Letters to the Editor
-
For the love of god
This is getting ridiculous. Can't we somehow recall these idiots, if the Congress is not going to impeach? How these "reporters" can continue with this charade day after day is really beyond me...
-
Riddle Me THIS Mr. Snow!
How many "insurgents" we kill are the enemy? How many Iraqis we kill are "insurgents"? How many of our kids that die or get maimed are we going to honor as great heros of "freedom"?
Makes one wistful for the obfuscation on little Scott McClellan and/or Ari.
-
So now it's not "purely a military exercise,"
"When you talk about a way forward, it's tempting to think of this as purely a military exercise, and that's the part that we focus on most here, but it's a lot more."
Where was this line of thinking back in 2003? Back when we started this tragic, misguided, devastating war, why didn't someone in the administration say to Bush and Rumsfeld and the rest, "Hey, this isn't just a military exercise. We need to figure out what happens after we bomb the bejeesus out of them." It's only taken 3 years, almost 3000 American deaths and around 600,000 Iraqi civilian deaths for the idea to begin to dawn on them that maybe, just maybe, they can't impose democracy on a country with bombs and bullets.
-
Gutless Media
"I think it is important that Americans learn as much as possible about what's going on in Iraq, and that's not merely militarily, to get a sense of where the violence is located, how widespread it is, what's going on in civil society, is there hope in certain provinces, what is the full picture in Iraq."
Not a single reporter challanged this grossly hypocritical statement by Snow. Appears all the media forgot the administration has deliberately hidden/avoided most all of the facts and figures on this war.
As incompetant as the administration has been, the media's incompetance is far more telling and absolutely disgusting.
-
I have a bounty...
I will donate $100 dollars to the charity of their choice to the first member of the press corp that walks up to Tony Snow and slaps him for talking nonsense or stonewalling.
-
Body Counts - Just A New Subset of Lies
In the December 13, 2006 press availability of GWB to which you linked, he indicated that 5,900 hundred of the "enemy" had been killed or captured in two months and one week (October, November and the first week of December).
The indicated killed/captured figures for a nine week period are a little hard to believe given the fact that, on a number of occasions over a fairly significant period of time the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have given estimates of the total number of insurgents in such ranges as:
- - 11,000 to 13,000 according to a Pentagon internal report commented on by Jamie McIntyre as reflected in the transcript of a February 8, 2005 show
- - 1/10th of 1% of the total Iraqi population (which would be approximately 26,500): General Casey Senate testimony of September 29, 2005.
One would almost have to believe either (1) that "Coalition" forces were taking things very easy on the insurgents until October, 2006; or (2) the 5,900 figure used by GWB is another load of horse manure.
-
I agree with rustyaustin
How much longer do we have to put up with this charade? The American media should be held as co-consiprators until they prove otherwise.
Maybe if we all just poke our heads out of the windows and yell "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" in unison, someone will listen. It probably wouldn't make the American media but would be reported everywhere else in the world.
-
I'll match Shipwack's offer
Hell, I'll double it. Somebody should have at least asked if an "impressionistic answer" is the same as a lie.
-
Uh, I hate to bring up Vietnam again but...
Once there was a war in which there would be a press briefing each day and the press liaison officer would stand up and proudly announce to the press that a staggering number of "enemy combatants" had been killed throughout the country in the past 24 hours and that "we" had lost only a tiny fraction of our brave young soldiers by comparison.
The fanciful numbers game led to the characterization of the conflict as a "war of attrition." It was a nice conceit that masked a more direct description: "We're killin' more of them than they are killin' of our guys, so therefore we are winning this war."
It struck a chord with the American people back home who remembered the two world wars and Korea and it made sense to them. We'll just keep killing them until they run out of people and then we "win." Everybody bought into it. As long as we were "attritin'" them at a rate of 10 of them to one of us, that seemed like a fair price to pay. (Unless of course, the "one" was you, or your son, or someone dear to you.)
But no matter how the press liaison spun the numbers, it began to look kind of fishy after a few years when, like angry ants, "they" kept on coming, seemingly out of nowhere. And worse, pretty soon it was discovered that the military was not only counting enemy regular army troops and their guerrilla irregulars, but word was coming down from up country that any living creature that wasn't "one of us" had to be counted as "one of them," including civilian non-combatant casualties, the so-called regrettable "collateral damage" of warfare. Women, kids, old people were included. Hell, they said, an old man can fire a rifle, a kid can throw a grenade, and a woman out there planting rice can just as easily be planting an anti-personnel mine. So count 'em all! In fact, just kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out.
And so here we go again. The same old self-serving phrases in a new context:
We're killing ten "insurgents" for every U.S. casualty. Really? How did you know that guy was an insurgent? Well, he was running out of town when we pulled up, so we smoked his ass! Great! Count him as a terrorist.
We had to destroy Fallujah in order to save it. Twice.
We're going to turn over all of our equipment to the coalition forces so that they can fight the insurgents. We'll even train them. We'll call it, the "Iraq-ization" process. We'll stand down, and they will stand up.
The next six month will be critical for our success. We can see the "light at the end of the tunnel."
If only we could put in a few more troops, we'll be sure to make the enemy lose heart and surrender.
The enemy is getting tired. We're winning! If only the American people will not give up, we can win this thing!
Ugh! I tell you young Salonians, one of the worst parts about getting older is watching the same old shit come around in a new bag. Human beings are basically stupid and if they don't study history, they'll make the same mistakes over and over. Hell, they'll make them anyway. You can't protect people from their fear, greed and ego.
It just goes on and on.