News-Record.com

I've read some of ginmar's defeatist drivel recently. So you think that buffoon is representative of Iraq veterans? Man, are you out of touch with reality.
Oh, and I like how you indignantly call yourself a "Republican" when backed into a corner. You're about as Republican as Hillary.
The media likes to start every newscast with how bad things are going in Iraq, blah, blah, blah, then they conduct polls that show people "think" the war is going badly (wonder where they got that idea?) and say, "See? We were right!" Sort of like running a news story on how bad fires are, then starting one and covering it and saying, "See? We told you they were bad."
Why don't you save your anti-war/anti-Bush BS for your own blog instead of crapping where you live by posting it here?

The point isn't whether ginmar is "representative of Iraqi veterans" (and if she's so defeatist, why'd she just re-up?). The point is that her post was a much politer way of expressing my sentiment, which is that it takes a very special breed of ignorance to claim that saying the U.S. should live by the principles it espouses is in any way unpatriotic.

And I guess your opinion on how things are going in Iraq depends on your opinion of spending 2,000 American dead, tens of thousands wounded and $200 billion in order to create another repressive Islamic "republic." Me, I'm against it, in part because I'm old enough to remember Iran c. 1979-82, but that's just my opinion.

You think I'm wrong? Fine. Prove it. But do it quickly, while it's still legal.

Oh, one other thing: Watch the language. That's the service agreement you accepted talking, not just me.

Yes, your opinion is just that...your opinion. I didn't say you were wrong, just misinformed and sadly driven by your hate for the Republicans and what the majority of this country believes in.
I can point you to a hundred websites or blogs that hold an entirely different view than you and ginmar. And you could point me to a hundred that support your view.
It's not a question of who's wrong and who's right, it's a matter of perspective and what you believe in.
What language? The BS reference? Sorry.

What, exactly, am I misinformed about, JayCee? The factual claims I made are accurate.

Also, in this context, what's the difference between "wrong" and "misinformed"?

And according to the most recent polls, which I linked in the original post, a majority of the country believes we should start pulling some or all troops out of Iraq. Also as I said in the original post, I ain't with them. At least, not yet. So, yeah, I'm in the minority, but not the minority you thought I was in.

And I can come up with "facts" to support any position. It's a matter of which "facts" you chose to look at, and what they mean to you.
You seem to believe all the negative things you hear because they support your feelings. I see the positive things and also believe them.
Why are you so anti-Bush? Why are you so against any action our government takes? It appears you've let your hate for President Bush overcome any impartial assessment of the situation.
Here's some positive "facts," and this list is over a year old, as I recall:

Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?
Did you know that the Iraqi government employs 1.2 million Iraqi people?
Did you know that 3100 schools have been renovated, 364 schools are under rehabilitation, 263 schools are now under construction and 38 new schools have been built in Iraq?
Did you know that Iraq's higher educational structure consists of 20
Universities, 46 Institutes or colleges and 4 research centers?
Did you know that 25 Iraq students departed for the United States in January 2004 for the re-established Fulbright program?
Did you know that the Iraqi Navy is operational? They have 5 100-foot
patrol craft, 34 smaller vessels and a naval infantry regiment.
Did you know that Iraq's Air Force consists of three operation squadrons,
reconnaissance and 3 US C-130 transport aircraft which operate day and night, and will soon add 16 UH-1 helicopters and 4 bell jet rangers?
Did you know that Iraq has a counter-terrorist unit and a Commando
Battalion?
Did you know that the Iraqi Police Service has over 55,000 fully trained and equipped police officers?
Did you know that there are 5 Police Academies in Iraq that produce over
3500 new officers each 8 weeks?
Did you know there are more than 1100 building projects going on in Iraq?
They include 364 schools, 67 public clinics, 15 hospitals, 83 railroad
stations, 22 oil facilities, 93 water facilities and 69 electrical facilities.
Did you know that 96% of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have received the first 2 series of polio vaccinations?
Did you know that 4.3 million Iraqi children were enrolled in primary school by mid October?
Did you know that there are 1,192,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq and
phone use has gone up 158%?
Did you know that Iraq has an independent media that consist of 75 radio
stations, 180 newspapers and 10 television stations?
Did you know that the Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004 and that the Iraqi economy is BOOMING?
Did you know that 2 candidates in the Iraqi presidential election had a
televised debate?

The lack of accentuating the positive in Iraq serves only one purpose. It
undermines the world's perception of the United States and our soldiers.

All of these facts are verifiable on the Department of Defense website and
many other independent sources.

I ballyhooed your "poll" earlier, do I need to explain it again? As a "journalist" you should know how it works.
The liberal media creates an impression through it's negative reporting. Then it designs poll questions to support it's position. Then it reports the poll results as "news" to support it's original position.
Surely you're not naive enough to believe the "polls" are you? I give you more credit than that, I think you quote them because they support your position no matter how flawed the results.

JayCee, I'm not anti-Bush, I'm anti-Islamic republics.

Second, even if by some strained interpretation all the "facts" you cite are literally true, some of them are missing some essential context. Consider just your claim that there are 55,000 trained Iraqi police officers. This March 2005 report from the Carnegie Endowment adds some essential context:

Training Iraq’s security forces is the centerpiece of President George W. Bush’s strategy in Iraq. To the extent that training records can be uncovered in the muddle of conflicting reports, the chronicle of the past eighteen months raises grave doubts about the strategy’s hope of success. Pentagon figures show that not only has there been no progress over the past year, but the gap between the total number of Iraqi security forces and the total required is now almost twice the size of the gap reported fourteen months ago.

The total number of all security forces was reported to have more than doubled in the three
months from October 2003 to January 2004. "We’re making very good progress," said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on CNN in March 2004. "We’re up to over 200,000 Iraqis that have been trained and equipped." What he failed to point out was that 74,000 of those 200,000 were members of the Facilities Protection Service -- building guards with less than one week of training. And of the 75,000 Iraqi police officers included in the total, 60,000 were entirely untrained. At the time, only a paltry 2,300 qualified as fully trained.

In July 2004, the outgoing head of Iraqi security force training, General Paul Eaton, offered
a devastatingly grim assessment: "It hasn't gone well," he admitted. "We’ve had almost one year of no progress." Shortly thereafter the official numbers began to reflect that reality. In
September, the Pentagon stopped reporting untrained security forces, and the total number
plummeted from 165,000 to fewer than 100,000. In the course of one two-week reporting
period, the total force dropped 40 percent. At almost the same time, the number of required
forces rose from 190,000 to more than 270,000.

I could go on, but I have, you know, a job and a life and all.

Besides, let's look at the big picture, shall we? When stepping outside the Green Zone is literally to risk your life, when dozens of U.S. soldiers continue to die every month, when the best thing we can hope for in Iraq right now is a stable Islamic republic as opposed to civil war, things are not going well. The "lack of accentuating the positive" is no such thing. It is, instead, a conscious and logical journalistic decision to look at the big picture, as defined by such things as whether U.S. and Iraqi deaths are tailing off, whether it is safe(er) to leave the Green Zone, whether attacks and IED explosions are getting fewer and farther between, whether Iraq is on the verge of adopting a constitution that really does guarantee freedom to all Iraqi citizens. Why? Because those are the things that the president and the administration have led us to expect and have themselves defined as the standards for "success.".

If those things actually were happening, then, yes, there would be a basis for claiming that things are going well in Iraq and the mainstream media would be reporting them.

Which leads to your claim about the news media's reports influencing poll results. Please, show me some research documenting your claim ... because I can show you some documenting that there is no evidence of the kind of phenomenon you describe. (Besides, if what you claim really happened and the media were as anti-Bush as you say, wouldn't John Kerry have won the 2004 election in a landslide?)

OK, I've got to get some real work done. Feel free to keep this going -- I might or might not get back here today -- but please provide some documentation for your factual assertions. Thanks.

Please provide impartial, factual documentation for your position, two can play at this game all day long.
You can't define "success" by documenting the things which "you" don't consider successful. Just because you don't agree with the truth doesn't make it any less truthful.
How do you "know" it's soooooo bad over there? Because you see it on the news, correct? And the news covers only the bad things, correct? So you watch and read the liberal news and form your opinions from that, correct? And if you were called in poll and asked a slanted question, you'd answer based on what you know from watching/reading the news, correct?
I rest my case.
Matt Lauer was interviewing a GI in Iraq the other day. After getting two responses to the effect that morale was good, Lauer had this to say:
"Don't get me wrong, I think you're probably telling the truth, but there might be a lot of people at home wondering how that could be possible with the conditions you're facing and with the insurgent attacks you're facing."
Captain Sherman Powell nailed Lauer, the MSM and the anti-war crowd with this beauty:
"Well sir, I'd tell you, if I got my news from the newspapers also I'd be pretty depressed as well!"
http://newsbusters.org/node/328

Have a nice day at work. I assume you have a real job, the perennial Bush-bashing is just a hobby, right?

Oh, by the way, I'm done with you.
Respond if you like, but I won't be reading it. I can find liberal rants anywhere.
See ya.

[[Schwarzenegger voice]]

He'll be back.

[[/Schwarzenegger voice]]

JayCee

On the off chance that you do sneak back here I have some inside info that may be of interest.

Lex belongs to the Michael Moore-Howard Dean wing of the Republican Party. Insiders tell me that this wing was created by newspaper editors who ask for volunteers such as Lex to represent themselves as Republicans so that they can claim to have one in the newsroom. They are big on diversity, you know.

If they get no volunteers, I’m told that they appoint people to be Republicans for certain periods on a rotating basis. Nobody likes this, of course, but they accept it because having to be in the presence of a genuine Republican eight hours a day, five days a week would be unbearable. I mean, it’s not like having to sit beside one at a lunch counter for 30 minutes, if you know what I mean.

In the old days, we had an actual Republican in the newsroom. He was our business editor, a kind, tolerant, endearing man. As you can see from the above posts, Lex is never apt to be defined that way.

These Moore-Dean “Republicans” are full of themselves and utterly contemptuous of anybody who expresses a viewpoint, or fact, that they choose not to embrace. That’s how you can tell them from real Republicans.

I’m also told that if newspapers aren’t able to solve their decades-long problem of enticing enough “minorities” to work in newsrooms, editors may also be considering designating people as black, Arab, Asian, Hispanic, Eskimo and whatnot, in order to meet their quotas.

So if Lex starts wearing a turban or claiming that he’s a black Republican, you’ll know what’s going on.

Jerry, I've been a Republican since 1978, and I remain one today for the same reasons that I joined the party in 1978. Even in its current debased condition, the party is still closer to my political philosophy than anything else around.

And, no, I'm not kind, tolerant or endearing. What would ever give anyone any impression to the contrary?

Mr. Bledsoe, I will stop in just long enough to thank you for your observations and info.
As you know Lex and his environment far better than I, I'll defer to your superior knowledge and judgement. Seems "spot on" to me, as my Brit friends say.

Told you he'd be back ...

Here's what I don't get.

I haven't heard ANY of what you have written about here (the original post that got this going) in any media source.

Yet, you go out of your way to dredge it up and put it on your (Republican leaning -- as IF!) blog.

Why are you not posting some of the most over the top things that Cindy Sheehan is saying that are not getting reported by the media and commenting on it as if it's incredulous?

I mean, I know a blog is not supposed to be balanced, but if you're going to dig around to find under-reported info and post it with your incredulous statements, why not do the same for the dreck that Sheehan is spouting?

I truly don't understand.

Because I figured most people who care already would have gotten that news the same way I did -- from conservative blogs -- or from liberal blogs blogging about conservative blogs.

I know Lex to be both kind and endearing, Jerry (and I daresay I've known him longer than you have) but you're correct that he's not particularly tolerant - at least not of goofiness. I don't see that JayCee or Jerry addressed what I took to be the point of Lex's post - that the American Legion is suggesting that they take away rights that they purportedly fought for. This being the same group that urged "the immediate withdrawal of American troops" from Yugoslavia in 1999 in part because of their insistence that "guidelines be established for the mission, including a clear exit strategy" and their perception that they were not.

Hmmm... It seems that there's probably much more at work than you "just figured people already saw it."

It's so clear Lex that you're beyond hope.

Please seek some professional help with your delusion that you are a Republican.

Better idea, Jim: The Republican Party seeks help for its delusion that it is conservative.

Oh, one other thing: If y'all can't focus on the subject of the post, we're moving on. Posting something and getting the entire index of logical fallacies in response is no more fun for me than reading something that contradicts your image of the world apparently is for you.

And this is really all about your fun.... right?

Well, yeah, sure. Isn't everything?

Okay, Lex, let’s go on topic—and I’m watching my language and of course have no greater desire on earth than to see that you have fun.

Here are the quotes from the American Legion commander cited in the Editor and Publisher piece, along with the resolution that was voted on by the Legion.

"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples."

"It would be tragic if the freedoms our veterans fought so valiantly to protect would be used against their successors today as they battle terrorists bent on our destruction.”

"No one respects the right to protest more than one who has fought for it, but we hope that Americans will present their views in correspondence to their elected officials rather than by public media events guaranteed to be picked up and used as tools of encouragement by our enemies."

"For many of us, the visions of Jane Fonda glibly spouting anti-American messages with the North Vietnamese and protestors denouncing our own forces four decades ago is forever etched in our memories. We must never let that happen again….

"We had hoped that the lessons learned from the Vietnam War would be clear to our fellow citizens. Public protests against the war here at home while our young men and women are in harm's way on the other side of the globe only provide aid and comfort to our enemies."

"Let's not repeat the mistakes of our past. I urge all Americans to rally around our armed forces and remember our fellow Americans who were viciously murdered on Sept. 11, 2001."

Resolution 3: "The American Legion fully supports the president of the United States, the United States Congress and the men, women and leadership of our armed forces as they are engaged in the global war on terrorism and the troops who are engaged in protecting our values and way of life."

Now show us the declaration of war. Point out where assaulting protestors is urged. I can’t seem to locate the part where the Legion wants to destroy the constitution. The N&R’s blogging friend Sue, picking up on this, says the Legion is “calling for the abolition of the constitution,” but not even Google can lead me to that hysterical declaration.

What’s happening here is clear from the Editor and Publisher piece. Reporters are distorting what actually was said and what actually happened to fit their own political agendas. Pretty typical of what goes on at the N&R a lot now.

"This might suggest to some, however, that American freedoms are worth dying for but not exercising,” one of the writers of the piece inserts after a quote.

That’s not reporting. That’s inserting opinion because the reporters disagree with what’s being said and don’t like the people who are saying it.

Notice the headline, too. Media Next? No indication here of any planned war by the Legion on the media, but let’s just throw it in anyway. Those meanie old veterans are coming after we poor media victims.

The true victim here is truth.

Where to begin ....

-- Let's see: Who anointed the American Legion to decide what "demoralizes the troops" or endangers their lives? What's wrong with letting the troops decide?

-- Yeah, it would be tragic if the freedoms our veterans fought so valiantly to protect would be used against their successors today. (Well, maybe not; see farther down in this point.) Note the use of the conditional: He's not even claiming that that has happened. Moreover, what, exactly, is "using freedom against" our soldiers? If he's saying people shouldn't use their freedom of speech to criticize soldiers, well, that's his opinion, but it's not objectively true. And while doing so would be incredibly stupid (at least w/r/t how they have, as a whole, conducted themselves to date), I don't think that, in and of itself, it would be "tragic."

-- Let's also not ignore the subtle but clear conflation of the president with the troops. The Legion either doesn't know or doesn't care that a lot of people want the administration to change its Iraq policy precisely BECAUSE they think it's bad for the troops.

-- C'mon, Jerry, he's asking people to forgo their freedom of peaceable assembly. Who is he to do that? Rights not exercised may be no better than rights not possessed. Beyond that, he suggests, on the basis of exactly zero evidence, that any such protest will inevitably be used to good effect by our enemies. That claim, even if true, ignores the good done when people around the world see Americans exercising their rights in public and realize that, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo notwithstanding, we really do walk the talk.

-- The E&P piece is an editorial. Surely you understood that. Right?

I take it you support the Legion's position, Jerry. That's fine. It's a free country. Me, I'm not going to let anyone else arbitrarily define where my rights stop, and if I want to raise a hue and cry about a little problem before it becomes a big one, that, too, is my perfect right.

Jerry, you left out the last line of American Legion Resolution No. 169 - Support For The War On Terrorism. I'm taking this straight from their website: they resolve "to engage whatever means necessary to ensure the united support of the American people." I believe THAT is the most salient point of the objections that many of us have to the AL's resolution and press releases (and we won't even get into what the heck the war in Iraq has to do with the war on terrorism). That statement is repeated in their press release. So what does "whatever means necessary" mean to you? Loyalty oaths? Imprisonment for dissent? Seems to open the door to any of those possibilities. Agree with us or else, right?

Lex,

I learned long ago that it’s impossible to have a reasoned discussion with you and I acknowledge my complete lapse in judgment for even attempting to point out reality.

One other thing. Don’t ever assume that you know what I think or believe. Not even your immense arrogance grants you the right to state that.

Tony,

I hadn’t read the full resolution, only the part quoted in the E&P piece. But you leave out the first part of that last passage. Here’s the full passage:

“Resolved, That the National Commander be and is hereby authorized to use whatever means at his disposal to disseminate accurate information about this war on terrorism, and to engage whatever means necessary to ensure the united support of the American people.”

The national commander is authorized to disseminate accurate information and ensure the support of the American people.

Does anybody actually think that the Legion meant for the commander to take up his M-1 and go out breaking up anti-war rallies, forcing people to sign loyalty oaths and imprisoning them for dissent, much less to set fire to the constitution?

This is just another example of taking things out of context to distort their meaning and use them for political attacks. A newspaper has no business doing that even on a blog.

Jerry, coming from you, accusations of arrogance are a high and rare honor.

As for your accusations of presuming I know what you think and believe, I don't see any place where I've done that. I did and do infer, correctly or not, from your comments that you support the Legion's position. (I don't think inferring is the same thing, but whatever.) But at any rate, the bargain you offer is fair: I won't presume I know what you think and believe if you'll extend me the same courtesy.

Oh, and we're done here.