View Story | 174 comments
Comments: Expand Shrink Hide (Always) | Indented Flat (Always)
You were part of the profession. Why would the media take anything the administration says at face value after what has happened for the last 7 years? It just seems to me that they would be a bit more suspect of anything Bush says.
by Mike S on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 06:31:36 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
...journalists know that they can't get away with writing every story with a lede that says "The Bush Administration lied again today ..."
Like a cyclone, imperialism spins across the globe; militarism crushes peoples and sucks their blood like a vampire. K. Liebknecht
by Meteor Blades on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 06:35:51 PM PDT
Publicly owned companies can't justify good coverage of a bad war to their shareholders.
Show of hands... who would join Kucinich's effort to impeach VP Cheney?
by Mogolori on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 06:40:03 PM PDT
People are resigned to the fact that nothing will change with this president or congress.
by debatablepolitics on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 06:46:57 PM PDT
by Mogolori on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 06:50:02 PM PDT
Don't have the power to impeach. kucinich has the power to impeach.
by debatablepolitics on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 06:58:52 PM PDT
Clever handle, but tough to type!
"This is not our America and we need to take it back." John Edwards.
by mcmom on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 08:17:16 PM PDT
"Great men do not commit murder. Great nations do not start wars". William Jennings Bryan
by ImpeachKingBushII on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 07:24:42 PM PDT
for the shout out.
really appreciated.
Why John W. McCain is an unstable, crazy, angry, clueless, hypocritical, lying, pandering douche.
by clammyc on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 06:46:39 PM PDT
funny.. wasn't is supposed to be for 90 days originally? or am I mistaken. There have been so many surge-iterations since then, I cannot even remember.
This is from JULY 4, 2007 -- last year:
_ it's now a fight to the finish>> Dean progressives v. Clinton centrists.
by rhfactor on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 07:41:15 PM PDT
...Fred Kagan and Jack Keane, originally argued for 18 months at least, as you can read in The Right Type of 'Surge': Any Troop Increase Must Be Large and Lasting.
by Meteor Blades on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 08:27:03 PM PDT
from the story:
Of all the "surge" options out there, short ones are the most dangerous. Increasing troop levels in Baghdad for three or six months would virtually ensure defeat. It takes that long for newly arrived soldiers to begin to understand the areas where they operate. Short surges would redeploy them just as they began to be effective. In addition, a short surge would play into the enemy's hands. Both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias expect the U.S. presence to fade away over the course of 2007, and they expect any surge to be brief. They will naturally go to ground in the face of a short surge and wait until we have left. They will then attack the civilian population and whatever Iraqi security forces remain,
Of all the "surge" options out there, short ones are the most dangerous. Increasing troop levels in Baghdad for three or six months would virtually ensure defeat. It takes that long for newly arrived soldiers to begin to understand the areas where they operate. Short surges would redeploy them just as they began to be effective.
In addition, a short surge would play into the enemy's hands. Both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias expect the U.S. presence to fade away over the course of 2007, and they expect any surge to be brief. They will naturally go to ground in the face of a short surge and wait until we have left. They will then attack the civilian population and whatever Iraqi security forces remain,
Honestly, i do not know anymore what has been achieved since any version of this re-escalation, or, to use Condi's word, augmentation, was proposed and put into action.
There are only a few things I know:
(1) I'd believe Lara Logan's view of success/failure morseo than any other journalist, including Michael Ware. (As great as he is, when I saw him on the live interview with Bill Maher last week, he seemed to be desperate to make jokes... who knows, maybe he has gone batshit crazy covering this war for CNN). And seems that her report 6-9 months ago indicated that in some areas this "augmentation" was producing some good results. But I'd like to know her report of things today and now.
(2) McCain has gone several times, heavily armored and wall to wall military protection, to create a Fantasy Island view of the wonderful secure open markets in Bagdhad.
(3) By having no written metrics, Bush could play his "let's wait til September" game endlessly, and debunk all quantifiable measurements of progress -- as being not the full purpose of the surge.
(4) And I know that Angelina Jolie went over there and made headlines by stating to intl press that "the surge is working". I have no idea what that was all about, why she went there, and what was her impetus to make this a press event. Yes, I presumed her liberal... but god only knows what she is. But if she considers herself highminded, fair, and not subject to being propogandized, then I don't know what to think of her publicly stated report from being them.
That's all I really know: those 4 things.
by rhfactor on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 08:53:54 PM PDT
The only reason that the public and the media are buying the surge <lies> is that American troop fatalities have greatly decreased in the last two months. That will unfortunately change as Iraq comes unglued in the next few weeks.
The only good to come from all of this is that the war will once again become front page news as things get progressively worse and then McBush will look like the real fool we all here know him to be. The headlines will change and McBush will have to answer for his failing strategy..say right around the time of the general debates in the fsll...maybe he'll even lose his kool and have a tantrum, right on a televised debate!
by StuHunter on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 07:09:28 PM PDT
...that McCain is an old senile fool at that, you missed his speech on foreign policy yesterday. It was a real winner; even the repubs in attendance only gave him polite applause at best, and only on his applause lines. He's ripe for the picking. I sat there thinking to myself, "Just wait ole John boy, until Obama gets you into a debate. That calm facade of a fatherly advice front, will dissolve faster than a cube of sugar in a rainstorm. He's a ticking time-bomb, whose temper will betray him one day"! Hold the line. It's not over yet folks, not by a long shot!
by ImpeachKingBushII on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 07:32:57 PM PDT
don't have a link, but he's said he doesn't think they'll be necessary...words to that effect. The idea of debating either Dems, especially Obama, probably makes him incontinent.
"Evil is a lack of empathy, a total incapacity to feel with their fellow man." - Capt. Gilbert,Psychiatrist, at the end of Nuremberg trials.
by 417els on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 08:04:08 PM PDT
wide narrow
View Story | 174 comments