, who knows?
maybe the linkages between arguments that purport to be based on a description of reality and the reality they purport to describe are not tops on your list of evaluation criteria.
you might enjoy busharguments for aesthetic reasons because they make the world simple and pretty;
or maybe because they enable you to impute legitimacy where there is none and that action fulfills some desire and so makes the world all pretty again;

or you might find them funny, in which case it hardly matters whether they are true according to other criteria or not;

or you might just like the manly feel you get from thinking about them, and that's all that matters--in which case they can't not be true because your manliness depends on the opposite being the case.

there are any number of frames that you can lay around an argument: whether the claims about the world they make line up with the actually existing world those arguments purport to describe is only one of them.
but the least you could do, if you cant manage to say whether you are serious or not, is to be up front about which logical game you are playing.

so far as i can tell, it cannot possibly be one in which the arguments about the world and the conditions these arguments purport to describe need have anything to do with each other.

but maybe we just play different games and happen by accident to find ourselves on the same board and are momentarily confused by that.
why not?
it's possible....

02-01-2007, 04:40 PM	#41 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	A predictable "non-response" response to the facts presented. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire

02-01-2007, 04:55 PM	#42 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	I reject the issue as you would have it. I'm sure the soldiers are thankful to the media for telling them how to outfit their vehicles. The US Army owes an enormous debt a gratitude to CNN, wonderful. I wonder if CNN correspondents have offered themselves to be strapped to humvee front bumpers as IED triggers. Talk about helping out a brutha. Back to the point: There is absolutely no excuse for a so-called prominent, responsible american newspaper to publish internet VIDEOS of american soldiers getting KIA. Under any circumstances. Ever. None. Period. End of story. Wouldn't you say? UNLESS, of course, you're an antiwar media empire pushing an antiwar sentiment. Then it's cool. Last edited by powerclown; 02-01-2007 at 05:56 PM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

02-01-2007, 09:04 PM	#43 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	The only absolute in journalism for as long as independent journalists have been covering US wars is to not reveal infomation of value to the enemy. Mathew Brady took photos of KIA in the Civil War. There are news archives of US troops being shot landing on Normandy Beach and Peter Jennings and Ed Bradley brought Vietnam firefights to the evening news. The only difference is that the news is now reported in real time. I would agree that today's war reporting requires a different set of ethics and standards that pays greater attention to the family of casuaties. In this case, without knowing the full story, I would agree that the NY Times may have stepped over the line in the timing of the story/video. But I would not say such reporting should be NONE....PERIOD. YOu dont seem to place the same value or the need for independent war journalists as I do....and the coverage of the good, the bad and the ugly, so that Americans sitting safely at home can really understand the cost of war. Or perhaps, you believe they (NY Times reporters, CNN reporters, etc) have an ulterior motive in their reporting...but I would suggest that is your own bias. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 02-01-2007 at 09:09 PM..

02-02-2007, 10:53 AM	#52 (permalink)
reconmike Thank You Jesus Location: Twilight Zone	I personally think that some embedded reporters should fall "victim" to a few friendly fire incidents, maybe they would learn what should be published or not. And Host why do you repeatedly quote Reagan on his Vietnam noble cause? Perhaps you might not have noticed while you were hiding from the US government in those years, but a Democrat started that noble war and Reagan was just trying to remove the defeatest stygma we recieved from all the draft dodging, card burning, Hanoi Jane loving, losers in this country who would not allow us to win that war. __________________ Where is Darwin when ya need him?

02-02-2007, 12:55 PM	#60 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	so you see in powerclown and seavers' posts how this "support our troops" nonsense plays out. so as for the arguments about the characteristics and functions of these claims, q.e.d. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-01-2007, 09:33 PM	#44 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	I think very highly of 3 NYT war reporters: John Burns, Dexter Filkins, and Michael Gordon. They very much put into perspective the likes of Arkin et al. These 3 have consistently been compelling, informative, enlightening, comprehensive and above all as neutral as possible, to my mind. I very much look forward to reading their articles. I also like Thomas Friedman, although he's not a war reporter in this war. Ask yourself this question: If the NYT are simply providing a neutral public service, to whom are they servicing? What demographic wants to see american soldiers KIA? Would you have reservations about foreign news agencies airing americans KIA?

02-02-2007, 01:25 AM	#46 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	What? You couldn't find anything negative to rake up about Friedman, Gordon or Burns? Christ host, I said I liked some of his reporting - I never said I wanted to fuck him. He's not my role model or someone I would blindly follow to the ends of the earth. And the NYT isn't my only source of information. The Grey Lady is usually my final source, when all other options have been exhausted, but not ever my only source. You really should give people more credit for their opinions. host, why do you think the NYT shows snuff films of american soldiers?

02-02-2007, 06:21 AM	#47 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	The NYT is the paper I read on the way in to work in the morning. It's the voice of the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan (more east than west, actually). I live in Queens, so it makes an interesting spectacle. I can only imagine what people living in Council Bluffs must think. Host, if you think the NYT isn't liberal enough, well......... <shaking head>

02-02-2007, 11:09 AM	#53 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	It's becoming apparent that you have an uneasy obsession with Duke Cunningham and his merry band of weasels. You bring it up in almost every thread in politics lately, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the OP or not. Venezuela? Let's mention republican corruption. Health care? It's about republican corruption. Sadaam Hussein? republican corruption. Military expenditures? how bout that republican corruption. China? never mind - republican corruption. Tax incentives? No, republican corruption. United Nations? yeah right, republican corruption. Economic stimulus? republican corruption. War on Terror? republican corruption. Evangelism? republican corruption Abortion? republican corruption Gun control? republican corruption Asteroids hitting earth? republican corruption. Global warming? republican corruption. Britney Spears crotch? republican corruption. Harry Potter? republican corruption. SUV sales? republican corruption Endangered species? republican corruption. Chocolate chip cookies? republican corruption. Tub & tile cleaner? republican corruption. Anal sex? republican corruption Smoking? republican corruption Dandruff? republican corruption. Internet? republican corruption. Heroin addiction? republican corruption. No host, I won't be clicking on any of your links. Just more articles from those who sensibilities match your own. And since I disagree with you about basically everything concerning this war, by default your cut and pastes carry no weight with me. I understand what your are trying to point out, I just don't agree with any of it.

02-02-2007, 09:28 PM	#66 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	mike...I think your underlying assumption that most join the military because they are warriors is wrong. I recall seeing a recent DoD survey that identified educational benefits as the number one reason for enlistment, followed by serving and protecting the country and learning a valuable or technical skill (I forget the order of these two reasons). Most have no interest or intent of becoming career soldiers. Thats not to say that the volunteers dont also have a sense of patriotism and understand that they may be asked to put their lives on the line to defend the country. But they(and their families and the country as a whole) should also expect that their Commander in Chief respect their commitment and their lives as well by never putting them in harms way based on lies or in pursuit of a political ideology that is not defensable by necessity or geo-political realities. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 02-02-2007 at 09:55 PM..

02-03-2007, 11:06 AM	#71 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	seaver: i'd probably not have mentioned your post in another context. but in this one, i think it functions as i argue it does. the response you post concerning vietnam is at the (mythological) core of the historical narrative that lay behind how the meme "support our troops" is currently used. maybe you'll see what i mean by my take on your post if you read through the thread at a bit of a remove. that's how i worked out my argument. what do you think? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-03-2007, 03:26 PM	#73 (permalink)
boatin Psycho	But, but, but... What the heck did Iraq have to do with 9-11? I know this has been done to death, how can anyone still connect the two? I know many people who had no issue with the war in Afghanistan, but huge issues with Iraq. Are you saying "We were attacked, someone had to pay, we chose Sadam?" It looks like you are saying exactly that. We randomly chose a villain, sent in our troops to fail, and when we object about how they are being wasted somehow we "aren't supporting the troops". It's kafka-esque...

02-03-2007, 05:54 PM	#76 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	seaver: what i meant is that as a meme, as a device that operates in a context of opinion management, "support our troops" has a simple effect of creating false dilemmas. the logic of these false dilemmas should be obvious--they are not rocket science to work out. you support "our boys" then you support the war, the administration blah blah blah: if you oppose the war, then you oppose our boys, blah blah blah. the meme has effects all the way around, but i dont see them as "evenly distributed"---those who are inclined to the right seem much more willing to internalize the meme-logic and to speak through it than those who are not so inclined. but it effects all sides in that it sets up a wholly fake set of questions/problems that you have to get through before you can have anything like a rational debate about the iraq debacle across political lines. loquitor: that last post....its reasoning...is nonsense. a reverse domino theory on top of it? geez. are you speaking on your own behalf, or working in some ironic way with assumptions that you know about but do not share? i vote that you should answer (b). __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-03-2007, 06:08 PM	#77 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	rb, if you can't remember what was being openly discussed four years ago, I can't help you. I'll put this really simply: the idea was that there is some severe pathology in the Muslim world, particularly in the Arab world. That pathology was what led to 9/11. The boil had to be lanced. There was a very bad actor who was actually shooting at people, had invaded his neighbors, gassed his citizens, and refused to comply with UN ceasefire resolutions for a decade. He was a good candidate to be taken down and an example of civil society put into its place - the idea being that you'd only need to use force once, that once the momentum of healing the pathology took hold, it would spread. Surely you remember all that? It wasn't kept secret. The president pretty much said so. And as I said, in hindsight the mistake was not following the Powell Doctrine. The rest is history. But there is no mystery about why 9/11 led to the invasion of Iraq.

02-03-2007, 06:21 PM	#79 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Btw, on the issue of returning troops being spat on, see this: http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu...27-CBS-17.html I was apparently wrong: the stories aren't apocryphal. There's other stuff too.

02-03-2007, 06:58 PM	#80 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	loquitor: i asked about you about your relation to the information that you posted. which you did not answer. do you think you could manage? i did not set out a list of reasons why the argument for invading iraq floated by the administration are...um....worthless are (1) i couldnt work out the answer to the question above and (2) will has done a pretty good job of laying out that case in this thread already. so it'd have been redundant. but hey, who knows? maybe the linkages between arguments that purport to be based on a description of reality and the reality they purport to describe are not tops on your list of evaluation criteria. you might enjoy busharguments for aesthetic reasons because they make the world simple and pretty; or maybe because they enable you to impute legitimacy where there is none and that action fulfills some desire and so makes the world all pretty again; or you might find them funny, in which case it hardly matters whether they are true according to other criteria or not; or you might just like the manly feel you get from thinking about them, and that's all that matters--in which case they can't not be true because your manliness depends on the opposite being the case. there are any number of frames that you can lay around an argument: whether the claims about the world they make line up with the actually existing world those arguments purport to describe is only one of them. but the least you could do, if you cant manage to say whether you are serious or not, is to be up front about which logical game you are playing. so far as i can tell, it cannot possibly be one in which the arguments about the world and the conditions these arguments purport to describe need have anything to do with each other. but maybe we just play different games and happen by accident to find ourselves on the same board and are momentarily confused by that. why not? it's possible.... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 02-03-2007 at 07:01 PM..