"Fixing" Non-Exsitent Problems, Does it only SEEM Corporate Media Is Promoting It?

[host]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...d-report_x.htm
Report refutes fraud at poll sites
Updated 10/11/2006 12:32 PM ET

TWO SIDES TO THE DEBATE

The debate over voting fraud has raged since the disputed 2000 presidential election:

• Republicans argue that voting by illegal immigrants and others cancels out legal votes. With ID laws, "illegals will realize the gig is up," says Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla.

• Democrats contend that fraud allegations are used to justify restrictions that suppress voting by poor and ethnic minorities. Illegal immigrants "are sneaking across the border for a job, not to vote," says Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — At a time when many states are instituting new requirements for voter registration and identification, a preliminary report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of the type of polling-place fraud those measures seek to stop.....

<i>host: Even with the above reporting pervasive in the last year, the WaPo refused to balance it's own editorial and a George Will column's opinion, with that of uniquely qaulified former civil servants at the DOJ, concerning this important appointment to the FEC:</i>

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/061477.php
12.19.07

Their op-ed, by the way, was rejected by the Washington Post – after the paper ran an <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/06/AR2007120602116.html">editorial</a> urging the Senate to approve von Spakovsky (“a flawed FEC is better than no FEC at all”) and a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/10/AR2007121001559.html">George Will column</a> that, beyond urging von Spakovsky’s confirmation, attacked the former Department officials who’d opposed it. They respond to Will here as well.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialg...t_be_confirmed
Von Spakovsky Should Not Be Confirmed
J. Gerald Hebert and Joseph Rich's picture
By J. Gerald Hebert and Joseph Rich | bio

<i>(Because the Washington Post refused to publish this piece rebutting this George Will column, we're publishing it here in full. If you're interested in background on Spakovsky, check out the TPMmuckraker archives. - ag)</i>

Doomsday scenarios of an unregulated 2008 election are being threatened in an attempt to force through the confirmation of a Federal Election Commission (FEC) nominee, Hans von Spakovsky, who is deeply embroiled in the scandals over the politicization of the Department of Justice (DOJ). But, what is forgotten in these scenarios is that it is von Spakovsky’s shameful record of minority vote suppression and partisan abuse of his office while at DOJ that has caused several Democratic Senators to put a hold on confirmation.

We are former career attorneys in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division who spent a combined 58 years there. Since the confirmation hearings concerning the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission last June, we have vigorously opposed his nomination. While he was at the Civil Rights Division, von Spakovsky played a central role in injecting partisan political factors into decision-making on enforcement matters and the hiring process, and made repeated efforts to intimidate career staff. Moreover, he was the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights.

The shameful record compiled by von Spakovsky was detailed in two letters (available here and here) sent to the Senate Rules Committee earlier this year by six former voting section staff members who were under von Spakovsky’s supervision while at DOJ. Those letters not only cited grossly political actions by von Spakovsky, they also noted numerous other abuses, including an obvious conflict of interest when von Spakovsky refused to disqualify himself from reviewing the Georgia voter ID law after he published anonymously a law review article arguing in favor of such laws.

There are a variety of ways to resolve the current impasse over the von Spakovsky nomination whose case for confirmation cannot stand on the merits. The threat of an FEC shutdown is greatly exaggerated and certainly no reason to call upon the Senate to ‘hold its nose’ and confirm von Spakovsky as an FEC Commissioner.....

Background:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200...printable=true
Poll Position
Is the Justice Department poised to stop voter fraud-or to keep voters from voting?
by Jeffrey Toobin September 20, 2004

...One of the more controversial parts of the new law requires, in most circumstances, voters who have registered by mail to provide their driver’s license or Social Security numbers, and to produce an official photo I.D. at the polls, or a utility bill. Hans A. von Spakovsky, a counsel to Acosta and the main Justice Department interpreter of hava, wrote to Judith A. Armold, an assistant attorney general in Maryland, that the Justice Department believed states must “verify” the Social Security numbers that people submit on their registration forms. For most states, this requirement won’t apply until 2006, but it may be a major hurdle for both the states and newly registered voters. “What D.O.J. is saying is clearly contrary to the statute in our view,” Armold says.

Von Spakovsky, a longtime activist in the voting-integrity cause, has emerged as the Administration’s chief operative on voting rights. Before going to Washington, he was a lawyer in private practice and a Republican appointee to the Fulton County Registration and Election Board, which runs elections in Atlanta. He belonged to the Federalist Society, a prominent organization of conservative lawyers, and had also joined the board of advisers of a lesser-known group called the Voting Integrity Project.

The V.I.P. was founded by Deborah Phillips, a former county official of the Virginia Republican Party, as an organization devoted principally to fighting voting fraud and promoting voter education. In 1997, von Spakovsky wrote an article for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research group, that called for an aggressive campaign to “purge” the election rolls of felons. Within months of that article’s publication, the V.I.P. helped put von Spakovsky’s idea into action. Phillips met with the company that designed the process for the removal of alleged felons from the voting rolls in Florida, a process that led, notoriously, to the mistaken disenfranchisement of thousands of voters, most of them Democratic, before the 2000 election. (This year, Florida again tried to purge its voting rolls of felons, but the method was found to be so riddled with errors that it had to be abandoned.) During the thirty-six-day recount in Florida, von Spakovsky worked there as a volunteer for the Bush campaign. After the Inauguration, he was hired as an attorney in the Voting Section and was soon promoted to be counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, in what is known as the “front office” of the Civil Rights Division. In that position, von Spakovsky, who is forty-five years old, has become an important voice in the Voting Section. (Von Spakovsky, citing Justice Department policy, has also declined repeated requests to be interviewed.)

In a recent speech at Georgetown University, von Spakovsky suggested that voting integrity will remain a focus for the Justice Department, and that voter access might best be left to volunteers. “Frankly, the best thing that can happen is when both parties and candidates have observers in every single polling place, wherever the votes are collected and tabulated, because that helps make sure that nothing happens that shouldn’t happen, that the votes are counted properly, and that there is transparency to maintain public confidence in elections,” he said. “Not enough people volunteer to be poll-watchers. They ought to do that so that there are poll-watchers everywhere in the country throughout the whole election process.” The Bush-Cheney campaign has announced plans to place lawyers on call for as many as thirty thousand precincts on Election Day, to monitor for vote fraud. Democratic lawyers also plan to be out in force.

Since Ashcroft took office, traditional enforcement of the Voting Rights Act has declined. The Voting Section has all but stopped filing lawsuits against communities alleged to have engaged in discrimination against minority voters. “D.O.J. is a very bureaucratic institution,” Jon Greenbaum, the former Voting Section lawyer, said, “and it’s hard to get cases filed under any Administration, but we were filing cases in the Clinton years.” As even civil-rights advocates acknowledge, there are fewer vote-discrimination cases to bring than there have been in the past. The Justice Department’s Web site says that “several lawsuits of this nature are filed every year,” but since Bush was sworn in the Voting Section has filed just one contested racial vote-discrimination case, in rural Colorado, which it lost. Justice Department sources say the Voting Section is also considering whether to sue a Mississippi locality that has an African-American majority. Such a lawsuit would be the first use of a key section of the Voting Rights Act to protect the rights of white voters.

The main business of the Voting Section is still passing judgment on legislative redistricting in areas that have a history of discrimination. Under Ashcroft, its actions have consistently favored Republicans—for instance, in Georgia, where the department challenged the Democrats’ gerrymander, and in Mississippi, where the Voting Section stalled the redistricting process for so long that a pro-Republican redistricting plan went into effect by default....

Another great and costly to our country, example:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/in...4a05d8&ei=5070
May 26, 2004
FROM THE EDITORS
The Times and Iraq

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so — reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

<h3>But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged.</h3> Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently verified.

On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that American officials took that defector — his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri — to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers.

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. <h3>Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power:</h3> "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."

Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.

On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American troops into Iraq, another front-page article declared, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." It began this way: "A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said."

The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda — two claims that were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi "scientist" — who in a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence — had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.

The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the attempts to verify his claims.

A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at nytimes.com/critique. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.

We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

It is costing all of us. The penchant of the present presidential administration to focus on problems which don't exist or are distorted into importance no supported by facts, is exposed, time and again, yet the major news outlets in the US keep falling for it, or fully supporting it.

Why do so many here believe that corporate media is too liberal. How many times do they have to be exposed sucking the c**k oi their corporate political sympathies and priorities before that belief wanes, at all?

[Ustwo]

Let me be the first to say I have no idea what you are talking about, how the related links tie into it, and compared to most of America the press is liberal. Compared to you, the press is fascist, but we have been over this already.

[roachboy]

well, this is interesting.

first off, let me say that i dont know what ustwo is talking about either.

the construction of this illusion called "the liberal press" was an aspect of the populist conservative movement's shift to the hard (read neo-fascist) right...it normalized the move to an extent, making it seem reactive. such moves require a blurring of interpretive lines, a collapse of distance--if folk were to say to themselves "i am becoming neo-fascist" rather than "i am becoming conservative" because the dulcet tones of a limbaugh--to pick an easy example from the past--make sense, i doubt there would have been such drift as there was.

you can see the constructedness of the notion of "the liberal press" in its immobility. it doesn't require justification, does not require systematic application, in fact the meme works better when there is no data. liberal basically means that which excludes conservative premises. that's it. so it has no content. it needs no content. it is "not us" that is its content.

but ustwo asserts its existence as a fact--and perhaps in certain quadrants of the world of the right, it is. in the bigger world, there is a diversity of positions running through any media outlet, some more enamored of conservative-friendly special ways of thinking and writing, some less so.

but you do have a clear consensus across all of this--that stuff lke neo-liberalism makes sense, that it is meet not to report too much on the catastrophic record neoliberalism has produced for itself as the official ideological frame for all kinds of extensions of american empire dressed up as "globalization"--that it is meet not to cover political dissent--that it is meet to provide the Dear Leader with whatever is required to maintain a veneer of political legitimacy to the overall order because it is only within the context of an order understood as legitimate that a loyal opposition can operate.

the loyal opposition accumulates cultural capital for itself no matter which actions it takes relative to the existing order: if it supports elements, it wins, if it opposes other elements, it still wins. this generates the impression of a viable circuit which links criticism and by extension a wider public to the discourses and fact of power: this generates the impression that the is a viable circuit which links dissent to clarification of problems to the processes whereby policy of formulated/power is exercised.
so you do not see much in the way of questions raised about the ideological assumptions that shape this movement, nor do you see much in the way of serious critiques of the existing order as a whole---so much for any idea that the press works in opposition--so much for the idea of the oppositional "liberal" press, so much for any suprise coming from the various movements in support of, in opposition to, obscuring or pursuing. the american press works for itself.


the logic of the op is obvious enough if you read the posts...the sweeping away of questions concerning the 2000 election--which you would think would require a serious investigation--because you would think that questions about the integrity of the voting system would be yet another serious blow to the rickety edifice that is the legitimacy of this system--but apparently folk think that this is not necessary and so are willing to allow problems to eat away at the procedural legitimacy of the system they imagine themselves to be defending.

it's bad enough the wreckage left by 7 years of sustain incompetence by the present administration..rather than try to look out for procedural legitimacy, the right prefers to pretend nothing is happening. ustwo, faithful little belleweather of this in the micro-world of tfp, shows as much.

it's like watching a train wreck in ultra slow motion. except that the way the camera is positioned, you cant quite escape the impression that when this sequence ends, there wont be a whole lot of other watching for you.

[dc_dux]

Today, Congress took steps to "fix an existing problem" in a manner is good for the press and the general public.

The OPEN Government Act is the first meaningful reform of the Freedom of Information Act in 10 years. The bill was even more necessary as a result of the Bush's administration's clampdown on FOIA requests after 9/11 and the policy of former Attorney General John Ashcroft instructing agencies to lean toward withholding information if they are uncertain about releasing it.

The bill sent to the Pres today:

* Restores meaningful deadlines for agency action under FOIA;

* Imposes real consequences on federal agencies for missing FOIA’s 20-day statutory deadline; and

* Clarifies that FOIA applies to government records held by outside private contractors
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1207/121907cdam2.htm

Another small step for transparency in government.

[harmolodic]

Excellent post, roachboy. Have you read "Manufacturing Consent"? (Everyone should.)

[mixedmedia]

I agree with host and roachboy. I think the 'liberal media' has been a myth all along, and that if there has been any media conspiracy it has been a 'double secret' conspiracy to persuade people to conservatism.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, so I will not make any wild claims, but the 'liberal media conspiracy' is indeed a myth.

[Ustwo]

Originally Posted by mixedmedia

I agree with host and roachboy. I think the 'liberal media' has been a myth all along, and that if there has been any media conspiracy it has been a 'double secret' conspiracy to persuade people to conservatism.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, so I will not make any wild claims, but the 'liberal media conspiracy' is indeed a myth.

Well I'm glad our resident communists and you think this. Yes you are on to us, we are secretly making it look liberal as to push people to conservatism

To quote the great liberal reporter Walter Cronkite

"Everybody knows that there's a liberal, that there's a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents...

— Cronkite at the March 21, 1996 Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner.

Of course he is just a secret double agent of conservatism

[mixedmedia]

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Well I'm glad our resident communists and you think this. Yes you are on to us, we are secretly making it look liberal as to push people to conservatism

To quote the great liberal reporter Walter Cronkite

— Cronkite at the March 21, 1996 Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner.

Of course he is just a secret double agent of conservatism

Among correspondents, yes, that's very likely. But correspondents are only that, correspondents.

And when I refer to 'media' I am not referring only to news organizations.

Of course, I said I am no conspiracist, but I do believe the 'liberal media conspiracy' is a myth that has colored the impressions of at least a couple of generations who believe that they were indeed persuaded by the media to be 'liberal' and as a result became more conservative.

If you can have your 'liberal media conspiracy,' certainly you can grant me that possibility.

Also, the tone of my post, especially the 'double secret' part was tinged with tongue-in-cheekiness.

[roachboy]

nice, ustwo---so you cite walter cronkite and bracket any sense that professional codes of conduct prevent a journalist from simply saying what they want--except in conservative press outlets, where the distinction between editorial content and information is blurred--but hey, that's no problem because that, too, is reactive.

"our resident communists"?
my my, the barrel's bottom seems close today.

[host]

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Let me be the first to say I have no idea what you are talking about, how the related links tie into it, and compared to most of America the press is liberal. Compared to you, the press is fascist, but we have been over this already.

The irony is you have much more to be angry about, because what is chronicled here is a deliberate, methodical, betrayal of your faith, not of mine:

The president, post 2004 election, able to "wind down" the "fear card":

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0051130-2.html
.....A clear strategy begins with a clear understanding of the enemy we face. The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are by far the largest group. These are ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, who miss the privileged status they had under the regime of Saddam Hussein -- and they reject an Iraq in which they are no longer the dominant group. . . .

The second group that makes up the enemy in Iraq is smaller, but more determined. It contains former regime loyalists who held positions of power under Saddam Hussein -- people who still harbor dreams of returning to power. These hard-core Saddamists are trying to foment anti-democratic sentiment amongst the larger Sunni community. . . .

The third group <b>is the smallest</b>, but the most lethal: the terrorists <b>affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda.</b>

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/16577874/page/5/
MTP Transcript for Jan. 14, 2007

....MR. RUSSERT: Senator Lieberman, let me show you the latest poll on all this about American attitudes. Support of the president sending 22,000 more troops to Iraq, 36 percent, opposed 61. Is it possible for a commander in chief to conduct a war where two out of three Americans, nearly, oppose his latest initiative and now believe that the war is not worth fighting?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well, it makes it harder, that’s for sure. And, and, you know, this is the great challenge because this is a different kind of war, Tim, as you well know. These are not armies massed on a battlefield or ships at sea. This is unconventional. It’s terrorism. ....

.......But my own sense of history tells me that in war, ultimately, there are two exit strategies. One is called victory; the other is called defeat. The president offered a proposal the other night that holds the hope of victory in a critical battle for the Iraqis and for us. With all respect, the other proposals represent the beginning of a retreat, of a defeat. And I think the consequences for the Middle East, which has been so important to our international stability over the years, <h3>and to the American people, who have been attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy that we’re fighting in Iraq today</h3>, supported by a rising Islamist radical super-powered government in Iran....

Notice that Bush stated:

......The third group <b>is the smallest</b>, but the most lethal: the terrorists <b>affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda.</b>....

....while Lieberman later sounded like Cheney...9/11....9/11....9/11

Bush would later change "his tune", and the "stenos" from the "liberal" NY Times were there to play the "Gunga din" role:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/wo...23iraq.html?hp
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: June 23, 2007

BAGHDAD, June 22 — The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with Al Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004....

......the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had been alerted....

....He portrayed the Qaeda leaders’ escape as cowardice, saying that “when the fight comes, they leave,” abandoning “midlevel” Qaeda leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops — just, he said...
....Some American officers in Baquba have placed blame for the Qaeda leaders’ flight on public remarks....
....But General Odierno cast the issue in broader terms, saying Qaeda leaders were bound to know ...
......Despite the flight of the Qaeda leaders from Baquba — a pattern that appears to have been replicated in other areas included in the new offensive, including Qaeda strongholds along the Tigris River south of Baghdad — he adopted an upbeat tone, saying the offensive held “a good potential” for reducing the Qaeda threat.....
.....First, he said, American and Iraqi troops would need to sustain their crackdown long enough for Iraqi forces to move into neighborhoods cleared of Qaeda fighters....
......But General Odierno said Iraqi forces were “getting better,” “staying and fighting,” “taking casualties” and adding an additional 7,500 soldiers to their overall strength every five weeks.......
......General Odierno played down the significance of the Qaeda leaders fleeing ahead of the offensive, saying American forces would hunt them down. “I guarantee you, we’re going to track down those leaders,” he said. “.....
American commanders had said that one difference from previous offensives that had failed to net top Qaeda leaders would be the use of “blocking maneuvers”....
......Friday that several hundred Qaeda fighters — about 80 percent of the recruits who were there when the offensive began Tuesday — remained in the western half of the city,.....
......American hopes that the Falluja offensive would deal a mortal blow to Al Qaeda were thwarted .......
....Since Falluja, Qaeda groups have shown a remarkable resilience in the face of relentless pursuit by the American forces.....
.....American commanders said this week that, more than 30 months after the city was recaptured, Qaeda groups have reinfiltrated the city.....forcing a fresh American and Iraqi offensive this month that has been aimed at capturing or killing the Qaeda fighters.....
...American commanders have begun acknowledging in the past year that the ability of the Qaeda groups to establish new strongholds after old ones are destroyed...
......General Odierno, at his news conference, sketched the sweep of the new offensive. He said the main thrust was aimed at Qaeda strongholds in Diyala Province, with its capital at Baquba; at the Arab Jabour area south of Baghdad, where Qaeda groups have sent wave after wave......
....“So far, within Baquba,” General Odierno said, “there have been many successes:.....

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/4/45748/74248
Iraq: Who Are We Fighting?
by BarbinMD
Fri May 04, 2007 at 04:04:34 AM PST

In his post-veto campaign to justify continuing with his failed war policy, George Bush <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070502-2.html">declared</a> that:

<i>Al-Qaida is public enemy No. 1 in Iraq.</i>

In fact, Bush mentioned Al-Qaida no less than 27 times in a speech that covered his usual spiel; <i>we're fighting them there, the central front in the war on terror, emboldening, surrender, and of course, September 11th. He waxed poetic about progress the Iraqi government is making, declining sectarian violence, early signs of his "surge" succeeding, and that there is no civil war, just Al-Qaida mounting "spectacular attacks" to sap the will of the American people. In fact, it seems that Al-Qaida is all that stands between the Iraqi government and a flowering democracy in the Middle East.</i>

But today we learn <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050302530.html?hpid=topnews">that</a>:

<i>The number of attacks with the projectiles rose to 65 in April, said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who oversees day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq. "The overwhelming majority" were in predominantly Shiite eastern Baghdad, Odierno said in an interview this week. Officials have said the projectiles are used almost exclusively by Shiite fighters against U.S. military targets.</i>

April being the month <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/05/01/us_military_suffers_costly_month_in_iraq_as_104_troops_killed/">where</a> 104 U.S. troops were killed in one of the deadliest months of this war, and in a month where it was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901728.html?hpid=topnews">revealed</a> that:

<i>A department of the Iraqi prime minister's office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad.</i>

The "stuff" in the following quote box is not news reporting:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews
17 Insurgents Killed Near Baqubah
Most Al-Qaeda in Iraq Leaders Have Fled Offensive, U.S. General Says

By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 23, 2007; Page A12

....The battle came Friday to the town of Khalis, about 10 miles northwest of Baqubah. U.S. forces saw a group of al-Qaeda in Iraq gunmen attempting to avoid Iraqi police patrols and infiltrate Khalis from the southwest, according to a U.S. military statement. . . . .

With those deaths, at least 68 suspected al-Qaeda operatives have been killed in the offensive, according to the U.S. military's tally....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/wo...st/21iraq.html
....American troops discovered a medical aid station for insurgents -- another sign that the Qaeda fighters had prepared for an intense fight . . . In a statement, the American military said it had killed 41 Qaeda operatives.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/wo...0military.html

.....The problem of collaring the Qaeda fighters is challenging in several respects. . . The presence of so many civilians on an urban battlefield affords the operatives from Al Qaeda another possible means to elude their American pursuers. . . . Since the battle for western Baquba began, Qaeda insurgents have carried out a delaying action, employing snipers and engaging American troops in several firefights......

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/wo...st/19iraq.html

....The Qaeda and insurgent strongholds in Baquba are strongly defended, according to American intelligence reports [though even that article described the enemy in Baquba as "a mix of former members of Saddam Hussein's army and paramilitary forces, embittered Sunni Arab men, criminal gangs and Qaeda Islamists"]......

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/wo...st/17iraq.html

.....With the influx of tens of thousands of additional combat troops into Iraq now complete, American forces have begun a wide offensive against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia on the outskirts of Baghdad, the top American commander in Iraq said Saturday.

The commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in a news conference in Baghdad along with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said the operation was intended to take the fight to Al Qaeda's hide-outs in order to cut down the group's devastating campaign of car bombings. . . .

The additional American forces, General Petraeus said Saturday, would allow the United States to conduct operations in "a number of areas around Baghdad, in particular to go into areas that were sanctuaries in the past of Al Qaeda."....

<h3>Your "homies" gush over it:</h3>

http://corner.nationalreview.com/pos...E1NDkwNjFlMGM=

<i>Rich [Lowry, Editor of National Review] and I share an admiration for Michael Gordon, one of three (along with Burns and Filkens) NYT reporters who really work hard to get the Iraqi story right.</i>

http://corner.nationalreview.com/pos...diMDI1ZjM4ODg=
Friday, July 06, 2007

Political Progress in Iraq [Rich Lowry]

This <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/world/middleeast/06military.html?ref=todayspaper">Michael Gordon story</a> from Diyala today highlights how there is political progress in Iraq, just not the sort of progress we insisted on with our benchmarks at the beginning of the year. This is bottom-up political progress as key Sunni players are beginning to swing our way (something we've been hoping for a long time). This passage goes to how drawing down our troops now would probably throw away this nascent progress and how the Sunni tribes siding with us are dependent on our combat power:

<i>The militants’ hold on the region was facilitated, senior American officers now acknowledge, by American commanders’ decision to draw down forces in the province in 2005 in the hopes of shifting most of the responsibility for securing the region onto the Iraqis.</i>

Bill Kristol
http://theweeklystandard.com/Content...3/849nkdmm.asp

In Iraq, we are fighting al Qaeda. . . . Friday's New York Times led with the news of [GOP Sen. Pete] Domenici's endorsement of (partial, gradual, and unspecified in any of its details) withdrawal from Iraq. In striking contrast to the Domenici story was a report from Iraq on the same page by Michael Gordon. It was a fascinating account of how young American soldiers are executing Gen. David Petraeus's new strategy on the ground, and how they're fighting and defeating al Qaeda.

<h3>But, as the NY Times "ombudsman", the READERS' representative wrote:</h3>

http://nytimes.com/2007/07/08/opinion/08pubed.html
The Public Editor
Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner

By CLARK HOYT
Published: July 8, 2007

As domestic support for the war in Iraq continues to melt away, President Bush and the United States military in Baghdad are increasingly pointing to a single villain on the battlefield: Al Qaeda. . . .

Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story. So is the question of how well their version of events squares with the facts of a murky and rapidly changing situation on the ground.

But these are stories you haven't been reading in The Times in recent weeks as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda's role in Iraq -- and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn't even exist until after the American invasion. . . .

Recent Times stories from Iraq have referred, with little or no attribution -- <h3>and no supporting evidence -- to "militants linked with Al Qaeda," "Sunni extremists with links to Al Qaeda" and "insurgents from Al Qaeda."</h3> The Times has stated flatly, again without attribution or supporting evidence, that Al Qaeda was responsible for the bombing of the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra last year, an event that the president has said started the sectarian civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.

....it is NOT "news reporting", it is shilling and parroting for "power", and not speaking the truth to it!!!

[host]

Anything to sell newspapers:

The Huffington Post has learned that, in a move bound to create controversy, the New York Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will become a weekly columnist in 2008. Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative who recently departed Time magazine in what was reported as a "mutual" decision, has close ties to the White House and is a well-known proponent of the war in Iraq. Kristol also is a regular contributor to Fox

[Ustwo]

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Shockingly you share an opinion with him