January 07, 2008
DaybyDay Fundraiser
Chris Muir of DaybyDay—one of the best online cartoon series going—is
raising funds, and could certainly use your support.
Like most bloggers, Chris is not a full-time cartoonist, and DaybyDay takes up a tremendous amount of time to write, well, day by day.
Drop on over and toss him a couple of bucks, will you?
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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January 04, 2008
A Blogger Dies at War
Blogger and soldier
Andrew Olmsted, who often posted as G-Kar at
Obsidian Wings, was killed in combat yesterday in Iraq. As far as you know, he was killed defending a village composed solely of innocent women and children from hundreds of insurgents.
Knowing the risks he took as a soldier, he composed a moving, reflective final post to be published in the event of his death.
In Major Olmstead's last paragraph he expressed doubts in an afterlife. I sincerely hope he finds himself today in Heaven, pleasantly surprised.
His writing is archived at http://www.andrewolmsted.com/
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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Ave atque vale, frater.
Posted by: DaveP. at January 04, 2008 04:14 PM (1AZTv)
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CY, thanks for emailling me the heads-up on this. It just goes to show how much
less ideological differences are when set beside human tragedy.
Regards, C
Posted by: Cernig at January 04, 2008 05:07 PM (aKi/z)
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Rest in peace, Soldier.
THE FINAL INSPECTION
The soldier stood and faced his God,
Which must always come to pass.
He hoped his shoes were shining,
Just as brightly as his brass.
"Step forward now, you soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
The soldier squared his shoulders and said,
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't.
Because those of us who carry guns,
Can't always be a saint.
I've had to work most Sundays,
And at times my talk was tough.
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny,
That wasn't mine to keep...
Though I worked a lot of overtime,
When the bills got just too steep.
And I never passed a cry for help,
Though at times I shook with fear.
And sometimes, God, forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place,
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around,
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here, Lord,
It needn't be so grand.
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was a silence all around the throne,
Where the saints had often trod.
As the soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you soldier,
You've borne your burdens well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Posted by: Bill Faith at January 04, 2008 05:45 PM (Ueqy8)
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This is such sad news. Words are inadequate.
Posted by: beth at January 04, 2008 07:29 PM (awyCJ)
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Bob..it has been a while.
This is sad news indeed. I am forwarding this to my son now serving in Iraq.
Posted by: Snooper at January 04, 2008 07:55 PM (QaDHz)
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I sincerely hope he finds himself today in Heaven, pleasantly surprised.
Bob, a man this great finds himself not in Heaven, but exploring beyond the rim with G'Kar and Dr. Franklin.
Posted by: TheEJS at January 04, 2008 08:12 PM (JyC8j)
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This is such sad news. Words are inadequate.
Posted by: beth at January 4, 2008 07:29 PM
she speaks words that are very true
Posted by: Butch at January 04, 2008 08:42 PM (/c9Cu)
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Whenever I read one that one of these fine young men has perished doing the job that needs to be done, I wish I was young enough again to go re-up and take his place.
God speed Major Olmstead, my heartfelt thanks and gratitude for your ultimate sacrifice, and my prayers for the ones you have left behind.
Review troops, long past review.
Posted by: Conservative CBU at January 04, 2008 08:49 PM (La7YV)
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What an individual. Just shows you how great our brave men and women truly are. And that they believe in what they are doing. WOW is about all I can say. AMEN. God Bless him and all our other brave protectors.
Jason
Posted by: Jason at January 04, 2008 09:50 PM (6ey40)
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My son lost his best friend in Iraq and then came back from Afghanistan with his body broken.
My heart goes out to MAJ Olmstead and, especially, to his bereaved loved ones.
Thank you, MAJ O., for your service to our country!
Posted by: m. r. o'donnell at January 05, 2008 01:58 AM (RcUPg)
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the forces of censorship never learn...
http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/9365/censoredpostsm5.png
http://www.freeimagehost.eu/image/c287b71968298
Posted by: censorship_never_works at January 06, 2008 02:55 AM (SyATH)
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"Censorship" you didn't give a rats ass about the immense suffering and deaths of ordinary Iraqis under Saddam, so your well thought out comments stink of nothing more than unintelligent bias.
However, Maj Olmsted, as a member of the US Military, the group of people you soley blame of inflicting death on ordinary Iraqi's, defended your right to voice such drivel.
Bu he also defended the right for any website administrator to delete any comments they chose on their website for any reason, especially if they find the comments inappropriate to the subject at hand.
Would you dare attend the funeral or memorial service of a soldier and in the midst of those paying respect and mourning make the same outlandish remarks you made on what is the 'virtual' equivalent of a memorial service to this man.
And if you did, and they had you removed from the premises, it would not be an act of censorship.
There is a time and place for everything.That you are incapable of understanding that speaks to your mental state.
So take your bogus concerns for deaths of Iraqis and your bogus claims of censorship and shove them where your head is obviously spending a great deal of time. In Basra these past two months, the ONLY people killing Iraqis are OTHER IRAQIS.
Posted by: Huntress at January 06, 2008 09:57 AM (SfNIo)
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Major Andrew Olmsted
May Angels Sing Thee To Thy Rest, Sweet Prince.
Godspeed!
Hooah!
Posted by: Huntress at January 06, 2008 09:58 AM (SfNIo)
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Hey, "censorship_never_works", would you say the same things about those Powers That Be on DailyKos or DemocraticUnderground who routinely delete conservative comments and/or users?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Posted by: C-C-G at January 06, 2008 11:01 AM (ojkss)
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Obsidian Wings is largely a left leaning blog, and hilzoy, who posted Maj. Olmsted's final post is most assuredly a lefty. That said, the thread linked was one to remember and grieve for Maj. Olmsted. And you, "censorship", are a Grade A douchebag for politicking on a thread where it was expressly discouraged in order to honor the memory of their fallen friend.
Would you dare attend the funeral or memorial service of a soldier and in the midst of those paying respect and mourning make the same outlandish remarks you made on what is the 'virtual' equivalent of a memorial service to this man.
Huntress, I suspect that he would and that the only thing that would prevent him from doing so is cowardice. Simple decency and/or respect would not enter into his equation.
Thank you, Andy. May your sacrifice be eternally rewarded.
Posted by: Pablo at January 06, 2008 01:13 PM (yTndK)
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Pablo, "censorship" has already violated Major Olmstead's wishes... the late Major wrote:
I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don't drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don't cite my name as an example of someone's life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I'm not around to expound on them I'd prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn't support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I'd prefer that you did so.
And so, of course, a lefty has to do just what the late Major asked him not to.
I could go on, but that would be to do myself what I am accusing "censorship" of... and I have already trodden perilously close to that line, so I won't step further in that direction.
I will just say, I wish "censorship" had the guts of Major Olmstead, to step into harm's way to protect others.
Posted by: C-C-G at January 06, 2008 03:51 PM (ojkss)
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Feeling the loss; RIP Maj. Andrew Olmsted.
MAJ Andrew Olmsted was killing in action January 3, 2008, and I just do not have any words to say how sorry I am to his family and friends. ... He did leave us one last post which he gave to hilzoy to post in such a case as this. So at least he deafed the grips of death with a final farewell. An excerpt:
PS. Thank you, Confederate Yankee, for bringing this to our attention. I just wish it could have been on brighter terms.
Posted by: Rosemary's Thoughts at January 08, 2008 05:44 AM (bNd+s)
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December 26, 2007
Hmmm...
I think we've found the
poster child for Jonah Goldberg's
new book.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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Err, it's Jonah.
The honesty of that person was, I guess, refreshing in a really sick way.
Posted by: tsmonk at December 26, 2007 02:43 PM (j1orm)
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That's some quality crazy there.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at December 26, 2007 06:23 PM (ERV3B)
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Ah, yes, the loving, caring left... always blaming someone else for their own problems.
As an admittedly minor blogger myself, I got one piece of free advice for that woman... if you can't take it, don't dish it out.
Posted by: C-C-G at December 26, 2007 08:30 PM (4tS0i)
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The left is Authoritarian by nature
Posted by: Capitalist Infidel at December 26, 2007 08:55 PM (Lgw9b)
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I want the 5 minutes of my life back that I wasted sifting through that nonsense.
Posted by: Conservative CBU at December 26, 2007 11:23 PM (La7YV)
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December 17, 2007
You Like Me, You Really Like Me...
John Hawkins has posted the
The 6th Annual Right Wing News Conservative Blog Awards as voted upon by 45 of my fellow bloggers, and
Confederate Yankee finished 3rd ahead of Newsbusters (4) and Michael J. Totten (4), and behind Michael Yon (2) and Michelle Malkin (1) in the category of "Best Original Reporting By A Blog."
I'm honored to be included in this list and more than a little surprised to find myself in such esteemed company. I'd like to thank my fellow bloggers and blog readers for their support over the course of the year.
I'm humbled.
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Hi Bob - congrats... No one has earned it
more than you my friend...
Posted by: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton at December 17, 2007 01:09 PM (ytltE)
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Your efforts here, CY, have been ground-breaking, independent, reliable and fair. Umm, well, except for the Ron Paul blimp story below -- the pic looks airbrushed and from 2001.
Anyway, you deserved it. Congrats.
Posted by: Dusty at December 17, 2007 02:00 PM (GJLeQ)
Posted by: Grey Fox at December 17, 2007 03:54 PM (E9jLN)
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You deserve every bit of it, Bob.
Now go have a steak to celebrate.
Posted by: C-C-G at December 17, 2007 07:57 PM (4tS0i)
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congratulations, and good company! I really respect Totten and Yon for their on-scene reporting. You, on the other hand, have made life a living hell for our lying domestic "enemies". Great work! :-)
Posted by: Frank G at December 17, 2007 08:23 PM (Ydps9)
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October 31, 2007
A Few Notes on "Emailgate"
I've seen over the past several days that Glenn Greenwald is focusing his attention to delving over emails attributed to Col. Steven Boylan, a U.S. Army officer currently serving as the public affairs officer to General David Petraeus [full disclosure: IÂ’ve used Col. Boylan as a source several times, due in no small part to the fact that he is a
Public Affairs Officer] .
And who am I to mind bloggers paying attention to words that our soldiers wrote? Frankly, I think that's just grand.
This particular story started when someone purporting to be Boylan sent Greenwald a scathing unsolicited email several days ago, which Greenwald dutifully published, along with follow-up conversations between Greenwald and Boylan, where Boylan claims that he did not send the original email and that he wasn't all that worried about the imposter.
After numerous updates to that page, Greenwald wrote about it again here, here, and again today, here.
Greenwald is notably convinced of several things:
- That the email header information indicates that that the original email did, in fact, originate from Boylan or someone with the ability to fake that information convincingly;
- that the military needs Greenwald's email to track down whoever sent the original email;
- that this exchange, however it began, is indicative of a military attempt to control the media "when they step out of line;"
- that somehow, this is all the Bush Administration's fault.
I will readily agree with Greenwald on the first point, that the email header seems to indicate this came from the same computer as other emailÂ’s attributed to Col. Boylan. Whether that IP address in question belongs to an email server used by hundreds of troops, is Boylan's personal computer, or is entirely spoofed, I have no idea.
I am quite certain, however, that the military needs no help at all from Greenwald in tracking this email down internally. If a rag-tag group of bloggers can track a bunch of Greenwald-approving blog comments under various names back to Greenwald's own IP address, then I'm rather certain that that the Army's own IT guys can muddle through in determining whether or not an email originated from their own server, without his technical wizardry. If the disputed email is indeed authentic, it would be recorded on the Army email server's log files, which they obviously have, which could track it back to the computer in question, which they could then traced to the user ID of who was logged-on to that computer at the time.
As for whether or not such an email, if real, would constitute a military attempt to control the media "when they step out of line," I would gently ask the noted First Amendment scholar Greenwald to note where it states that soldiers give up all their constitutional rights to free speech once they put on a uniform.
Is it only when they disagree with liberals?
I ask because while the questionable email that started this particular conflagration was no doubt scathing, and emails apparently from Col.Boylan to other bloggers also disputed some of their content and fact-finding efforts, I fail to see how these private emails to bloggers were somehow inappropriate, unless Greenwald thinks that he and his compatriots should be able to attack the military—even to the point of fabrication—without any response.
Greenwald has a long and mercilessly well-documented history of being unable to take criticism. Somehow, I think that has as much to do with his focus on this topic than any real concern over a military email server may have been compromised.
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Well said. He is making himself look like a bigger idiot than he usually does.
Posted by: Pam at October 31, 2007 04:47 PM (UWHnN)
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Hey Glenn -- help me out here:
You've said recently:
The overt politicization of our military in Iraq -- working closely and in secret only with Drudge, The Weekly Standard and right-wing blogs -- seems at least as important
as the monumental issue of what Franklin Foer knew and when he knew it.
Now Glenn, I'm sure some here might take that as a bit of sarcasm, but alas, we know better.
We also know that your latest monumental issue is quite dear to you personally. Whether or not you were pantsed by a sockpuppet or a real PAO (insert irony alert) must weigh heavily on your mind.
(Being pantsed is already in evidence)
Could we please ask you to put aside your work on today's monumental issue and set your sights back to the Beauchamp/TNR affair? So many would thank you for putting your investigative talents to use there. Perhaps you might ask Franklin Foer if he in fact aware of Scott Beauchamp's real IP address. After all, whether or not Beauchamp actually sent these articles to Foer has yet to be proven - it might have been a sock. Your reknown mastery of IP addresses should quickly help us determine who said what and when. Please give this some thought.
Heckofajob Greenie.
Posted by: Justacanuck at October 31, 2007 05:08 PM (hgxwr)
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I would gently ask the noted First Amendment scholar Greenwald to note where it states that soldiers give up all their constitutional rights to free speech once they put on a uniform.
And I’ll gently reply, Bob, that there are quite a few “free speech” activities that someone wearing a uniform cannot engage in and are prohibited by law from doing.
Federal Law (Titles 10, 2, and 18, United States Code), Department of Defense (DOD) Directives, and specific military regulations strictly limit a military active duty person's participation in partisan political activities.
Cannot - Speak before a partisan political gathering, including any gathering that promotes a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.
Cannot - Participate in any radio, television, or other program or group discussion as an advocate for or against of a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.
Cannot - Allow or cause to be published partisan political articles signed or written by the member that solicits votes for or against a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.
There is a long list of other “cannots” that you might want to familiarize yourself with.
http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/militarylaw1/a/milpolitics.htm
Posted by: Steve at October 31, 2007 06:20 PM (MN8Pv)
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Oh, I am well aware of at least some of those--especially as it relates to speaking at political events, which has gotten soldiers in trouble recently--I've just seen no evidence that Boylan or other PAOs have done anything approaching that, protests from the Naomi Wolf/Glenn Greenwald wing of the Democrat Party duly noted.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 31, 2007 06:27 PM (HcgFD)
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John, If you read Salon closely, you'll note that they said essentially the same thing I did: the header information were able to narrow it down to a couple of computers on the military network. They never indicated that they were able to see beyond a mail server, which is what I speculated these computers may be even before I read their article.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 31, 2007 06:50 PM (HcgFD)
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Steve - You need to remember that Bush isn't running in 2008 and that the Iraq War was approved by a bipartisan majority of both houses of Congress. Correcting misinformation is not a political activity even if Greenwald believes it to be so.
The e-mail in question wasn't supporting or questioning individual candidates or parties. Where do you see the offending violations?
Posted by: daleyrocks at October 31, 2007 07:09 PM (0pZel)
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Bob - Another point to add. Greenwald has also concluded that the Army is doing nothing to investigate the e-mail matter or its IT security because they have not informed HIM of what they are doing in those regards. The clowns.
Posted by: daleyrocks at October 31, 2007 07:11 PM (0pZel)
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It all boils down to whether the Army's network assigns IP addresses dynamically or statically, and if statically, how often they are renewed, and whether or not they are assigned new addresses at renewal time.
Basically, a dynamic IP address changes every time a computer logs on. A static IP address is "leased" for a certain period of time (90 days is pretty standard in the non-military world, not sure what it would be in the military). The network administrator (a/k/a the "Alpha Geek") can also set most networks to renew the same address every time, or force a new address each time it is renewed... for ease of administration, most civilian net admins choose to renew with the same address... Alpha Geeks are notoriously lazy.
Therefore, without that information being released by the Army (and for their own computer security, I would expect that they will never release details like those), all Greenwald and his ilk can do whine.
Posted by: C-C-G at October 31, 2007 07:37 PM (ysloH)
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So Socky McSockpuppet's rag has
yet another post up on this silly affair. Greenie's bunkmate Farhad Manjoo has posted a rambling bunch of quotes and links seeking to portray Boylan as passionate about his job. Who knew?
Amongst all that waste of electrons can be found this huge steaming pile:
But neither Michelle nor Steven Boylan had anything to do with a curious e-mail recently sent to an elderly Vermont man. Late in September, the Brattleboro Reformer, a newspaper in southern Vermont, reported that police had uncovered an effort to defraud 81-year-old Fred Humphrey, who was looking to rent out his vacation cabin in nearby Guilford. Someone claiming to be Lt. Col. Steve Boylan (Boylan was promoted to colonel from lieutenant colonel) had inquired, in a series of e-mails, about renting the cabin as a surprise present for his godson in England. The e-mailer even sent Humphrey a check for $3,000, $2,500 over the asking price, asking that the difference be remitted to an address in New York. Police contacted Boylan in Iraq and determined that he wasn't the fellow behind the rental request. The $3,000 check, unsurprisingly, turned out to be bogus.
Salon attempted to acquire the fake Boylan e-mails from Humphrey in order to examine their headers, but Humphrey did not return our calls. The company through which Humphrey rents his cottage would not provide Salon with the e-mails without Humphrey's consent. In the Reformer's report, however, Humphrey describes the fake Boylan's letters as "worded in rather stilted language" and missing key words. "It didn't seem like someone who had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel would write like that," Humphrey said.
The disputed e-mail messages to Greenwald -- as well as all of the blog posts bearing Boylan's name on the Web -- are not at all stilted. Indeed, they all share a strident tone, oozing confidence.
It's now quite apparent the brilliant researchers at Salon have never even thought to ask their very own IT department to explain the mysteries of IP addresses, mail servers and spam to them. If they had in fact bothered to get out from behind their keyboards to ask a few questions, they might have a working hypothesis of who might be behind Boylan's e-mail.
And if any of the crack Salon researchers had actually talked to someone in IT, this brilliant report by Farhad Manjoo would not have included the breathless 291 words I've quoted above. If Farhad or SockyGreenPuppet had bothered to ask one of their IT geeks - any geek who knows anything at all about e-mail, they wouldn't be wasting their impressive investigative skills trying to obtain an e-mail sent to an 81 year old.
Instead, we now know that Farhad and/or his researchers are incompetent and perhaps by the time I post this, someone will have already clued him in on what a
419 scam is.
What's next Greenie & Farhad? Will you next be insinuating that Boylan is possibly behind the next penile enlargement/Cheap Viagr@/stock pump'n'dump e-mail that comes with his name attached?
You guys have proven beyond a doubt that professional asshattery can be a paying job.
Posted by: Justacanuck at October 31, 2007 09:58 PM (hgxwr)
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Justacanuck, I suspect that Farhad thinks that computers still use tubes.
Posted by: C-C-G at October 31, 2007 10:16 PM (ysloH)
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C-C-G,
To reduce power consumption and space requirements I believe they use nuvistors. 6CW4s. A tasty little number almost as small as a CK722.
Posted by: M. Simon at November 01, 2007 05:47 AM (eeb3t)
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Mr. Socketty Sock Puppets hatred for the military makes the code pinkies look downright patriotic in comparison.
Posted by: Capitalist Infidel at November 01, 2007 08:31 AM (Lgw9b)
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Simon, and the internet (invented by Algore, don't forget) is made up of lots of pipes, too?
Posted by: C-C-G at November 01, 2007 08:41 AM (ysloH)
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Okay, so if it wasn't Boylan then it was someone else within the Army's network. Either that, or a hacker broke into the military's computers to forge intemperate e-mails under Boylan's signature. Come on, none of that passes the smell test and you know it.
I find the "hacker" explanation you postulate highly unlikely. If someone was able to penetrate this email server, I think they would have somethig more useful to do than mimic a PAO, such as stealing data.
I've little doubt that the author is indeed someone within the military network. As a result, I'm rather confident that an investigation is underway, somehow muddling through without Glenn's superfluous email or advice.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at November 01, 2007 08:50 AM (0BhZ5)
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Hmmmmm.
1. It's possible to spoof email headers.
What the email headers are is a section of the email that lists the servers in turn that received the email and then sent it on. There is no perfect guarantee that the email in question actually traversed the servers in this list and it's very possible that someone simply edited the email headers to include US Army or DOD email servers when in fact the email didn't originate from any of those.
Remember folks. Email headers are just text appended to the body of the email. It's nothing more complex than that. And anybody with any experience in SMTP or TCP/IP programming can spoof email headers.
2. It's possible that a US Army or DOD email server, or any workstation or computer authorized to access one, was compromised to send this email. Why they would do so and then send a fake email to Socky McSockpuppet is frankly beyond me but it's possible.
3. Socky McSockpuppet is making all this up. He got an email or two from Lt. Col. Boylan and then edited the body of the email to make it far more advantageous for himself. The US Army or DOD email servers will have the the transmission of the email logged on it's servers and may, or may not, have the email in question stored in a backup log somewhere. They probably do as it's SOP for large organizations to have complete copies of all emails sent or received but you never know.
I really doubt this but Socky McSockpuppet has done some questionable things in the past to get attention so that's always a possibility.
Posted by: memomachine at November 01, 2007 09:40 AM (3pvQO)
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It's highly likely that Greenwald is telling the truth and that Boylan is lying.
John, the problem with Greenwald on this one is not his facts (which is a nice change of pace), but his conclusions, which are quite stupid, the most blatant of which is that somehow the Army
needs him to sort this out.
What is it that you think Boylan's lie is? If he did write the original email and send it under his own name, why would he then say he didn't? Do you suppose he thought an egotistical hack like Gleen(s) wouldn't mention it?
Posted by: Pablo at November 01, 2007 10:16 AM (yTndK)
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To answer your question, yes, I did contact Boylan, and he told me the same thing as he told Greenwald: the initial email wasn't from him. Take that claim for whatever you think it is worth.
I
never implied a hacker explanation, in the main post or the comments.
A hacker would hack into the system, use Boylan's account, and send the email. I never stated or implied that occurred. In fact, I postulated that I thought the only way someone outside of the military could have sent this is if the message was spoofed--sent by someone not at all on the military's network, but able to fake the headers convincingly.
This leaves us with two possiblities: either Boylan sent the original email, or someone at his base logged-on to his account and sent the email.
I agree that, looking at the what we have for evidence, that it is most likely that Col. Boylan sent the original message and then disavowed it for reasons unknown.
I'm puzzled as to
why he would disavow the message. It was not political in nature, though certainly scathing. Of course, I'm puzzled as to why anyone would care enough about Greenwald to initiate a conversation with him in the first place.
I'm sure we'll know which is correct soon enough.
If Boylan sent it I wold imagine it would be easy to prove and I imagine he will be reassigned rather quickly, probably within a week. You can easily tell if that occurs becuase someone else would step into his role, which is not an unnoticable one.
If however, someone else used his ID (the only other internal option I see), they may be able to prove or diprove that theory quickly as well. At his level, Boylan spends a lot of time in meetings. If the message was sent at a time he could be verified to be in a meeting with other officers or even off base, that would clear him rather quickly.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at November 01, 2007 10:25 AM (EPsu8)
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John - Why don't you point out the innaccuracies and exaggerations in the e-mail that Boylan allegedly sent rather than just making a bald statement? Greenwald did a piss poor job of refuting it in his original response and has repeatedly mangled the facts of the Beauchamp matter. Lying, exaggeration and exaggeration are par for the course for Greenwald. Why don't you point out where you feel they exist in the offending e-mail that has Greenwald still hyperventilating?
Posted by: daleyrocks at November 01, 2007 11:15 AM (0pZel)
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I wouldn't piss off Greenwald - he can field an army of millions of sock puppets with the stroke of a key.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at November 01, 2007 11:58 AM (XDffs)
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That kid is an amateur who's just starting out in life, but you and others have put him through the meat grinder.
False. We put the magazine TNR through the ringer and continue to do so due to their lying and covering-up lies. The story is no longer about Beauchamp, and has not been for months.
Boylan is experienced and senior, and there is every indication that he is a liar. CY, this is an integrity test. Not just for Boylan, but for you.
You seem to have a reading comprehension problem. Re-read CY's post. He very clearly stated in his original post, and in several follow-up comments to you, that he believes either Boylan wrote the email or that someone within the Army at his location wrote the email. He further stated that he believes that the Army is investigating and we will find out soon which is true. As to Boylan lying, the only lie would be if he indeed wrote the email that he disclaimed. The email itself contained no lies. And, despite your assertions otherwise, the email itslef did not violate any laws or Army regulations for him to have sent it.
However, I do agree that if he sent it, the tone of it was not an appropriate email from a senior Army official, particularly a PAO. But, there is an enormous difference between feeling the tone was unprofessional and claiming Boylan did something illegal - which is what you are trying to imply.
You also state that
It's an open question as to whether the Army will investigate the matter to begin with, much less reveal the truth.
Having been in the Army and conducted and/or advised investigating officers, I can tell you that the Army is much quicker to investigate iteslf and/or its people than any Democrat ever has been in regards to a liberal. Almost any claim of misconduct will be investigated ad naseum, regardless of how meritless the accusations are. So, have no fear, this will be investigated.
In any case, you appear sane enough to notice that, if a liberal tells you the sun rises in the East, he's being truthful. We agree on what's really at issue here, which is that Boylan likely sent the e-mail. It's an open question as to whether the Army will investigate the matter to begin with, much less reveal the truth.
This is amusing coming from the side of the aisle that still defends TNR, "fake but accurate" Dan Rathers, and numerous other obvious falsehoods.
He is sworn to serve the United States, which includes all of us. As a PIO, it's part of his job to be reasoned, reasonable, accessible, articulate, and truthful. The tone of his e-mails is unacceptable. If he worked for a private company, he'd be fired for the tone of his comments.
I'm glad you find the tone of his email unnacceptable. Would that leftist considered the tone of their "arguments" the same way and actually engaged in reasoned debate rather than "Bush Lied" or calling everyone a racist/bigot/homophobe/sexist, etc., etc., when they disagree with a policy. It is a very one-way street with leftists. They want to be treated with kid gloves but have no limits on their own vicious rhetoric. While I think the tone of his email (if Boylan did send it) was unprofessional, it does not bother me that much - and it is up to his superior officers to decide whether it is acceptable or not.
Its too bad that the left is focusing on the "tone" of the email and not the fact that his comments in the email were correct with regards to Greenwald.
Posted by: Great Banana at November 01, 2007 12:03 PM (IDPbq)
21
bravo John!
this "but Clinton did it too" defense has always sounded desperate.
Posted by: dan of steele at November 01, 2007 02:11 PM (zJwn0)
22
John - The gasbaggery about your family surely must be interesting to someone somewhere, but it doesn't get back to the issues you raised earlier - inaccuracies and exaggerations in the e-mail allegedly sent by Boylan. You raised the point. Please be specific in providing examples of the conduct you describe. Also you mention lying. Apart from the issue of the provenance of the e-mail, are there other lies that you have noted. Please be specific.
Liberals are noted for that vagueness. Please be an exception.
Posted by: daleyrocks at November 01, 2007 02:42 PM (fObAs)
23
Ah yes, the old "the facts as I see them are..." conjecture argument.
Who can argue with this logic? ...Your mother taught you well.
Posted by: everydayjoe at November 01, 2007 04:14 PM (/c1gr)
24
John - With the values that you claim your parents imparted on you and lessons learned in a long and storied business career, it would seem that you would be above flinging accusations about someone's character without having the willingness to back up your accusations or defend your position. That is exactly the cowardly behavior you have exhibited today. I doubt your father would be very proud or that the company you served as spokeperson for would have allowed you to get away with such behavior. He lied because I say he lied or he exaggerated and is innaccurate because I say so just don't cut it in the corporate world. Surely with your wealth of experience you can see that.
I played in the same arena as you for a number of years and would have been cut off at the ankles had I tried the same bit of jackassery you have today on this thread. You made assertions. Back them up with specifics.
I will grant you that provenance of the e-mail cannot be proved one way or the other at this point. I want to hear about innaccuracies and exaggerations, words for which you seem to have created strange definitions in the case of Beauchamp. Creating incidents out of whole cloth and passing them off as truth count for innaccuracy and exaggeration in your parlance for Beauchamp. I wonder how you define the words in the case of Boylan or the author of e-mail?
Posted by: daleyrocks at November 01, 2007 06:02 PM (0pZel)
25
It's not about whether he is correcting GG - Because of his position as PAO (now compromised) one could argue that Boylan is in violation of Article 133 (Or the person that sent/forged it)
Article 133—Conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman
Text.
“Any commissioned officer, cadet, or midshipman who is convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
Elements.
(1) That the accused did or omitted to do certain acts; and
(2) That, under the circumstances, these acts or omissions constituted conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman.
Explanation.
(1) Gentleman. As used in this article, “gentleman” includes both male and female commissioned officers, cadets, and midshipmen.
(2) Nature of offense. Conduct violative of this article is action or behavior in an official capacity which, in dishonoring or disgracing the person as an officer, seriously compromises the officerÂ’s character as a gentleman, or action or behavior in an unofficial or private capacity which, in dishonoring or disgracing the officer personally, seriously compromises the personÂ’s standing as an officer. There are certain moral attributes common to the ideal officer and the perfect gentleman, a lack of which is indicated by acts of dishonesty, unfair dealing, indecency, indecorum, lawlessness, injustice, or cruelty. Not everyone is or can be expected to meet unrealistically high moral standards, but there is a limit of tolerance based on customs of the service and military necessity below which the personal standards of an officer, cadet, or midshipman cannot fall without seriously compromising the personÂ’s standing as an officer, cadet, or midshipman or the personÂ’s character as a gentleman. This article prohibits conduct by a commissioned officer, cadet or midshipman which, taking all the circumstances into consideration, is thus compromising. This article includes acts made punishable by any other article, provided these acts amount to conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Thus, a commissioned officer who steals property violates both this article and Article 121. Whenever the offense charged is the same as a specific offense set forth in this Manual, the elements of proof are the same as those set forth in the paragraph which treats that specific offense, with the additional requirement that the act or omission constitutes conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman.
(3) Examples of offenses. Instances of violation of this article include knowingly making a false official statement; dishonorable failure to pay a debt; cheating on an exam; opening and reading a letter of another without authority;
Posted by: Jim at November 01, 2007 06:26 PM (TZikN)
26
Just one point.
It is not necessarily required to hack into the military email server in order to spoof an email header.
Therefore, for all we know, it could have been our commenter John here who sent the email allegedly from Boylan.
Something worth considering, no?
Posted by: C-C-G at November 01, 2007 07:17 PM (PGjzz)
27
Hello everyone, if we are to rightly call TNR to task for their defending of a story that is clearly a lie then we should be open to the same criticism if we defend someone who is clearly lying. There is no hacker, there is enough evidence that we can see Beachamp was a liar and Boylan is a liar. Beauchamp was a low in the military where as Boylan has a much higher rank and is a Public Affairs Officer.
Defending Boylan when the evidence is clear is no more admirable then defending TNR, the reasoning some are reaching for on this blog is the same as TNR. Let's face it is a liar and should be drummed out of the military for his behaviour.
Posted by: RealityCheck at November 01, 2007 07:53 PM (j2vGP)
28
John, if I sound less than convinced of your analysis, it's only because I find it refreshingly unburdened by the weight of evidence.
I happen to be a certified computer technician and have been since the days of the original 80386 machines. I know how easily one can spoof email headers, so I am not convinced that the emails came from Boylan simply because of the headers.
You only accept the evidence because you have a pre-existing bias against the military which you cannot move past.
I pity you for that.
Posted by: C-C-G at November 01, 2007 08:11 PM (PGjzz)
29
Boylan lied about the e-mail. I have been as succinct as I can be about that. On that point even CY agrees.
Two things
really tick me off.
One of those is someone putting words in my mouth. The other one is someone what take a position of absolutes before all the evidence is in.
I
never said he lied about the email. I said it was
most likely. I try not to pass judgment until the facts are in, and all we know for
certain is that either the email was spoofed by someone highly competent, or more likely than not, it came from a pair of Army email servers in Iraq.
You don't seem to grasp that while it is most likely that Boylan sent the email, that dozens or hundreds of others send email through those same email servers, which in turn are fed by an unknown number of desktop and laptop computers. We don't yet have enough information to know where it originated.
But we do have a bit of data that could be nothing, or proof that someone other than Boylan sent the email message.
I'm still working that. Perhaps you and the other Nifongs of this world should hold judgment until all the facts are in.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at November 01, 2007 08:24 PM (HcgFD)
30
CY, you don't understand.
The Great Greenwald has declared Boylan guilty.
Evidence, proof, data, all that is irrelevant to the determination of
The Great Greenwald.
Just like what happened when
The Great Rather declared that the Texas Air National Guard memo was accurate, no?
Posted by: C-C-G at November 01, 2007 08:44 PM (PGjzz)
31
John - Your act is pathetic. The reflex patellar reaction of the left when someone says something negative about one of their Saints, Greenwald in this case, is to attack, regardless of the merits of the position. Your appeals to principled behavior should start with Greenwald and your friends, who all like to stick together, to use your turn of phrase, rather than the Army. Let's go back to earlier today:
You Say - "Boylan is a public affairs officer, and a fairly senior officer in the military. He is sworn to serve the United States, which includes all of us. As a PIO, it's part of his job to be reasoned, reasonable, accessible, articulate, and truthful."
That's your job description for him. When his integrity is directly impugned by dishonest bloggers such as Greenwald who have a track record of blatantly disregarding facts, misusing quotes and communicating with you as if they were bill collectors, does he not have a duty, as you point out in the job description, to correct the facts.
You Say - "The tone of his e-mails is unacceptable. If he worked for a private company, he'd be fired for the tone of his comments."
The tone was hilarious and deserved based on the tone of Greenwald's e-mails to him and Greenwald's blog postings about the politicization of the military. Boylan doesn't work for a private company. He works for the U.S. Army. Address any issues you have related to Glenn's wounded ego and hurt pride to his boss.
You Say - "If (as seems likely) he has lied about this Greenwald incident, he not only failed at his PIO job but he's put a stain on the Army. I notice that you've been aggressive in the case of a young private who wrote an article that contained some inaccuracies and exaggerations."
Greenwald put a stain on the entire senior leadership of the Army because of his BDS. Because the Army is trying to succeed in Iraq and he views it as Bush's war, he incorrectly views anyone talking about positive developments or avoiding potential negative developments as politicizing the war effort. That is an inherent danger when you become a hopeless idealogue such as Greenwald. Some innaccuracies and exaggerations you mention related to Beauchamp are really fabricating entire incidents from scratch and claiming they happened as described. Those are not the typical dictionary definitions of inaccuracies and exaggerations.
You Say - "That kid is an amateur who's just starting out in life, but you and others have put him through the meat grinder."
No one here except TNR has had any access to Beauchamp so your claim is a little hard to fathom. TNR didn't even acknowledge any contact with Beauchamp until more than a month after the fact. The Army dealt with Beauchamp through its own investigation. The right's interest, in my opinion since I cannot speak for others, is to have another dishonest liberal publication correct its smearing of the troops.
You Say - "Boylan is experienced and senior, and there is every indication that he is a liar. CY, this is an integrity test. Not just for Boylan, but for you."
Your fatuous statements here contradict the beginning of your comment from which this was extracted.
Your moralizing is pretty hollow when all you are really annoyed about is one of your icons getting his nose bloodied. You still haven't addressed the issue whether there was anything incorrect about the content of the e-mail, only the tone. Too bad.
Good Day, Sir!
Posted by: daleyrocks at November 01, 2007 10:08 PM (0pZel)
32
Heh... nice sign-off, Daley. Kinda reminiscent of one I've seen somewhere... but I honestly invite you to continue to use it.
Posted by: C-C-G at November 01, 2007 10:21 PM (PGjzz)
33
One of my favorite Greenwald quotes, culled from a comment he made one his own blog, 12/2/06 - essentially he'll do anything to take down the administration and not everyone is entitled to respect and civility - it explains a lot:
There are some people who treat our conflicts with the Bush administration and their followers as just a matter of basic, friendly political and policy differences - along the lines of "what should the rate of capital gains tax be?" or "what type of laws can best encourage employers to provide more benefits to their employees" - and therefore, we treat people who support the administration with respect and civility and simply have nice, clean discussions to sort out our differences among well-intentioned people.
That isn't how I see that, and nobody should come to this blog expecting that. I don't think I've done anything to lead anyone to expect otherwise. I see the Bush movement and its various component parts as a plague and a threat, as anything but well-intentioned. My goal, politically speaking, is to do what I can to undermine it and the institutions that have both supported and enabled it.
Posted by: daleyrocks at November 01, 2007 10:33 PM (0pZel)
34
Very good find, Daley.
Of course, since the members of the Armed Forces vote overwhelmingly Republican, Greenwald is therefore determined to undermine the very people who defend the freedom of speech he uses so freely.
Therefore, whenever Greenwald gets his hands on something that he thinks he can use as a bludgeon against the Armed Forces, he uses it to excess, having ridden the wave of his pre-existing bias straight to a conclusion without any thought being necessary.
Now that he's found that he has stepped in the substance that he tried to smear Boylan with, he's spinning furiously to avoid having to admit that he was wrong, and rank-and-file lefties like John here are doing the same, for the same reason.
That is, unless John is another of Glenn "Sock Puppet" Greenwald's sock puppets.
Posted by: C-C-G at November 01, 2007 10:43 PM (PGjzz)
35
John - Thanks for opinions John. At least you recognize some of the flaws of the left. I don't need somebody to write talking points for me to tell me what to believe. I don't fantasize about our constitution having been shredded by the evil Bush empire, wars for oil, wars for Halliburton, 9/11 being an inside job or many of the other strange conspiracy theories that seem to infect the left. I don't wake up filled with anger and rage the way many on the left admit they do every day.
I wonder how dishonest people like yourself can look at themselves in the mirror, though.
Good Day, Sir!
Posted by: daleyrocks at November 01, 2007 11:47 PM (0pZel)
36
John, you speak of True Believers, and that is appropriate, for you are one.
You are clearly bent on dismissing all exculpatory evidence in favor of accepting, on faith, the word of
The Great Greenwald. When you've studied computers as long as I have (my first PC was a Commodore Vic-20), perhaps you will comprehend why email headers are not accepted as evidence in any court of law that I am aware of. They're just too easily faked.
I direct your attention to
this article from Carnegie Mellon University, if you don't believe me. You may also wish to view
this article which details specifically how to spoof an email header.
But, of course, you being the True Believer that you are in
The Great Greenwald, you will accept none of this purely non-partisan evidence in favor of your partisan True Believer conclusion.
Good day, Sir. I said,
Good Day!
Posted by: C-C-G at November 02, 2007 08:12 AM (PGjzz)
37
John,
Your comments are a farce. You potray yourself as a tough, hard, brilliant worker who moved up the corporate ladder by his own sweat. You claim to be the only independent minded, clear thinker around.
Yet, your comments are identical to any admitted leftist who comes here. You continue to defend TNR and Beauchamp, but want Boylan's head on a platter w/o even the courtesy of an investigation.
Who do you think you are fooling? I was in the miltary, put myself through college and lawschool, went back into the military, and since then have worked my way up in my profession. My family was not rich, my parents were not political. I started out in life as a very, very liberal person, and over time (through experience and education) became more conservative). so, how does your bio make you somehow smarter or more able to think independently than mine?
You may believe you are independent minded and weigh everything and make a logical decision, but your positions end up parroting the knee-jerk reactions of the left - why is that?
Just because we disagree, does not mean that I have not thought through things and come to my own opinion, so constantly attacking people and claiming we are nothing but "bush-bots" - while you don't say it, you imply it - is hardly a new or persuasive argument.
You have not made a logical or persausive argument here - you have merely called yourself smart and independent and called us dumb and followers, and think that somehow proves your point. You call the internet a wasteland and think that makes you smarter than everyone else here.
Instead of relying on your belief that you are smarter and more independent than others, or that those you disagree with (conservativesj) are incapable of independent or logical thought, how about you try and make an argument?
Why is it that leftists (which, despite your assertions, you conform to all the stereotypes) must always a) deny they are leftists and b) personnally attack the people they are debating with rather than debating a point?
I think most people here have stated that Boylan probably wrote the email, but we will wait for the Army investigation and see what they do. Moreover, I think the consensous veiw on this site is that if Boylan wrote the email - the email itself was not a problem (i.e., not illegal or against army regs in any way - even if the tone was unprofessional), lying about sending the email may be a problem for Boylan.
You have simply asserted that sending the email in the first instance is wrong, wrong, wrong. Yet, you have no credible arguments for why this is so aside from your own assertion. Point to a law or army regulation that Boylan violated.
Next you argue that we should all be calling for Boylan's discipline, w/o even allowing an investigation to occur (while at the same time basically defending the lying of TNR and Beauchamp). That seems premature to me.
you also state that
Boylan told a direct, unambiguous lie. It's obvious. That's not acceptable. I'm not naive. I know that people play games, and I know that there are ambiguities and tough situations that can be read in more than one way. This wasn't one of them. Boylan lied, and liars have no business serving as colonels in the Army, and they certainly have no business dealing with journalists.
If you honestly believed lying was such a huge sin, you would have a hard time ever voting for a liberal (and certainly could never support either Clinton). Moreover, why can't we hold journalists to the same standard of never lying?
As to your assertion that admitting Boylan lied will somehow "destory our worldview", that is insane tripe. If Boylan lied, he lied. He will have to deal with whatever consequences the Army imposes - which I will be fine with. It will not affect my conservative world view one bit.
You see, I happen to know that people are fallible, and that the messenger is not the messege. So, for instance, if a republican officeholder who votes against gay marriage gets outed as gay, I realize that such an event does not have any bearing on whether or not I believe allowing gay marriage is a good policy.
It is leftists (liberal, progressive, whatever you want to call it) who believe that the personal is policy. Leftists seem to believe that because people don't live up to standards at all times, there should be no standards. That because people fail to act morally at all times, there should be no absolute morals. that is foolish in my opinion. We don't have standards and morals out of the belief that everyone lives up to them always, but out of belief that everyone should attempt to live up to them always, and that there should be consequences for not living up to them. Leftists see failures to achieve a standard or moral and say, scrap the whole system.
Thus, whether Boylan is proven a liar or not is of no consequence to my world view. I have come to my world view through education, experience, reading, thinking and analyzing. I constantly alter my "world view" based on new facts and new arguments. Just because I don't alter my worldview in ways to suit you does not mean that I don't think rationally about such things, as you imply in every one of your comments.
I don't, however, alter my worldview simply b/c some person has failed to live up to a standard somewhere in the world. If anything, such things tend to strengthen my worldview, as I realize that such failures demonstrate the need for such standards - otherwise there would be chaos.
So, if you really are interested in a reasoned debate, drop your talking points about how you are so smart and independent and how we are so dumb and nothing more than bush-bots and try to make a reasoned argument based on facts, rather than assertions. then we can argue in good faith and try to persuade each other of the merits of our positions. Otherwise, you are simply blowing smoke . . .
Posted by: Great Banana at November 02, 2007 08:37 AM (JFj6P)
38
Great Banana, just one word: AMEN!
Posted by: C-C-G at November 02, 2007 08:50 AM (PGjzz)
39
C-C-G,
The form of arguing used by the left, and being used here by John - is slowly driving me insane. I just don't understand how people can be so vested in an opinion when they are wholly unable to defend said opinion with a rational argument based on facts.
I have come to realize that there truly seems to be a left/right difference in thinking (call it brain structure, brain chemistry, whatever). People on the left truly seem to believe that if they can demonstrate that the person making the argument is somehow deficient, then the argument is deficient. No matter how many times we point out that those are two separate things, they always go for the attack on the person making the argument, rather than the argument itself. Which is why I believe for the left, personal is policy.
Conservatives have always argued that people on the left make decisions with emotion rather than with logic. I am beginning to believe that more and more. I don't even think they purposefully do it, I think they honestly believe that attacking the person making the argument is the same thing as attacking the argument.
I also think this explains why the left often seems much more passionate about their politics, and much more willing to engage in things like demonstrations and marches - their policy preferences are based on emotion, which is much more motivating to act than simply basing policy preferences on some form of rational argument.
Which explains why conservatives and liberals are wholly unable to have good faith arguments. We are basically communicating in two different langauges. And, I am not trying to make a value judgment in this diatribe, there is a place for emotional decision making and a place for rational decision making in this world.
I am simply coming to believe that there is a real cognative disconnect between liberals and conservatives and true communication is almost impossible.
Posted by: Great Banana at November 02, 2007 09:08 AM (JFj6P)
40
Hmmm.
@ John
Boylan told a direct, unambiguous lie. It's obvious. That's not acceptable. I'm not naive.
Prove it.
That's the problem you've got *and* we have. Nobody actually has any proof of any specific thing. And until somebody actually offers up some proof or other documentation, there really isn't anything that anybody can do about it.
I.e. it's all just speculation.
So if you're going to call Lt. Col. Boylan a liar then YOU need to provide absolute and unambiguous proof of it.
And quite frankly I don't think you can because it's simply not available.
Posted by: memomachine at November 02, 2007 01:26 PM (3pvQO)
41
Hmmmm.
The things people need to understand are pretty basic.
1. All communications using the internet use ASCII.
This is because early on the only computers that communicated on the internet used ASCII.
2. All communications using the internet use TEXT.
This is because the programs that initially were developed to use the internet were designed to be used from a command line, on a text only terminal using telnet.
3. The web browser you are using to read this communicated using TEXT. Plain text.
The reason is that, again, the internet was built primarily on text based software, it's easier to debug and track and in a pinch you can use telnet to accomplish anything as long as you've got the knowledge and are willing to suffer doing so.
Posted by: memomachine at November 02, 2007 02:02 PM (3pvQO)
42
Hmmm.
An example:
http://www.xoc.net/works/tips/telnet.asp
If you follow the directions exactly you'll see:
GET / HTTP/1.1
host: www.microsoft.com
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Location: /en/us/default.aspx
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
P3P: CP="ALL IND DSP COR ADM CONo CUR CUSo IVAo IVDo PSA PSD TAI TELo OUR SAMo C
NT COM INT NAV ONL PHY PRE PUR UNI"
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:04:57 GMT
Content-Length: 136
<html><head><title>Object moved</title></head><body>
<h2>Object moved to <a href="/en/us/default.aspx">here</a>.</h2>
</body></html>
----
As you can see. It's all text.
Posted by: memomachine at November 02, 2007 02:06 PM (3pvQO)
43
Hmmm.
@ Great Banana
I am simply coming to believe that there is a real cognative disconnect between liberals and conservatives and true communication is almost impossible.
*shrug* I've said for years now that:
Liberals think conservatives are evil,
Conservatives think liberals are crazy.
Strange. But true.
Posted by: memomachine at November 02, 2007 02:08 PM (3pvQO)
44
Banana, it is true that lefties do not use logic, for one simple reason.
If they examined the position of the modern left logically, they'd be forced into conservatism.
How else do lefties justify opposing a war that has liberated millions of people from a brutal dictator, while loudly proclaiming their concern for human rights? It only makes sense if you don't let logic within 100 miles of it.
Therefore, lefties cannot, truly
cannot use logic, so they resort to the only other kind of arguing they know, which they learned on the elementary school playground and have never forgotten.
Posted by: C-C-G at November 02, 2007 06:53 PM (PGjzz)
45
This leaves us with two possiblities: either Boylan sent the original email, or someone at his base logged-on to his account and sent the email.
There is actually a third possibility. GG has received mail from Boylan in the past, so he has an example of what servers are used. Using the prior message as a template, the current message could have been created out of whole cloth.
Good Day.
Posted by: Loren at November 05, 2007 02:54 PM (sIRhH)
46
Indeed, Loren... and given Mr. Greenwald's known sock-puppeting activities, it doesn't seem that big a stretch for him to do so, does it?
Posted by: C-C-G at November 05, 2007 08:06 PM (PGjzz)
47
Greenwald vehemently denies any involvement, direct or indirect in manufacture of the disputed e-mail. While ny bias runs toward doubting the person formerly caught out in similar mischief, however, a person who frets a lot about being treated with the proper dignity a person of his caliber deserves, it does occur to me that Greenwald is not the only person who could have a grudge against Greenwald or Boylan, or might indulge a misguided attempt to gain sympathy or express the views of either.
For example a disgruntled Beau"champion" , or a mischievous Cabana boy who feels Boylan has used his friend rather ill, has staged the drama.
Anyone who has received email from Boylan could spoof his header information. if skilled enough. Some might have access to insert a spook straight onto the Salon servers.
The original email was innocuous enough, neither was it entirely unsolicited, in that it was a response to Greenwald public statements. The author purported to be speaking in his capacity as a private person, not in official capacity.
It had a critical and "woodshed lecture" tone, but the worst insult it contained was a comparison of Glenn to the talents of Alan Colmes.
So, I don't know why Boylan wouldn't own it. Friends of Glenn suggest Boylan wrote it in a fit of vodka-thirty and regrets it, and/or enjoys toying with the likes of Greenwald. But I tend to take Boylan at his word. He didn't write it, and his emails to Glenn, while taciturn, are consistent with someone who wonders if the mail bears hallmarks of a fake...as others have faked being him in the past.. ( "Interesting email, why do you ask"...etc)
Glenn is unsatisfied by this response, but seems clueless as to how impertinent his follow-up questions actually were, decribing himself as "civil" and "proffesional". I see little attempt at evasion by or failure of Boylan to adequately explain anything, as nothing more was owed but a denial of authorship.
Posted by: SarahW at November 06, 2007 09:49 AM (wF/xI)
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October 22, 2007
Yon: Looking For A Few Good Readers
Michael Yon has his latest dispatch posted, blasting the current state of media affairs:
Resistance is futile: You will be (mis)informed.
He begins:
No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.
He does, however, have in mind a solution:
Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour. Why wouldn't they? The cloned copy they get comes from the same sources that list the specials at the local grocery store, and the hours and locations of polling places for town elections. These same news sources print obituaries and birth announcements, give play-by-play for local high school sports, and chronicle all the painful details of the latest celebrity to fall from grace.
To illustrate the absurdity to which this conceit of the collective has grown, I'm tempted to borrow from the boy in the fairy tale, only this time pointing to and shouting at the doomsday-sayers parading by: "Hey, they arenÂ’t wearing any clothes. . . . " Except in this case, I realize I am not a lone voice. Furthermore, with the help of other clear-eyed individuals, I may actually be in a unique position to do something to remedy this, if the experience I had with the AP response to my challenge to investigate and report on the disturbing gravesites in the Al Hamira village is any guide.
Although I can't answer to the cause of the problem, I humbly offer permission to media outlets to republish excerpts of the dispatch or the dispatch in its entirety, including my photographs from the story (if used as they are in the dispatch) at no cost during the month of July 2007. I only ask that the site receive proper attribution and that any publication taking me up on the offer email the website with the details.
That offer was dying on the vine until Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee took the Associated Press to task for their bungled reportage of a different mass graves news story, using my dispatch as a comparison. Although it took a little back and forth, and some additional pressure from all the other bloggers who started tracking on the topic, the AP finally dispatched a reporter to the scene. The resulting article was picked up by at least one other major media outlet, reaching thousands more people. This got me to thinking: what if I made a similar offer on a more permanent basis to a large media syndication, say, the National Newspaper Association?
And so Yon is going to syndicate his text and images, for free to get real, frontline stories of the war to the American people, doing the job that Americans the Manhattan and Washington, DC-based professional media won't do.
But it will take your help to make sure that your local paper newspapers take advantage of the offer.
Those readers can first check to see if their local paper is a member of the NNA . Because only NNA members will be able to
" . . . print excerpts of Michael Yon's dispatches, including up to two of his photographs from each dispatch. Online excerpts may use up to 8 paragraphs, use 1-3 photos, and then link back to the full dispatch on his site saying 'To continue reading, click here.'"
If their local paper is a member of NNA, readers can contact the editor, urging their participation. [If Bob Owens' experience is a reliable indicator, this might take several, uh, prompts.] By encouraging their local daily or weekly newspapers to reprint these dispatches in their print editions, more people without internet access can begin to see a more accurate reflection of the progress I have observed and chronicled in dispatches like "Achievements of the Heart," "7 Rules: 1 Oath," "The Hands of God," and "Three Marks on the Horizon."
In addition to making his work available to your local papers through the NAA, Yon is rebuilding his web site, and having it translated into a total of 17 languages, so that though people in nations where English isn't their primary language can get information from a source a bit less biased than Reuters, AP, AFP, or their state-run media.
None of this, of course, comes without a price. Click on over, and see what you can do to help fight the media war.
We can gripe about how poor and deceptive the media coverage in Iraq is, or we can do something about it. The choice is yours.
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Larger papers will have difficulty taking Yon up on his offer as it will be seen as tantamount to an admission of prior flawed coverage. If they label his work a special series and he omits criticism of the MSM from his work, I think there's a chance. Otherwise, he's biting the hand that he's asking to distribute his work.
Posted by: daleyrocks at October 23, 2007 09:37 AM (0pZel)
2
They can choose any dispatches they want. Not all mention the media.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 23, 2007 10:18 AM (gqU4X)
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October 19, 2007
The Huffing Wolf Challenge
Naomi Wolf has her latest pre-packaged "Bush is going to overthrow the Constitution and install himself as dictator with the help of Blackwater" stem-winder posted on the
Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington's menagerie of
Who's Who in the DSM IV.
Wolf, true American patriot that she is, is criss-crossing these United States in a desperate bid to roll back the forces of Halliburton and the Illuminati, no doubt speaking with the same great oratory and care with the facts that we've come to expect from the Empress of Earth Tones.
She has all the answers to save this great nation from the plague of Bush, and writes with a truthfulness and accuracy that we haven't seen in over seven years... which can be your's for just $11.16 (You save $2.79).
Clearly, freedom comes with a price, but it wasn't until now that I realized it also comes with FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
"But wait, there's more!"
But what if she's wrong? What if--God forbid--she's profiteering from fears of overthrown liberty that may never be?
And therein lies the question, and well-deserved suspicion.
Is Naomi Wolf truly convinced that we have a grave constitutional crisis on our hands, that America about to succumb to dictatorial forces, and that only a book tour can save us? Or is Wolf cynically using the fears of the paranoid fringe to make a profit, filling her own coffers as a digital revivalist charlatan, ministering to those with more money than sense?
We could find out rather easily, I should think.
If Wolf truly believes what she writes, then she must believe that George W. Bush (the head of the American Nazi party she constantly alludes to, but never specifically names) will attempt to overthrow the country and establish himself a Hitleresque dictatorial figure by January 20, 2009, the day the next President of the United States is sworn into office (it would be kind of hard to do it after a new President is installed, after all).
If Wolf is sincere, she and others like her will no doubt be rounded up and shipped off to internment camps run by Michelle Malkin shortly after that date, soon to be fired in massive ovens run by a cigar-chomping Rush Limbaugh. No money she has saved, and none of her earthly possessions will mean a thing to her as her ashes waft in the breeze.
BUT...
What if Wolf is just peddling fear for profit? Shouldn't she be held accountable?
And so a modest challenge that an honest Wolf can easily meet.
If Wolf is honest and sincere about what she writes and the overwhelming majority of the United States continues to ignore her as a kook as they do now, then she'll be too dead to enjoy the money she's made selling her book to the lunatic convergence of Ron Paul supporters, truthers, and Indymedia conspiracy theorists.
"Now how much would you pay?"
But if she's merely been profiteering from fear, as I suspect she has been, then it only seems fair she should pay a price for her deception. Being the magnanimous person that I am and a capitalist, I won't ask her to return a dime to the suckers she's conned.
They, you see, need to be taught a lesson, too.
No, I propose a simple, cost-free solution: a promise from Wolf that if her fear-mongering goes for naught and the next President is sworn into office on January 20, 2009 without a coup d'état, that she will never write again in her current paranoia-outlet-of-choice, The Huffington Post.
The terms should be simple to enforce: if Wolf is right, Arianna Huffington will be rediscovering her conservative roots and swinging The Huffington Post to the right of David Horowitz's FrontPage Mag and will no longer in need of Wolf's services, and if Wolf is wrong and President Bush and his imaginary brownshirts shuffle off to Crawford, then the beautiful Ms. Huffington will still be mistress of her own quite successful domain, if a bit editorially top-heavy on end-of-the-republic-as-we-know-it conspiracy theorists, and needing to cut weight.
It's a simple challenge, really: Naomi Wolf should put her soapbox where her mouth is.
Somehow, though, I doubt she's up to even that mild challenge.
It might cut into her chances to market her next book, How President ________ Is Carving Up America's Soul With a Ginsu Knife.
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"The Wolf that cried wolf"
it could be a parable for our times, if certain parties ever learned from their experiences.
but since they don't, maybe we should publish a collection entitled "Stuck on Stupid" instead? %-)
Posted by: redc1c4 at October 19, 2007 12:11 PM (IWoUD)
2
I think Wolf is nuts. But I was thinking of your prescription, and how she doesn't put her money where her mouth is, nor will she pay a price in the likely event that she is proven wrong. I wonder... what would you prescribe for:
1. folks who insist that Islamofascism is the gravest threat civilization ever faced but will do nothing or virtually nothing advance the cause of civilization other than talk about it
2. folks who warned us about how Clinton would ruin the economy, and then told us how GW was going to do even better. Do they owe the rest of us anything for the mediocre economy we've had since 2001, or should they bear extra responsibility for paying off the national debt?
Posted by: cactus at October 19, 2007 12:29 PM (SV0Gb)
3
Me personally... I'm still waiting for Baldwin et. al. to pack up and get the f*ck out of the US... we'd be much better off and the toxicity that is Hollywierd might come down a few notches... then again, with the exception of Venezuala I can't think of a place that any of them would be welcome, to include Wolf... lets face it... by placing that much "Suck" in one place, you risk forming a Black Hole of Talent that could very well mean the end of the earth as we know it.
Posted by: Big Country at October 19, 2007 12:36 PM (8dJDM)
4
I'm sorry, cactus, but I'm having trouble following you. What would be "advancing the cause of civilization," by your definition?
I work in RTP, the largest research park on this planet, and know for a fact quite a few people from varying nations who work here that view Islamofacism as a very real threat. I would like for you to explain how the people working for
these companies, investgating everything from technology to medicine to pharmacy, aren't doing more to "advance civilization" than just about anywhere else you can name. Or would you prefer these doctors and researchers to stop trying to cure cancer and MS or build smaller, smarter computers, and enlist so that they can huff up the side of a nameless mountain in Pakistan to put a bullet in a member of Osama's fan club?
I'd also like to know what country you live in, that you have a "mediocre economy."
We've had 49 consecutive months of job growth, the longest uninterrupted expansion of the labor market in U.S. history. Real after-tax per capita income has increased by 12.5% since Bush took office, and real wages have jumped 2.2 % a higher average rate than in all of the 1990s. Export have increases, the trade deficit has been reduced, the GDP is powering along at 3.8% after six consecutive years of growth, even including 9/11.
Those of us here in the U.S. are in the middle of a thriving economy, that is, in just about every way, better than what Clinton presided over. I'm sorry things aren't going so well wherever you are.
(BTW, to be fair to Clinton, Bush, and the 41 other Presidents before them, Presidents typically have a only a nominal impact on the economy, for good or for ill.)
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 19, 2007 01:07 PM (ScOBm)
5
Come on CY, if cactus
feels like we have a mediorce economy, then -- by God -- we
have a mediocre economy.
After all, what is more important in all this? Your facts or his feelings?
Posted by: Mark L at October 19, 2007 01:37 PM (H7yeS)
6
"What if Wolf is just peddling fear for profit? Shouldn't she be held accountable?"
Being a babbling fool with a national soapbox is punishment enough.
Posted by: Ken McCracken at October 19, 2007 01:42 PM (6g1gX)
7
CY,
Since you mention unemployment...
The unemployment rate is low today because since the Welfare Reform Act took effect, when people hit the limit, there's no point in reporting to the unemployment office that you're looking for a job. The unemployment rate counts those who are looking.
Thus, a better measure is the employment to population ratio - also reported by the BLS. That is... the ratio of the population who have a job, which is not dependent on people who don't have an incentive to report they're looking in order for the number to make sense.
Click
here. Note that the BLS now has a nifty graphing function. Take a look at what's happened to that since 2001, or take the longer view and include data going further back.
"BTW, to be fair to Clinton, Bush, and the 41 other Presidents before them, Presidents typically have a only a nominal impact on the economy, for good or for ill."
Why do you say that?
Mark L...
The heck with my feeling, or yours for that matter. The federal agency that keeps track of GDP and so forth is the BEA.
Click here, then go to table 7.1 for real GDP per capita. Feel free to figure out for yourself - no need to trust me - how growth has looked since GW took office, as compared to, say, the previous administration. I could tell you, but you wouldn't believe me.
And the Census keeps track of
real mean and median income. No need to trust what I feel. Check it out yourself.
Posted by: cactus at October 19, 2007 02:17 PM (SV0Gb)
8
Let's go with it. Let's also add the proviso that, should we not have a western-civilization-ending showdown with Islam, everyone who has made money pandering to
that demographic must also return what they've earned.
Posted by: nunaim at October 19, 2007 02:50 PM (22/Qe)
9
Cactus, I see you're over on the other side of the street playing. Welcome, as an avid reader of Bob and you.
Bob, Cactus is a writer over at Angry Bear and has done extensive work in collecting and graphing much Econo-data. Some of his interpretations/conclusions can be left of center, but that's no surprise and even no indictment.
Posted by: CoRev at October 19, 2007 03:02 PM (0U8Ob)
10
Well, Bob, the "Fundamentalists" have been making a pretty good living over the past few years writing about Armegeddon, it was just a matter of time before the Leftys got in the game.
Posted by: jj at October 19, 2007 04:35 PM (Gx8W6)
11
The unemployment rate is low today because since the Welfare Reform Act took effect, when people hit the limit, there's no point in reporting to the unemployment office that you're looking for a job. The unemployment rate counts those who are looking.
Thus, a better measure is the employment to population ratio - also reported by the BLS. That is... the ratio of the population who have a job, which is not dependent on people who don't have an incentive to report they're looking in order for the number to make sense.
You
feel that employment to population is a better measure. Care to explain why, other than it makes Bush look bad?
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at October 19, 2007 06:07 PM (Ef+b7)
12
Mark Flacy,
I tend not to pick series based on who they make look good or bad. It just so happens that Bush doens't look good on a lot of things, but maybe that has something to do with a) the amount of time he spends on vacation and b) the amount of time which he doesn't spend on vacation that he spends mountain biking. But that's neither here nor there.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics'
glossary, the unemployment rate is defined as "the number unemployed as a percent of the labor force."
Now, to be unemployed, one has to have "made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week." Otherwise, even if you're jobless - you're not considered unemployed. Assuming you're not retired or studying, they figure you don't want a job or at least are discouraged from looking for one, in which case, by definition, you're not unemployed.
Anyway, how do they know if a person made specific efforts to find employment? Well, he/she has to tell them, them being the unemployment office or the welfare office, which pass on the information to the BLS who in turn adds it all up. But if you put a time limit on how long a person can receive benefits, say, a few years, and person runs through those few years, what incentive do they have to show up at the unemployment office and declare or even prove they were looking for a job?
Anyway, the limit on unemployment compensation, I believe, is 26 weeks, and the lifetime limit on welfare is 5 years. A lot of people hit that limit a while back. Which means that the unemployment rate no longer means what it used to mean.
As to to the employment to population ratio... that's just the ratio of people per job. Ideally, one would look at the working age population, but I don't think the demographics have changed enough nor in a way that would be relevant in explaining what we've seen happen in the last few years.
Posted by: cactus at October 19, 2007 06:45 PM (SV0Gb)
13
In other words, cactus, you are arguing the economy is bad because you
feel it is bad. Since statistics don't back you up, by gum, why them statistics just gotta be wrong. They just gotta.
It's
okay. We
understand. We do.
Really.
Posted by: Mark L at October 19, 2007 07:46 PM (JaqMZ)
14
Cactus, But if you put a time limit on how long a person can receive benefits, say, a few years, and person runs through those few years, what incentive do they have to show up at the unemployment office and declare or even prove they were looking for a job? Doesn't this class fit the definition of non-working individuals who don't want a job? Discouraged maybe if we interviewed them, but definitely without a job and seemingly uncaring about it.
Posted by: CoRev at October 19, 2007 08:19 PM (0U8Ob)
15
Cactus, do your figures include those people who have left a job working for someone else to open their own business and work for themselves?
Just askin'...
Posted by: C-C-G at October 19, 2007 08:51 PM (ufhAS)
16
Mark L,
I linked to the data. I can't imagine you looked at it or that you understood it or you wouldn't have written what you wrote.
CoRev,
That's the problem, isn't it? Motivations and constraints being what they are, at this point you can't tell the two groups (those that want jobs and those that don't) apart because you took away the mechanism that used to be useful for sorting one group from the other.
Posted by: cactus at October 19, 2007 08:55 PM (SV0Gb)
17
Okay so Blackwater is going to help Bush become a dictator? Guess I better get that resume in the mail ASAP. Want to make sre I'm on the winning team and all that. Think they're still paying top dollar @ Blackwater?
Posted by: Stacy at October 19, 2007 10:56 PM (5IFLu)
18
Oh, and cactus, we've got an older population. Could be they just decided to retire. But hey, you can spin it to "Bush Bad!" and that's all that matters.
Posted by: SDN at October 20, 2007 08:14 AM (Hg2oD)
19
SDN,
The same BLS link also gets you a graph for the series in the 16 to 19 year old age group. The pattern seems to be the same... so either:
1. what we're observing is, indeed, as you say, folks retiring; presumably, since 16 to 19 year olds are following the same pattern, we can conclude that 16 to 19 year olds are also choosing to retire
2. the patterns we're observing are due to something other than people choosing to retire
Considering that, given the other links (to real GDP per capita and real median income) seem to indicate that things aren't going so great for most people, I wouldn't bet on large numbers of 16 to 19 year olds deciding to its time to take that gold watch. But you can spin it that way if it gets you to the "Bush good" outcome you're after.
FWIW... there is data out there. Its easy to find. And it contradicts a lot of what you believe.
Posted by: cactus at October 20, 2007 03:25 PM (SV0Gb)
20
SDN,
A follow-up. Here's
data on the US population, by age group for the years 2000 to 2004 from the Census.
If you do the math... sum up the population 20 to 65, and divide through by total population...
2000: 59%
2001: 59.3%
2002: 59.5%
2003: 59.7%
2004: 59.9%
Put another way... over the same time that the employment to population ratio dropped, the working age population as a percentage of the total increased.
Posted by: cactus at October 20, 2007 03:51 PM (SV0Gb)
21
Cactus, I ask again:
Does your data account for people who are no longer employed by someone else because they are now employed by themselves?
Your reluctance to answer that question speaks volumes.
Posted by: C-C-G at October 20, 2007 08:28 PM (ysloH)
22
I'm willing to bet Wolf $10,000 that there is no coup. Surely she's willing to take my money if she's so sure of herself.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 21, 2007 01:20 AM (6Yy5p)
23
C-C-G,
Its not my data. I linked to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the government agency that computes data on employment, unemployment, and for whatever reason, the CPI and inflation. As to your question, from their
glossary, the definition of employed persons:
"Persons 16 years and over in the civilian noninstitutional population who, during the reference week, (a) did any work at all (at least 1 hour) as paid employees; worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family..."
So yes, it includes work people did as business owners. Pretty much everyone except prisoners or members of the military, but they're not counted in the employment to population ratio anyway. (You may recall Reagan tried to have the "noninstitutional" removed from the definition in order to make the figures better back in 84, if memory serves.)
As an aside, I believe the business figures are way overstated right now. (I can get into a discussion of the business births-deaths model they use, which is a pet peeve of mine, if you'd like, but I think its enough to point out it isn't transparent.)
Posted by: cactus at October 21, 2007 07:30 AM (SV0Gb)
24
Cactus, I ask again:
Does your data account for people who are no longer employed by someone else because they are now employed by themselves?
Your reluctance to answer that question speaks volumes.
Well, yes--volumes about your unwillingness to read or understand what people post here. Yet again.
Posted by: nunaim at October 21, 2007 07:58 AM (Ek553)
25
Seems to me you have two potential trends working to deoress the EP ratio, an aging population and 16-19 year olds electing to stay in school. Making college more affordable has been a major platform issue for the Dems, presumably because this is a big part of their base, so this is hardly a surprise. A choice to stay in school is also a factor of economic alternatives and a lot of people have speculated that competition from low wage immigrants has led that younger cohort to delay entering the workforce.
Posted by: daleyrocks at October 21, 2007 05:38 PM (0pZel)
26
daleyrocks,
The population may be aging, but from 2000 to now, the working age population as a share of the total has increased, not decreased. (See numbers provided upthread based on data from the Census, linked to upthread.)
Posted by: cactus at October 21, 2007 06:01 PM (clLqi)
27
cactus - I'm aware of the increase. The BLS database is currently not available - the flag on it indicates possibly due to updating. My understanding of a drop in the EP over the past five or six years can be explained by the two factors in my comment, which you did not address. The 16-19 age cohort is part of working population.
Posted by: daleyrocks at October 21, 2007 08:11 PM (0pZel)
28
I think we are all missing the point here, and that point is that Naomi Wolf is a raving loony.
Posted by: Techie at October 22, 2007 10:28 AM (T+8Gr)
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October 18, 2007
Help Blackfive Win a Scholarship
Collegescholarship.org has a $10,000 scholarship for bloggers that are also full-time students. There are
20 finalists, and for whatever odd reason, they've decided to let voters decide who should win.
Frankly, I don't know 19 of them and they may very well be nice people, but the 20th I do know, and I think that he deserves your vote. His name is Matthew Burden, but you'd probably more familiar with him if I simply called him Blackfive.
So, like, go vote.
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Hmmmm.
I'm surprised there are only 1,300 or so votes for him so far. I guess people haven't woken up yet.
Posted by: memomachine at October 19, 2007 08:56 AM (3pvQO)
2
Anyone know who Shelly Batts or Kimberly Klein are? They seem to have a lot of support - or loyal botnets or something.
Posted by: SGT Jeff (USAR) at October 19, 2007 10:45 AM (yiMNP)
3
Ah, never mind, I actually clicked on some links... law student and a neuroscience candidate? Yikes...
Posted by: SGT Jeff (USAR) at October 19, 2007 10:47 AM (yiMNP)
4
I've gone there twice, on two different browsers. I even asked my computer programming husband for help. Exactly how do you vote for Matt? Is there a specific browser that lets you vote? Is there a page I am missing?
Posted by: Suzi at October 19, 2007 04:00 PM (0px9S)
5
Suzy, if you see the vote results then someone on that computer has already voted... or so the theory goes, anyway.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 19, 2007 05:52 PM (HcgFD)
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October 05, 2007
2007 Weblog Awards Open the Nominations
The nomination process for the
2007 Weblog Awards is now open in 49 categories until October 15.
Go on over and nominate your favorites after reading the nomination FAQ.
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I'll get to it tonight. I have to find my other passwords 'cause TypeKey isn't working.
Posted by: Dusty at October 05, 2007 05:39 PM (1Lzs1)
2
Hmmm... any suggestions about which blog you'd like us to nominate? (grin)
Posted by: C-C-G at October 05, 2007 08:20 PM (6c3XF)
3
CCG, I'm
hoping that you'll go out and nominate blogs that may have some really good and/or undeserved talent, especially in the newer categories.
Me, I tend to do okay, but thanks for the thought. ;-)
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 05, 2007 08:43 PM (HcgFD)
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October 04, 2007
Attempting to Force Others To Fast For Your Cause?
Desperate to salvage a defeat in Iraq before progress becomes too obvious for the professional media to contain, some leftists have decided on last ditch effort via
direct action.
Due to the projected shortage in wait staff, those of you in college towns should plan to "dine in" on October 17.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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This could be even more effective than the middle-aged women in Marin County who laid down naked in the weeds to spell out PEACE for a photographer.
Posted by: Banjo at October 04, 2007 08:53 AM (1DQ52)
2
Yawn.
Algore's global concert all over again. Lotta hype, but nothing will be changed, except the public's perception of the people who take part.
Posted by: C-C-G at October 04, 2007 09:07 AM (6c3XF)
3
Does anyone really think this is going to catch on big and disrupt most people from their daily routines?
Posted by: T.Ferg at October 04, 2007 09:13 AM (2YVh7)
4
I wonder if they have to tell there boss they're taking the day off. Kinda defeats the whole point, but if they don't they will just get fired. Well I guess finding a new job at Arby's isn't too hard.
Posted by: Justin B. at October 04, 2007 09:27 AM (Rd4s4)
5
If it means all the Leftist web sites and the MSM take the day off too, I say go for it.
Posted by: Lord Whorfin at October 04, 2007 10:08 AM (qybSO)
6
Well, I just enjoyed a rare mid-afternoon dish of fudge brownie ice cream to consume some of those calorie offsets the left is so kind to offer.
Anything we can do to keep America calorie-neutral!
Posted by: redherkey at October 04, 2007 01:30 PM (kjqFg)
Posted by: daleyrocks at October 04, 2007 02:15 PM (0pZel)
8
Typical commies. Sorry to ask but is this the second year of "Enough Is Enough" or still the first, I have lost track.
Posted by: Dusty at October 04, 2007 03:48 PM (1Lzs1)
9
...so is this going to be a real, no food at all, IRA-thug-in-an-English-prison class fast? Or are we talking a Mother Sheehan, I'm-fasting-so-pass-me-another-designer-fruit-smoothie, bullfast?
And if the former, is there any way we can convince them to extend the duration for about ten days?
Posted by: DaveP. at October 04, 2007 06:37 PM (mjjwA)
10
Justin, if they do lose their job, it'll all be Bush's fault.
Posted by: C-C-G at October 04, 2007 06:44 PM (6c3XF)
11
Love the list of generals he cites..(Gen)"Lamar Odom".
Damn, A general that has some rebounding skillz! Yo! A true renaissance man!
Posted by: MunDane at October 04, 2007 07:28 PM (Meq0P)
12
Elected democrats will stay home? Kool....
Posted by: 1sttofight at October 04, 2007 08:10 PM (dyn92)
13
Starbucks will probably go out of business.
Posted by: C-C-G at October 04, 2007 09:02 PM (6c3XF)
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August 23, 2007
The Journalism that Bloggers Actually Do (And Some Won't Discuss)
Is
this attack on one liberal journalism professor by another liberal journalism professor in a left-coast liberal newspaper missing anything?
Off the top of my head, I'd say there is an almost purposeful lack of the important contributions to original reporting from center-right blogs.
Oh, I'm sure that there is a market for those who care about an over-priced chocolatier's deceptive marketing practices, but I'm quite convinced that Rathergate, the CBS/Sixty Minutes scandal that saw Mary Mapes and Dan Rather discredited while trying to run a pre-election hit piece on President Bush using fake documents, was far more important. Driving that scandal were "buckhead" on Free Republic, Powerline with their "The Sixty-First Minute" and Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, who showed that forged documents were created on the only version of Microsoft Word running in 1973. Rosen, instead of giving credit to the conservative bloggers that blew this story wide open, instead links to a non-blog web site.
Rather disingenuous, if you ask me.
Charles Johnson was also a lead blogger in the "fauxtography" scandals emanating from last summer's Israeli-Hezbollah war, catching Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj photoshopping a picture of combat. Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report discovered another Hajj photograph where the photographer cloned elements and duplicated them. Reuters subsequently pulled more than 900 photos as a result. Literally dozens of other photos were scoured by conservative bloggers and shown to be staged and/or staged managed by HezbollahÂ’s media minders.
This raft of stories also doesn't make it on Rosen's radar, which seems to only scan left.
Ed Morrissey's coverage of "Adscam" revealed corruption that was credited as a key factor in sending the Liberal Party of Canada down to defeat in national elections.
There is also the current, on-going meltdown with Scott Beauchamp and The New Republic, exposed and led by center-right bloggers beginning with Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard.
I've also had a busy couple of months myself, debunking a pair of wire service reported massacres that never occurred, revealing the hidden experts behind a ethically-bankrupt magazine's rigged investigation, embarrassing the world's oldest wire service into changing their photo attribution policies, and conclusively debunking a poorly-research Associated Press group report that sought to blame law enforcement ammunition shortages on current overseas conflicts.
One might think that most readers would find these right-generated stories marginally more interesting than an open-source software lawsuit details and chocolate exaggerations, but then, perhaps that is my bias.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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Sorry, but I think you are a little unfair – I say this despite not substantively disagreeing with your observation that the examples missed some important contributions form center-right blogs.
Let me explain myself:
To slightly oversimplify, the thesis of Skube is that blogs deserve disdain because they are long on hot air and short on elbow grease. Blogs donÂ’t do the tedious hard work of fact checking like the real media.
Rosen’s thesis is “nonsense – of course they do, let me enlighten you with examples”
Your thesis is that the Rosen list omits some important contributions. Fair (as in accurate) but unfair (as in non-responsive).
In the mathematical sense, you disprove a claim of non-existence by demonstrating a single example. ThereÂ’s no requirement that the example be representative, or exhaustive. While it may be revealing that RosenÂ’s list didnÂ’t contain some of the examples near and dear to both of us, he didnÂ’t purport to deliver a representative survey. While you dismissed the chocolate example as unimportant, I saw it as a decent and delightful example helping to illustrate the breadth of the fact checking of blobs.
In short, Skube was way off base, and Rosen adequately punctured the Skube thesis.
Phil
Posted by: Phil at August 23, 2007 02:31 PM (39DNf)
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Phil, Rosen went out of his way to go around Powerline and LGF to cite a non-blog for Rathergate. This is ignoring the biggest constributors to the story that many consider as
the story that put bloggers "on the map" as an effective check on the media.
Rosen doesn't have to be exhaustive, but he leaves out not just this most powerful example, but many of the other powerful examples of blogs doing journalism as I cited in the main article, most of which were of far more general importance than those he cited in his list, some of which were frankly obscure.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at August 23, 2007 02:56 PM (0BhZ5)
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I gotta go with CY on this one.
Posted by: T.Ferg at August 24, 2007 09:16 AM (2YVh7)
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Errr... he modestly said.
I would suggest that my work on The Stingy List falls into this category. After the UN accused Americans of being stingy in the aftermath of the tsunami, I documented over a billion dollars of donations by private Americans and business.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins at August 24, 2007 12:41 PM (HeNaU)
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July 31, 2007
A Community-Based Reality
I think that the phrase borrowed from commenter at
Riehl Word View quite accurately reflects a growing "conventional wisdom" among a peculiar group of bloggers that military and conservative bloggers attempted to claim that "Scott Thomas" didn't actually exist.
"Scott Thomas," of course, was the pseudonym chosen by U.S. Army PV-2 Scott Thomas Beauchamp when he posted a series of three dispatches in the magazine The New Republic.
The most recent post, "Shock Troops," (subscription required) became the focus of Michael Goldfarb on July 18 because of some very strong claims of various kinds of abuse alleged by "Scott Thomas" of himself and other soldiers. These claims are now the subject of investigations by the U.S. Army (real) and the magazine that carried the claims, The New Republic (which critics have dismissed as an attempt at face-saving and job-keeping by the editors, and little more).
Soon afterward, Beauchamp's previous post, "Dead of Night" came under scrutiny, and two claims he made there were conclusively debunked.
Military bloggers began zeroing in on the identity of "Scott Thomas" within days— Marine turned documentary filmmaker JD Johannes had his unit narrowed to the 1-18 Infantry by the following Saturday—forcing Thomas into a position where he felt the need to reveal himself days later.
On the afternoon Beauchamp came forward on July 26, severel prominent bloggers began to compose a narrative every bit as fictional as that of Beauchamp himself, and apparently, for equally dishonorable reasons.
On that afternoon in The Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum seems to have manufactured the controversy:
Conservative sites went crazy. Thomas didn't really exist. His stories were made up. The left hates the troops. Etc. etc.
At Sadly No!, Gavin M. claimed:
1) WingNet accuses soldier/journalist of being an impostor.
2) WingNet proven wrong.
At alicubog:
ATTENTION COMRADES! Previous meme "Scott Thomas does not exist" is no longer operative. Please to substitute "Scott Thomas Beauchamp is a bad man" or "Scott Thomas Beauchamp is Oliver Stone" or "Scott Thomas Beauchamp is a semiotic construct" or "We'll get Scott Thomas Beauchamp fired" or whatever damn thing you can think of.
By the next day, Americablog had latched onto this creative fiction as well:
Of course, the right wing blogosphere went nuts, accusing TNR of fabricating a soldier and lying about his experiences. There were repeated attempts to prove that Scott Thomas was a fake.
Even yesterday, at Mercury Rising yesterday, a blogger wrote:
Of course, once they found out about it, all of the Usual Suspects in the conservative’s mighty Wurlitzer - Malkin, Powerline, the whole schmear - set out to prove that “Scott Thomas” didn’t exist and that this was all just liberal lies to smear the armed forces and turn the country against the war. They went berzerk proving to themselves through “semiotic analysis” and other such crapola that this whole thing was just made-up liberal media lies.
And so it is that "this whole thing"—the claim that conservative bloggers said Thomas didn’t exist or wasn’t a soldier—comes squarely back onto the shoulders of liberal bloggers who created the meme themselves.
When pressed to provide a specific quote from any conservative blog stating that Scott Thomas didnÂ’t really exist, was fabricated, or was an imposter, these and other liberal bloggers have utterly failed to do so.
Why they failed should now be obvious: they made up these claims themselves.
Update: A bit dog barks. Gavin M. at Sadly No! (cited above for claiming "WingNet accuses soldier/journalist of being an impostor") tries to support liberal bloggers' charges that conservative bloggers said Beauchamp didnÂ’t exist, was fabricated, or was an impostor.
How does he mount his brilliant defense?
He cites devastating examples, such as Bryan at Hot Air using scare quotes around the word soldier... Twice. He also highlights a truism observed by Bryan in that post that anyone in the military would be able to tell the difference between a fellow soldier's uniform and that of a civilian contractor.
A great defense mounted so far, but wait, there's more!
Gavin M. blasts Charles at LGF for using the phrase, "purported to be written by a soldier." Charles used the "P" word to describe someone hiding behind a pseudonym? Why, that's the exact same thing as directly calling him an impostor, isn't it folks?
And yet Gavin presumably has a day job that doesn't involve balloon animals.
But hang on, he has more evidence... Ace of Spades also used the damning scare quotes... twice. Gavin's a regular Perry Mason, isn't he?
And the killing blow... before Beauchamp came out, Michelle Malkin, vile, prevaricating Malkin, addressed the liberal blogosphere's greatest unknown soldier as--and watch out for the scare quotes--as "alleged."
Purported and alleged, two bread-and-butter words in any journalist's quiver for when the facts are hazy in the least, have--according to Gavin--become the same as calling him an impostor. Using scare quotes in the same manner is morphed by Gavin into a declarative emphatically stating that he doesn't exist.
That's his case. Really.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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I'll admit that I thought there was a distinct possibility that Scott Thomas was not a soldier. I really didn't think that a real soldier would choose creative license over telling the truth. Why would a soldier in a combat zone feel the need to make fabrications so stupid that almost anyone could see through them? Well anyone except the editors at TNR. I guess it comes down to one's influences. His influnces probably include Anthony Swofford, Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thomson. Writers that felt emotions and feeling were more important than facts. Too bad his influences didn't include Ernie Pyle, Stephen Ambrose, Mark Bowden or even Michael Yon. Those people wrote about combat and didn't feel the need to create extra facts to make their stories more angst ridden.
Posted by: BohicaTwentyTwo at July 31, 2007 09:45 PM (oC8nQ)
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Hmm. Well you posted your own letter to TNR, dated 7/20, in which you ask them the following questions:
Did New Republic editors ask for credible documentation from "Scott Thomas" to prove his identity as a present duty soldier or as a discharged veteran? If so, did they receive such documentation, and did New Republic editors make an attempt to verify the accuracy of that documentation? Considering not dissimilar and thoroughly debunked claims by fake Ranger and former member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Jesse MacBeth, this would be the only prudent first reaction upon reading such dramatic claims as those made by Thomas, especially considering TNR's own Stephen Glass problem.
So when Gavin M. at Sadly No! says that the WingNet accuses soldier/journalist of being an impostor, and then proven wrong, he would've been right about the Confederate Yankee at least.
Posted by: The Voice of Reason at July 31, 2007 10:12 PM (K1Emm)
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Suggest remedial English class VOR.
You have obvious reading comprehension problems. Particularly in regard to questions versus declarative sentences.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at July 31, 2007 10:19 PM (8Dgyh)
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Particularly in regard to questions versus declarative sentences.
In raising the question, he's holding it forth as a distinct possibility. It's the first question he puts to the editors! Of course the subtext is that it's not just possible, but plausible.
Posted by: The Voice of Reason at July 31, 2007 10:47 PM (K1Emm)
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I asked if TNR did their due diligence as editors... something then and now we suspect they did not, and with good reason.
This question you cite was the first question of seven, following several declarative paragraphs. It was the first question regarding this situation, because in a first-person narrative, establishing the credibility of the storyteller is a primary concern.
There is a world of difference in asking if TNR took the steps one would expect to verify the ID of their writer, and of declaring him a fabrication. Many left-leaning blogs purposefully jumped over that gap, as does VOR.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at July 31, 2007 11:11 PM (HcgFD)
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CY and VOR,
Help me out here. When knowledgable people started looking critically at Scott Thomas' TNR writing, they criticized its content as being
wrong. As in,
"this doesn't fit, Army units in Baghdad don't work this way, the stories don't ring true, the equipment's described wrong..."
It seems pretty reasonable to go on to wonder, "Is this guy for real? Really a soldier? Really in Baghdad?"
Whether CY made that assertion (as opposed to posing that question) or not in his letter to TNR, other bloggers certainly expressed doubts(there are a lot of them out there).
It turns out that Scott Thomas
really is a USA soldier in Baghdad. Great! On to the key issue: his stories seem
wrong. Are they?
The Gotcha! seems to be predicated on an implicit corrolary to entertaining doubts that Scott Thomas is a for-real soldier. It would go:
If a blogger expresses doubts that Scott Thomas is an actual soldier stationed in Baghdad,
and Scott Thomas turns out to be an actual soldier stationed in Baghdad,
then all doubts about Scott Thomas' accounts have been definitively vanquished.
That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Posted by: AMac at July 31, 2007 11:11 PM (Djzc+)
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In raising the question, he's holding it forth as a distinct possibility.
The way truthers do when they raise the question if 9/11 was an inside job right? That makes it a "distinct possibility" right?
Will Richard Nixon rise from the dead? Its a "distinct possibility" you know right?
Posted by: Purple Avenger at July 31, 2007 11:42 PM (8Dgyh)
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Whether CY made that assertion (as opposed to posing that question) or not in his letter to TNR, other bloggers certainly expressed doubts
(there are a lot of them out there).
My emphasis, and my question: if there are "a lot of them out there," then why does it seem so difficult for those making these claims to actually support their assertions with direct quotes?
I've seen some that wanted to know if
TNR vetted the guy prior to publication, and I've seen some guess at his identity--incorrectly--by identifying another soldier (Clifton Hicks) as the possible writer behind the pseudonym.
What I have not seen, despite claims by the liberal bloggers I cited (and quite a few I did not), is any direct quotes showing that conservatives stated "he didn't exist" as Drum and roy at alicublog and Mercury Rising assert, or was "an imposter" as Gavin M. stated, or that anyone was accusing
TNR of "fabricating a soldier" as was claimed at Americablog.
John from Op-For and I even politely asked the bloggers at "Mercury Rising" to support their assertions with direct quotes, and instead, we had our quite reasonable requests deleted as a result of their being exposed.
Did a handful of milblogs or center-right blogs probably make those assertions? With literally tens of millions of blogs in existence, I feel rather certain that
some probably did, but that was not something shared by bloggers on the overwhelming majority of the more popular and reputable blogs. It simply wasn't. It wasn't even a noticeable minority opinion.
This was a meme created, propagated, and self-reinforced by blogs on the left, and it is time that they own up to their own brand of fabulism.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at August 01, 2007 07:56 AM (0BhZ5)
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Just after "Shock Troops" hit the stands, I could have registered at Blogspot and started a blog, naming it "Scott Thomas Doesn't Exist!!!" Each entry could have focused on this single conviction (postings would have dropped off on the day that Beauchamp was outed/stepped forward).
What I fail to understand is why cases equivalent to my hypothetical are assuming such importance among Beauchamp's champions. Would it weigh equally if I had loudly opined by the office water cooler, instead of blogging? If I had
thought about it but kept my beliefs to myself?
Since there are tens or hundreds of thousands of web-logs, it is surely true that some bloggers have asserted Scott Thomas' non-existence or non-service. I haven't checked, because the point doesn't seem worth discussing (but here we are).
It is clear that critics-of-Beauchamp's-critics read these threads, and often jump in to comment. Two quick questions for you:
-- Why does it matter if some bloggers incorrectly accused Scott Thomas of non-service, and were then proved wrong?
-- Since it matters, can you link to posts of the high-traffic bloggers who have committed this infraction? Say, bloggers in the top-200 positions of NZ Bear's Ecosystem?
Thanks in advance.
Posted by: AMac at August 01, 2007 08:50 AM (5PjHO)
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CY:
I'm confused. I thought that all enlightened individuals were to question authority (TNR) and be relentless truthseekers (a la Michael Moore, Chomsky, etc.)or else be lickspittle automatons manipulated by greedy corporate interests into having their consent manufactured and pockets picked.
Maybe it is beyond the comprehension of some Leftists, but they do not have a monopoly on critical thinking skills. Their "truth" can get the reasoned pinata treatment too.
The difference between the 60's and today is that technology allows those with differing views and insights to publicly scrutinize the pieties and claptrap of the Left and expose shinola for what it is.
AMac is right on the mark in his comments. What this meme is meant to be is a debate stopper. How long will it be before the Leftie bloggers start throwing out the "backlash" and "chilling effect" memes too?
Posted by: wjo at August 01, 2007 09:16 AM (2/2Kk)
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Correction to my first comment (7/31/07 11:11pm), where I wrote:
other bloggers certainly expressed doubts (there are a lot of
them out there).The antecedent for "them" was meant to be "bloggers" rather than "bloggers who expressed doubt." Correctly parsed, the point was, "since there are a lot of bloggers out there, it is not surprising that some (small) number expressed doubts."
Apologies for the misleading grammar on that point.
Posted by: AMac at August 01, 2007 09:41 AM (Djzc+)
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Hmmm.
All this is just BS.
The real question is where the heck is that proof that TNR was supposed to provide.
Frankly I think they've ducked the whole thing and are hoping it'll all either blow over or other leftie websites will help them reconstruct the issues in a way that'll let them escape responsibility.
Personally I don't plan on letting them.
Posted by: memomachine at August 01, 2007 10:01 AM (3pvQO)
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This is a lot like the "Jamil Hussein" AP fiasco. His stories were debunked but the AP produced someone who used the pseudonym "Jamil Hussein". That didnt make his lies any less dishonest and the crappy AP reporting and less crappy.
Posted by: ME at August 01, 2007 10:24 AM (gkobM)
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General J.C. Christian is still around? I thought he went into hiding after that "own goal" he created on that Nashville blogger. Putz.
Posted by: daleyrocks at August 01, 2007 11:27 AM (0pZel)
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This recent thread, "Scott Beauchamp's Troubles are Just Beginning," attracted 141 comments, many from defenders of Beauchamp and debunkers of those who are skeptical of his claims.
I hope they offer some answers to the questions posed in this post, as well.
Posted by: AMac at August 01, 2007 12:06 PM (Djzc+)
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And the debunking of the Beauchamp-doubters continues apace...
*** crickets chirping ***
Posted by: AMac at August 01, 2007 06:29 PM (Djzc+)
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Hmmm.
Do we have to wait until after TNR's vacation?
Posted by: memomachine at August 02, 2007 09:33 AM (3pvQO)
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Part of the issue is what the Left seems to believe constitutes
necessary versus
sufficient proof.
For those who are skeptical, or simply with a bit more analytical rigor, there's several things that are necessary for a story to be true.
The first, as evidenced by CY's questions, is that the person actually exist, both physically (not a complete fiction) and exist as described (as a soldier, as a soldier in Iraq).
From there, other pieces of evidence are necessary for the story to be given credence: details need to be accurate, opportunities described need to have occurred, the people described need to have existed.
The Left, having concluded that Beauchamp is the fulfillment of their dreams (an artist witness to the depravities of LT Calley), have concluded that providing proof that Beauchamp existed is SUFFICIENT, when it is not.
As ME notes, this is precisely like the Jamil Hussein kerfuffle. If Hussein exists, he must therefore be telling the truth.
The irony, of course, is that when the Left opposes a meme, say, that the surge is working, evidence from witnesses, on the ground, in Iraq, who can provide photographic evidence (I'm thinking Michael Yon) are dismissed as "shills."
If anyone ever wants to see the double standard of liberal-think in action.....
Posted by: Lurking Observer at August 02, 2007 11:31 AM (/ZD7V)
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Hmmmm.
About that Jamil Hussein. One thing I kinda missed, mostly due to boredom, was whether or not the Jamil Hussein that that the Iraqi Interior Ministry found was the same Jamil Hussein that the AP had been quoting.
Did the AP come out and explicitly state that this specific Jamil Hussein was *the* Jamil Hussein that they had been quoting?
Any answers would be great. Thanks in advance.
Posted by: memomachine at August 02, 2007 02:30 PM (3pvQO)
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About that Jamil Hussein. One thing I kinda missed, mostly due to boredom, was whether or not the Jamil Hussein that that the Iraqi Interior Ministry found was the same Jamil Hussein that the AP had been quoting.
Did the AP come out and explicitly state that this specific Jamil Hussein was *the* Jamil Hussein that they had been quoting?
This is not now, nor has there ever been, a real Jamil Hussein. Jmail Hussein is a pseudonym for Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Gulaim Innad XX XXXXXXX [last name, as always, redacted for his safety], who leaked stories from all over Baghdad to Iraqi stringers working for the Associated Press. Only a handful have ever been independently confirmed as true.
Whenever the issue is brought up, AP's former (Linda Wagner) and current (Paul Colford) Media Relations Directors always point to a January 4 Steven R. Hust article, where they state Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf confirmed the existence of Jamil Hussein, just as they said all along.
The problem with that story is that it simply isn't true. I'd consider going so far as to call it a direct, willful, ass-covering lie.
As I released in an exclusive on
February 15, BG Abdul-Karim denies the AP's printed claim, and in fact, says that it was AP's Iraqi stringers that confirmed to him on two separate occasions that XX XXXXXXX is the guy referenced by AP as Hussein.
I can also tell you that AP refuses to dispute my account, though they've had about six months--and my repeated invitation--to do so.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at August 02, 2007 02:53 PM (0BhZ5)
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It looks like PV2 Beauchamp is a real soldier, and his tales are true.
You can move on to calling some other media outlet liars now.
Posted by: R. Stanton Scott at August 02, 2007 03:38 PM (iL2/6)
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The boys at Sadly, No! have assembled examples from Hot Air, Malkin, Ace of Spades, and LGF all doubting that Thomas was a real soldier.
Are they now part of the vast left-wing conspiracy that oppresses you? Or were you completely wrong?
Posted by: TR at August 02, 2007 07:37 PM (Bhrim)
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TR - Has that famous research lab over at SadlyNoonehome proved the Troofiness of Beauchamp's stories from their reporters on the ground or other means yet? Are they good for anything other than snark? I guess that was a rhetorical question. Most of their snark sucks, involves bathroom humor, and is written at the third grade level in honor of their readership.
Posted by: daleyrocks at August 02, 2007 07:50 PM (0pZel)
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I'd consider going so far as to call it a direct, willful, ass-covering lie.
Much like this post, as TR and others have pointed out.
That Malkin, Ace, LGF and other prominent right-wing bloggers expressed the possibility that Soldier Scott did not exist and presented this possibility as a distinct one is pretty clear. They pushed this meme in lockstop, as per normal. I can understand you wanting to twist words or intentions to CYA, but this post and its idea that the meme was made up by Drum and other lefty bloggers is just ignorant on its face. C'mon, really. You can parse better than this.
Posted by: dgbellak at August 02, 2007 09:53 PM (foHAH)
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With the TNR "Statement" now up, I'll post a link to my thoughts on the matter
(comment 18 at this Winds of Change thread).
FWIW, I think the Statement is written with great care, to claim what it can. And the claims of truthfulness TNR is now making are not the same as the important claims in Beauchamp's original essay.
Posted by: AMac at August 02, 2007 10:57 PM (Djzc+)
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Please, just apologize for being wrong and move on. Or even just move on. All this backtracking and spinning really discredits anything this blog has to offer.
Posted by: hpl99us at August 03, 2007 07:04 AM (m2z0f)
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My problem with the
TNR affair was that the actuality of the individual involved was secondary to what was being reported, but NOT up the chain of command or to the necessary military justice organizations available in the Armed Forces. There is a responsibility that goes with 'freedom of the press' as a part of 'freedom of speech', indeed the press is function of individual rights, not that of an organization or set of organizations put broadly under 'journalism'. As such individuals who are reporters are accountable to the exact same laws and restrictions for their reporting as any individual is who is not a journalist and yet publicizes information. Beyond the concept of 'sedition' and its US Code instantiation, there is this thing known as 'adhering to treaties' that have been codified under the US Code. We do, indeed, have freedom of speech within our Land, but those doing reporting from foreign lands are only free to report on what is allowed via treaty. In most instances that is a broad spectrum of ideas, but in wartime the actual signed conventions and treaties put hard and fast restriction upon such reporting. Actions taken that are contrary to those treaties and conventions covering warfare are this thing known as: war crimes.
Clear on that? Freedom of speech upheld in the US, but external to it circumscribed by treaty and during wartime and other times of combat operations overseas treaties define what can and cannot be done and the US Code then upholds those things. We agree by our Constitution that this is the case by the separation of powers and the giving over to Congress to write laws to uphold treaties. No one branch gets say on this and the judicial does its part to make sure that the Constitutional separations and grants of limited power to government do not over-ride civil rights. Well known, well respected, observed by all, right?
As desecration of graves is specifically prohibited starting at least in the 1899 Hague Convention governing the rules of law on land, since when does TNR get away with NOT going to the Armed Forces *first* on that story? They even account,
in their attempted clarification, that it took place. Their responsibility upon confirmation was *not* to publish because that grave site was something that could now be considered to be a crime scene by the desecration and violation of the interred there. Respect for the dead in areas under control of one's military overseas and, indeed, all buildings, areas and other places that have no function in or for warfare is strictly prohibited beyond its useful function, and is to be treated as private property and with respect. That also goes for State owned places that do not have function for warmaking. Very old idea, that once you control territory you treat the land and inhabitants with respect... especially and particularly the resting places of the dead. No matter how shabbily the locals treat such places, those rules of warfare apply to those troops in control of such areas, which TNR *also* confirms for itself.
We appear to be too civilized to treat graveyard desecration and necrophilia during wartime as the crime it is.
Soon we will not have a civilization at all if we cannot make such simple things a part of our responsibilities to our Nation and ourselves.
My horror and disgust was not only in the actions put forth in the article, but in the absolute lack of ethics on the part of TNR in their reporting.
Posted by: ajacksonian at August 03, 2007 07:12 AM (oy1lQ)
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hpl99us,
Follow the links.
"move on," indeed.
Posted by: AMac at August 03, 2007 07:44 AM (IZc7W)
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I love this. So no putting quotes around a word does NOT suggest that it is not actual or real.
So when I say
We are "winning" in Iraq
I'm being serious?
Please.
Posted by: Dhalgren at August 03, 2007 08:46 AM (Q7Ugu)
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I love this. So now putting quotes around a word does NOT suggest that it is not actual or real.
So when I say -
We are "winning" in Iraq
I'm being totally serious?
Brilliant, CY!
Posted by: Dhalgren at August 03, 2007 08:46 AM (Q7Ugu)
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TR - Has that famous research lab over at SadlyNoonehome proved the Troofiness of Beauchamp's stories from their reporters on the ground or other means yet?
Way to move the goalposts, champ.
CY insisted that no one on the right had ever doubted that Beauchamp was a real soldier. That was the issue here, and the SN folks proved that CY was - as always - incredibly wrong.
As for Beauchamp's claims, TNR seems to have handled that well, but you people are in such a state of denial you'll never believe it.
Fine. Keep your head in the sand, and see how many more of your fellow Americans you can alienate with your insanity. It's about 3-to-1 against you now. Keep it up.
Posted by: TR at August 03, 2007 09:57 AM (Bhrim)
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Are they good for anything other than snark?
It's a humor blog. Snark is sort of in the job description.
Unlike this site, which is unintentionally hilarious.
Posted by: TR at August 03, 2007 10:01 AM (Bhrim)
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TR,
Who is moving goalposts?
Libs claims that conservative bloggers directly said Beauchamp didnÂ’t exist, was fabricated, or as Gavin directly stated, was "an impostor."
None of that has held up, no matter how much you try to read behind the lines or take things out of context. Sorry, champ, but you've been chumped, as even your own examples show.
No conservative blogger that you've been able to produce said that "Scott Thomas doesn't exist." Nor did you find anyone declaring that "Scott Thomas isn't a soldier." Nor is their any evidence to support Gavin's claim that any conservative said "Scott Thomas is an impostor."
What is interesting is that Kuwait-based PAOs have now called his burn victim an urban legend, after Foer shifted the goalposts out of Iraq.
There is also an as yet unconfirmed report that the military investigation is over, and that Beauchamp's own platoon--where Foer claims Beauchamp's witnesses were from--have refuted his stories, and proven them to be false.
I'm waiting for an official verification of this claim, butit appears you've been punked four times now... how much more will it take for that to sink in?
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at August 03, 2007 10:13 AM (WwtVa)
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If they didn't doubt he was a solider, then why all the parsing?
Why put the word "soldier" in quotation marks if they thought he was a real solider?
Why say things like this -- "The story of the woman in the DFAC makes no sense for the simple reason that the soldier claims not to know whether she was civilian or military.
A real soldier ought to know at a glance whether she was one or the other if he was as close to her as he claims to have been" -- unless you mean he's not "a real soldier"?
Why say things like " 'Scott Thomas,' an alleged soldier" and "purported to be written by a soldier" unless you doubt that he's actually a solider?
Why would Malkin say there were "questions about his identity " if she didn't mean that there were, well, questions about his identity?
Your parsing of language would make Bill Clinton blush.
You were wrong. Sack up and admit it.
Posted by: TR at August 03, 2007 11:14 AM (Bhrim)
35
HmmÂ… letÂ’s examine this sentence.
Eats shoots and leaves.
Does it mean the same thing as?
Eats, shoots and leaves.
You see, the addition of that single comma substantially changed the meaning of the sentence. Zowee!!!
Let's take another example.
Confederate Yankees intelligence and thoughtfulness are a joy to behold.
Confederate Yankees “intelligence” and “thoughtfulness” are a joy to behold.
Numerous right wing bloggers clearly implied Beauchamp did not exist, just because they said it in quotation mark for as opposed to text does not change the meaning of the words they wrote.
You see kids, punctuation is important.
Posted by: over_educated at August 03, 2007 11:45 AM (Cg5WI)
36
Seems to me the right continues to focus its energy on the substance of Beauchamp's articles, which is what generated the entire controversary, while the left remains stuck on stupid debating what he is.
TR and over_educated, do you believe what he wrote is accurate or fiction?
Posted by: daleyrocks at August 03, 2007 11:57 AM (0pZel)
37
I believe, on the whole, that the events Beauchamp described occurred. Was he completely accurate? No. Was he accurate within a margin of error that is acceptable? Yes, I can forgive misrecalling the mess hall an event occured in and inaccurate descriptions of shell casings. I know you all think it is convincing to harp on a minor innaccuracy thinking that it completely discredits your opponent, it doesn't, it just makes you look like a tool.
The fact is we have an eyewitness account corroborated by other eyewitnesses. What level of proof do you need? Video tape?
But this post wasn't about Beauchamps accuracy. It was a claim that right wing blogs didn't at first suggest that Beauchamp was fabricated, which, as has been pointed out, they quite obviously did.
Posted by: over_educated at August 03, 2007 12:47 PM (0M6oQ)
38
TR and over_educated, do you believe what he wrote is accurate or fiction?
On one side, you have Beauchamp, corroborated by other soldiers and fact-checked by TNR.
On the other, you have refutations from Matt Sanchez, who apparently had a career in gay porn before becoming the darling of the right.
I'll go with the first group.
Posted by: TR at August 03, 2007 01:18 PM (Bhrim)
39
Sanchez, by the way, is currently being investigated by the Marines for soliciting money for an Iraq deployment he never took. Sounds very trustworthy, indeed.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2007/03/marine_sanchez_investigation070330/
Posted by: TR at August 03, 2007 01:27 PM (Bhrim)
40
I'll eventually figure out what not to include in comments here.
I find it terribly ironic that the tolerant left is lambasting a gay(?) black American because his past theoretically renders him incapable of being honest. Nice spin from the left. Can you point to any specific problems with what he has written or is it just wishful thinking. I wasn't aware that porn was illegal. Do Barney Frank's up close and personal associations with gay prostitution, which is illegal, render him dishonest and unfit for public office according to your standards evenly applied?
That investigation you mentioned into raising money for an embedded reporting assignment which never occurred, has it been resolved unfavorably to Sanchez or are you just throwing dirt on him for shits and giggles?
Your tunnel vision on whether Beauchamp existed is pretty funny given that the controversy starts with what he wrote. Are former or serving soldiers supporting what he wrote apart from the anonymous sources in TNR's "fact checked" re-release? If they are, why not provide some examples folks.
Posted by: daleyrocks at August 03, 2007 03:21 PM (0pZel)
41
"Your tunnel vision on whether Beauchamp existed is pretty funny given that the controversy starts with what he wrote."
Well, that is what this blog post is about. It is supposedly refuting the fact that right wing bloggers initially claimed Beauchamp didn't exist. We are pointing out that they did do just that. There are voluminous other threads discussing what he wrote, we are just reponding to the OP's original assertion.
Posted by: over_educated at August 06, 2007 07:46 AM (Cg5WI)
42
Hmmm.
@ over_educated & TR
Right wing *blogs* didn't advance the opinion that Beauchamp didn't exist. **Commenters**, such as myself, advanced that opinion.
And there is a vast difference between the two so no BS from either of you.
I personally advanced the opinion that Beauchamp was a fraud because no soldier with any sort of experience would refer to a 9mm shell casing fired by a Glock as "square-backed".
That Beauchamp is a soldier *and* was ignorant enough to refer to that 9mm shell casing as "square-backed" speaks volumes for the man.
Posted by: memomachine at August 06, 2007 09:45 AM (3pvQO)
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July 23, 2007
RIP: Christiana Hendrix
Christiana Hendrix, wife of Mike Hendrix of
Cold Fury,
died this weekend in a motorcycle accident. Mike, you and your family have my sincere condolences and prayers in this most tragic of times.
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
--Psalm 121: 1-8.
As Glenn notes, "Words are completely inadequate in these situations, but they're also essential."
Please stop by and offer your condolences for the loss Mike and Christiana's family is experiencing, and if you are a religious person, consider offering up a prayer for those who remain behind.
Update: Jeff Goldstein's grandmother passed away today as well.
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July 05, 2007
Building on a Foundation of Socks
There exists a
well-known parable spoken by Jesus in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 7, that uses the example of foolish builders who build houses on the sand, only to watch those houses wash away in the flood because it had weak foundations.
Writing today at The Moderate Voice, Jeb Koogler builds his house upon the sand of noted sockpuppet Glenn Greenwald, questioning the role of al Qaeda in Iraq:
About two weeks, Glenn Greenwald wrote a widely-cited post that questioned the oft-stated notion of a strong al-Qaeda role in the Iraqi insurgency.
That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term “Al Qaeda” to designate “anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq” is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as “Al Qaeda.”
Greenwald goes on to point out that such statements are misleading, given that the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that al-QaedaÂ’s role in Iraq is quite small. Indeed, most studies have found that, rather than a large presence of foreign al-Qaeda fighters, the Iraqi insurgency is largely made up of disaffected Sunnis, Saddam loyalists, and ex-Baathists.
The problem with building his post upon Greenwald's theory is that Greenwald's claim is demonstrably false; a simple review of the MNF-I web site's press releases, feature stories, and daily stories shows conclusively that the military only cites al Qaeda as an actor in a clear minority of cases, typically less than a third of the time, even as surge operations are heavily targeting al Qaeda cells as part of Operation Phantom Thunder.
Perhaps in the future, Koogler should base his posts on a more solid factual foundation and go directly to the source (MNF-I) instead of repeating the already discredited claims of a known partisan dissembler such as Greenwald.
The only think more dangerous than building one's house upon a foundation of sand is building that same house on a foundation of sockpuppets.
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1
Where's the normal blog swarm attack from the hive in response to this. Everyone must still be distracted by Libby or embarrassed by the truth.
Posted by: daleyrocks at July 05, 2007 05:42 PM (0pZel)
2
The more that one stretches the truth, the worst things are going to get. Tying all opposition in Iraq to al-Queda has been a major PR campaign by the Bush administration. Like every other thing that they have attempted to do, the consequences of this action was not factored in when they discussed the domestic PR implications of the campaign. Al-queda was a minor group worldwide before the USA decided to invade Iraq for it's oil. Many Muslims shunned them, and they were regarded as violent extremists. Now, with the occupation of an Arab state combined with the PR campaign to call all factions in the Iraq civil war al-Queda, they are a major player, drawing recruits from almost every Muslim state on the planet to fight against our guys in Iraq. This foolish PR campaign is literally killing American troops, and has turned a minor nuisance into a major terrorist threat by giving it legitimacy that it didn't have before. The way you win wars is with overwhelming force, clear thinking and taking the fight to them. Not with domestic PR campaigns.
Posted by: persimmon at July 05, 2007 10:44 PM (nUWIw)
3
Persimon,
What part of CY's site of less than one third of articles from MNCI mention AQI did you not comprehend? AQ a minor group? Riiiight I suppose a minor group besides AQ caused the Black Hawk down incident in Somalia or how about the Khobar tower bombings or the African embassy bombings or could it be the USS Cole maybe? Yup sounds like AQ was a "minor" terrorist group before we invaded Iraq alright and oh yeah forgot one minor attack it happened on Sept 11 2001 note two years before the invasion of Iraq but Meh why let facts and reality get in the way of your BDS right? And the invasion for oil thing is just stupid, think about this now put aside your BDS for a minute and ask yourself, what would be the best way to ensure an oil supply from Iraq with Saddam in charge? Hint look to Saudi Arabia and you get a clue instead of invading you make friends with the dictator dum dum. No we did not invade to get the oil and while we are on that subject invading a country for their oil would be perfectly legit it is a strategic resource after all and if we ran out of it the entire economy would collapse and the country and a good part of the civilized world with it. Forunately for us we only get 14% of our oil from the middle east oops I guess that blows a big gaping hole in your libtard talking point about invasion for oil also but then it is to easy since anyone who believes anything the sock puppet says is a low grade embicile anyway. And lastly the trully huge irrefutable FACT that jsut kills all of your libtard talking points and that is DRUM ROLE PLEASE "WE HAVE NOT HAD A SINGLE TERRORIST ATTACK ON AMERICAN SOIL NOR OUR INTERESTS OVERSEAS(EMBASSIES) IN FIVE YEARS" coincidence maybe? I think not.
Posted by: Oldcrow at July 06, 2007 02:18 AM (q7b5Y)
4
I don't know about politics, Oldcrow, so however you wish to compartmentalize me is your business. Most of what you wrote is difficult to understand. I read everything and study on it, and have come to the conclusion that the war is over oil and keeping that commodity traded in dollars. If we were fighting terrorists worldwide we would be putting resources into that instead of running a cost plus war in Iraq. What we are doing in Iraq has spiraled out of control, due to the mistakes of Rumsfeld and Bush. We are 563 days away from the end of those mistakes, then a solution to Iraq can commence, whatever it is.
Posted by: persimmon at July 06, 2007 03:27 AM (nUWIw)
5
Uh yuh like I said BDS a terminal case of eyes wide stupid. So tell me exactly how are things spiraling out of control in Iraq? Come on name one battle we have lost, one objective AQI or AIF have achieved come on just one example based on facts not feelings that show it is "spiraling out of control" as you put it. Oh and nice try you did not address a single one of my points and yea in 563 days if a Dhimmi or whack job like Ron Paul gets in office it will be less than a year before we have another terror attack in the U.S. because after all in yours and those like you thinking it is a criminal problem not a military one. Funny I seem to recall another Dhimmi Administration using that approach and it got us all the terror attacks I mentioned.
Posted by: Oldcrow at July 06, 2007 05:01 AM (q7b5Y)
6
"So tell me exactly how are things spiraling out of control in Iraq?"
Have you seen the state of the government in Iraq recently? It is clearly falling apart. Without the government there is no political settlement, without the political settlement the surge is an excercise in futility.
""WE HAVE NOT HAD A SINGLE TERRORIST ATTACK ON AMERICAN SOIL NOR OUR INTERESTS OVERSEAS(EMBASSIES) IN FIVE YEARS" coincidence maybe?"
It may sound rather pedantic, but your Embassy in Bagdhad is mortared most days now.
Posted by: Rafar at July 06, 2007 07:17 AM (kkgmI)
7
That is most certainly rather pedantic Rafar, embassies countining as U.S. soil and all. Would you like to join persimmon in explaining where we are not fighting teroism worldwide?
Posted by: daleyrocks at July 06, 2007 09:38 AM (H+Y7x)
8
Have you seen the state of the government in Iraq recently? It is clearly falling apart.
As a practical matter, its no worse than the Taiwanese legislature...where open fist fights on the floor are common.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at July 06, 2007 11:49 AM (gQtXT)
9
I do not agree, Mr Oldcrow. Al-Queda has grown in strength and legitimacy while you are claiming that we have already won the war against them because they haven't attacked American soil. But there are 30,000 dead and wounded Americans from the current Iraqi occupation. The American military is in bad need of an expensive refitting before they will be able to respond effectively to any domestic terrorist threats. The standards for the soldiers have been lowered, and the less said about the integrity and courage of the senior American military leadership, the less they will be embarrassed. There is currently no plan for success in Iraq. The Bush administration is just playing out the string until the end of their term in office, then it will be somebody else's problem. The democrats are going to let him do what he wants in hopes that there will still be this unpopular war going on when the '08 elections come around. In the meanwhile, this PR campaign to sell the war to the American public is working out quite well for al-Queda, drawing both manpower and money to Iraq. It has literally become a hands on training ground for terrorists. As the tactics of our opponents become more and more sophisticated, and their recruiting becomes easier (due in part to the boomerang effect of this domestic PR campaign) our own army over there grows weaker. It is not a blueprint for success, it is the makings of a failure. You wish very much to ignore this, but that is the reality of the situation. And if we don't watch out, we are going to get one of those spineless democrats as a president, who will attempt to pull out of Iraq.
If they do that, we will be right back over there within a decade. Not for the terrorists, but for the oil and currency exchange.
Posted by: persimmon at July 06, 2007 03:08 PM (nUWIw)
10
Al Quaeda has grown in legitimacy??? Sheesh, the hive-mind speaks.
Posted by: DirtCrashr at July 06, 2007 05:14 PM (VNM5w)
11
Currency exchange? Who is this bozo? Why do we have to go over there for a currency exchange when we've got them every two blocks in most cities?
Plus, we're going to use the U.S. military to fight terrorism domestically? Tanks in the street type stuff?
Keep me away from the crap he's smoking please!
Posted by: daleyrocks at July 06, 2007 06:43 PM (0pZel)
12
"Tying all opposition in Iraq to al-Queda has been a major PR campaign by the Bush administration."
Except that they're not doing that. Not by a long shot.
Posted by: Rob Crawford at July 08, 2007 09:16 AM (bH9q3)
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June 26, 2007
Child Abuse?
Drudge is alarmed over a picture on
Rosie O'Donnell's blog that apparently shows her daughter in some sort of military fatigues, festooned with a a bandoleer of small caliber ammunition.
Presumably, this is some sort of anti-war protest on the part of O'Donnell, but she seems unable to write anything more coherent than the headline, "A picture says a thousands posts."
Considering her storied track record of being unable to write complete sentences or even complete words (the Big Ro seems to think the blogosphere charges by the letter, like some demented form of text messaging), I suppose this could be considered at least a grammatical improvement.
But what, precisely, is the message is she trying to send?
Based upon the reaction of her readers, it seems to be either "I'm willing to pimp my child for a cheap political stunt," or, "I'm so nutty, even my own demented fans are disturbed over how I'd use my child."
Whatever her point, few seem to understand it, and I wonder if that cluelessness extends to O'Donnell herself.
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1
After reading the comments I came to the conclusion that Ms. O'Donut is the smartest and sanest of the bunch. That is the most pathetic accumulation of defectives I have ever encountered.
Posted by: GeorgeH at June 26, 2007 04:24 PM (Jkcjv)
2
We must also decry the ongoing abuse of that
shrieking harpy Pamela Oshry Geller, over at "Atlas Shrugs." She's always using her kids as props in her incoherent hatefests. It disgusts me.
I so hate the way Rosie writes that I start quivering with rage every time I stumble across one of her "poems."
Posted by: Doc Washboard at June 26, 2007 04:27 PM (Rq904)
3
I dunno, Doc. Sometimes she can be
pretty amusing. And my brother did that, so don't blame me. ;-)
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at June 26, 2007 04:53 PM (HcgFD)
4
"A picture says a thousands posts"
Whats it say, she wants her daughter to be a terrorist? I think Rosie lost her marbles.
Posted by: jbiccum at June 26, 2007 09:40 PM (Rd4s4)
5
I say we just ignore the barnyard animal. The less we talk about her, the better life is. That is one woman that even some libs have to admit is crazy.
Kram
www.FuzzySnake.com
Posted by: Kram at June 27, 2007 04:00 AM (i94/j)
6
"A picture says a thousand posts."
Which of the double entendre hits you first, Rosie's effort to mock literacy or the bravado of Rosie actually fighting for anything beyond the point she feels you are not her friend anymore?
If there was a fitting picture worth a thousand explanations of maroon, that one comes second after a photo, any photo, of Rosie.
Posted by: Dusty at June 27, 2007 06:51 AM (GJLeQ)
7
The child soldier is always a disturbing image, and the fact that people are disturbed is indeed, likely the very point. The message that I take away, at bottom, is that war is destroying our young and, implicitly, our future. You may disagree or think it trite, but that does not make it unclear.
So what's the big deal again? You guys don't get it so she must be nuts, is that what I am reading here?
Posted by: Shochu John at June 27, 2007 08:36 AM (hA1lr)
8
Shocku, your moral relativity drivel falls on deaf ears here.
Teaching your children to hack off the heads of those who don't grow their beards long enough is not the same as teaching your children to stay the hand of those who attempt to hack off those heads. Teaching your children to beat on women who don't wear the proper style of clothing is not the same as teaching your children to intervene to stop the beating.
Children being included in efforts to show the moral philosophy of a family or society is not altogether repugnant and neither is a child soldier, even a child fighting, in and of itself. What determines it's repugnance is what the purpose is, what philosophy informs it and how great the need for action is.
In this instance I find it a good teaching moment. What is the purpose of Rosie offering this picture of her daughter, if she, in fact, does mean to offer a point at all? The disgust that many on our side display is threefold, I think. First, it is invested with the disgust for Rosie's own moral relativity, philsophy, and hypocrisy, which leads to the second disgust for Rosie's impersonal use of her daughter to argue points she is incapable of arguing herself.
But, third, last and more important, this disgust is held in the atmosphere of knowing Rosie really has no serious point to offer in her substitute for a thousand posts. She tried to paint with Picasso symbolism but left it absent of symbol like that of hosting a party and adding a note to the invitation, "Bring your own anything." You have brought "destroying our young people" and "destroying our future", both of which are "implicit" for you and which is itself, without much of a point either, not to mention pretty much wrong. The future will exist no matter how many times Rosie's publishes picture of her daughter wearing a bandoleer and I'll go on to say that if children grow up wearing the "metaphorical" bandoleer for the correct reasons, the future will become much brighter, not more dark.
Posted by: Dusty at June 27, 2007 09:40 AM (GJLeQ)
9
"Shocku, your moral relativity drivel falls on deaf ears here."
I am not entirely sure at what point I made any moral point whatsoever. Perhaps you could point that out for me.
"She tried to paint with Picasso symbolism but left it absent of symbol like that of hosting a party and adding a note to the invitation, 'Bring your own anything.'"
I would hardly call this a Picasso symbolism. In fact, as far a symbolism goes, it's pretty kindergarten, which is why I am shocked at the confusion here at what she could POSSIBLY be trying to get at.
"not to mention pretty much wrong. The future will exist no matter how many times Rosie's publishes picture of her daughter wearing a bandoleer and I'll go on to say that if children grow up wearing the "metaphorical" bandoleer for the correct reasons, the future will become much brighter, not more dark."
Fine you disagree with the point. Personally, I think the message here is trite and utterly devoid of subtlety. That having been said, I still GET the point. I am astounded not that people here disagree with what she is saying with this picture, but that they don't understand it. It is really not that complicated.
Posted by: Shochu John at June 27, 2007 06:01 PM (hA1lr)
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June 25, 2007
Damn the Reality, Full Meme Ahead!
Undaunted by the facts, Glenn Greenwald attempts to shore up his demonstrably false claim that, "...the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as 'Al Qaeda.'"
with an update to his
already debunked post:
Posts from other bloggers who previously noticed this same trend demonstrate how calculated it is and pinpoint its obvious genesis. At Kos, BarbInMD noted back in May that Bush's rhetoric on Iraq had palpably shifted, as he began declaring that "Al-Qaida is public enemy No. 1 in Iraq." The same day, she noted that Bush "mentioned Al-Qaida no less than 27 times" in his Iraq speech. As always, a theme travels unmolested from Bush's mouth into the unexamined premises of our newspapers' front pages.
Separately, Ghillie notes in comments that the very politically cognizant Gen. Petraeus has been quite noticeably emphasizing "the battle against Al Qaeda" in interviews for months. And yesterday, ProfMarcus analyzed the top Reuters article concerning American action in Iraq -- headline: "Al Qaeda fight to death in Iraq bastion: U.S" -- and noted that "al qaeda is mentioned 13 times in a 614 word story" and that "reading the article, you would think that al qaeda is not only everywhere in iraq but is also behind all the insurgent activity that's going on."
Interestingly, in addition to the one quoted above, there is another long article in the Post today, this one by the reliable Thomas Ricks, which extensively analyzes the objectives and shortcomings in our current military strategy. Ricks himself strategy never once mentions Al Qaeda.
Finally, the lead story of the NYT today -- in its first two paragraphs -- quotes Gen. Odierno as claiming that the 2004 battle of Falluja was aimed at capturing "top Qaeda leaders in the city." But Michael Gordon himself, back in 2004, published a lengthy and detailed article about the Falluja situation and never once mentioned or even alluded to "Al Qaeda," writing only about the Iraqi Sunni insurgents in that city who were hostile to our occupation (h/t John Manning). The propagandistic transformation of "insurgents" into "Al Qaeda," then, applies not only to our current predicament but also to past battles as well, as a tool of rank revisionism (hence, it is now officially "The Glorious 2004 Battle against Al-Qaeda in Falluja").
You'll note that Greenwald's supporting "evidence" for his comes in the form of links to liberal blogs, letters to Salon.com, selected articles from the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and yet, he completely fails to address the fact that Multi-National Corps-Iraq's own press releases debunk his claims on a daily basis.
Sadly, like a dog returning to re-ingest its own vomit, Greenwald cannot get enough of his own rotting bile. Greenwald continues to insist that there is a conspiracy by the government, the world media, and the U.S. military to turn all enemy forces in Iraq into al Qaeda, and stands by his claim that:
...every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."
Again, this daft claim is hardly supported by the facts, and is easily refuted by the military's own primary means of information dissemination about the War in Iraq, the MNF-I PAO press release system.
Today, Monday, June 25, MNF-I has 13 listed press releases. Of those, one is a duplicate post, while the remaining 12 press releases break down enemy activity in Iraq for the day as follows:
- four releases discussing Sunni insurgent activity;
- one release discussing Shia militia "Secret Cells;"
- four where a specific group enemy group is not named;
- ...and only two where Al Qaeda is mentioned.
Far from making the enemy "almost exclusively" al Qaeda, MNF-I PAO's releases for the day link less than 17% of their stories to al Qaeda activity.
Greenwald ignores the key source that would prove or disprove his "all of our enemy's are being labelled al Qaeda" meme, which are the archives of press releases, of press briefings, Pentagon briefings, daily news, and feature stories from the U.S. military, which make it clear that al Qaeda is not the only extremist group being fought by Coalition and Iraqi forces in Iraq.
Instead, he bumbles forward, doggedly bucking reality, insisting upon some grand conspiracy being orchestrated by the White House, international news services, the American press, and the United States military to repaint all extremist activity in Iraq as being orchestrated by al Qaeda.
As the links above clearly show, Multi-National Corps-Iraq is failing to uphold their end of this alleged conspiracy by consistently citing other extremists groups in their daily press releases and news stories.
Whoever is in charge of this grand conspiracy (perhaps the Freemasons? Maybe the Illuminati? Yale's secretive Skull & Bones Society? Boy Scout Troop 111 in Arlington, Virginia?) should also castigate the media, as they are failing to insist that everything in Iraq is "all al Qaeda, all the time," including this story in the Boston Globe where a suicide bomber targeting Sunni tribal sheiks aligned against al Qaeda was the perfect opportunity to flog this claim, if such a conspiracy was indeed "on." Sadly, the media is failing to uphold their end of the bargain.
Glenn Greenwald seems doggedly intent on descending into his own brand of "trutherism" regarding a grand government, media and military conspiracy to re-brand the Iraq War.
In doing so, he may finally get the notoriety he so desperately craves, if not for the reasons he'd hoped.
Update: I hardly find it surprising that the empty heads at Editor & Publisher lap up Greenwald's bile, with nary a thought to whether or not it's true.
Considering that E&P editor Greg Mitchell has his own track record of manufacturing news and indeed, wrote a post advocating that the media should attempt to undermine the Presidency, I'm not exactly shocked they'd grasp at any straw they could to support their nakedly partisan political objectives.
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1
Wait a minute. I thought Greenwald said establishment media types are acting as stenographers, repeating the propaganda about the unitary enenmy Bush has dictated our military use. Obviously there has been a breakdown in communication somewhere along the way. Where could it be?
My vote based on past experience is on Glenn's side, because the meme is a fabricated device to cast doubt once again on the honesty of the administration and our activities in Iraq. That is one meme on which Glenn has been 100% consistent, truth be damned.
Posted by: daleyrocks at June 25, 2007 11:03 AM (0pZel)
2
How exactly are you refuting what Greenwald says?
Both you and Greenwald are saying the same thing: that much of the MSM reporting about the presence of al Qaeda is contrary to fact.
P.S. Hate to state the obvious, but most people don't get their information from MNF press releases; they get it from the mainstream media. And that should concern your readers.
Posted by: K Ashford at June 25, 2007 01:06 PM (mO+Pe)
3
Clearly the toughest insurgency to defeat is the deaf, dumb, and blind, liberal media. If anyone can crack them (besides Chuck Norris), Gen. Petraeus can, while they're kicking and screaming like babies if he has to.
Posted by: Bacchus at June 25, 2007 01:16 PM (HUWtL)
4
K Ashford: They are most certainly not saying the same thing. Glenn Grenwald claims that the enemy in Iraq is almost exclusively referred to as Al Queda. Confederate Yankee notes first that Al Queda is indeed in Iraq and is subject to understandable special interest when planning and conducting military operations, and secondly the the claim by Glenn Grenwald does not reflect the reality in the reporting from either the military or the press agencies when you actually examine the data. In fact, Al Queda is explicitly referenced not exclusively, but only a fraction of the time. What fraction of the time Greenwald has not attempted to quantify, but Confederate Yankee has.
In fact, Glenn Grenwald's claim contridicts itself when he references the many press reports which do not even mention Al Queda. In doing so and by claiming that those that don't mention Al Queda are reliable but those that do are not, Grenwald reveals his real agenda which is that he does not believe Al Queda should be mentioned at all. In other words, even though anti-Al Queda operations are underway, and even though these operations consitute only a fraction of the reporting, he believes that any such reporting (even just 17%) is too much because such reporting, although factual, reveals too much that is contrary to Mr. Grenwald's agend.
And further, it's ridiculous to claim that Reuters or the AP is somehow pro-Bush and is going along with some conspiracy to misname Iraqi insurgent groups Al Queda. The truth is simple. Al Queda is in Iraq. They are a target of special interest, and they are behind much of the most spectacular multi-casualty attacks on Iraqi civilians that do make the headlines (and are intended to do so). Thus, at least some of the time, a press release or news report will mention Al Queda in conjunction with these attacks or in conjunction with operations against them. That there are other insurgent groups that are not Al Queda is a fact which demonstratably remains both in the militaries press releases and in the popular press.
Posted by: celebrim at June 25, 2007 01:26 PM (Qnlt+)
5
I thought it might be good to remind people again of Joshua Micah Marshall's flack work on behalf of Ken Pollack back in 2002, *before* 1) Marshall had been advised that Clinton's Iraq policy was correct if handled by Gore, evil if executed by Bush, and, 2) Pollack got so scared that he wouldn't be able to get a job in the Kerry administration that he started trying to pretend he had *not* written "The Gathering Storm". His book on why it was necessary to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam was reviewed by Marshall for Washington Monthly. The laudatory review is here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0211.marshall.html
This is actually one of the better flip-flops I have seen. Imagine having a principled stalwart like Pollack (his Iraq convictions lasted for about a year after his book) running US foreign policy.
Of course, both men were right back then. But that was before the puppetmasters had inflicted them with amnesia.
Posted by: Kurmudge at June 25, 2007 01:29 PM (lDbgI)
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CY,
This one of the sorriest post I've seen on this blog to date. Greenwald is simply pointing out the obvious to anyone that's been paying attention to the news lately, there has been a perceptible shift in attribution to al Queda. You want me to source that? Turn on your TeeVee for a half an hour. At any rate, K Ashfords right.
...and I wouldn't be bagging on Greg Mitchell with a
track record of your own that far exceeds his supposed transgressions.
Posted by: Frederick at June 25, 2007 01:38 PM (TcNVg)
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K Ashford said: "Both you and Greenwald are saying the same thing..."
Greenwald is clearly trying to place the misnomers at the feet of the US Military Command (see previous Confederate Yankee post http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/231205.php) and the Bush Administration, while Confederate Yankee is placing it at the feet of the largely misinformed and unreading public, the MSM, and GREENWALD himself.
If Greenwald is going to blame the US Command, he needs to CITE THE US COMMAND, which is exactly what Yankee is doing here. Sorry K, but you missed your mark and missed it big.
Posted by: REN at June 25, 2007 01:39 PM (dzI/I)
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More entertainingly, our favorite piece of talking footwear has chosen a rather poor example to defend his claim by mentioning Fallujah, a place that actually was crawling with Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda linked fighters. All the forces there were not members, but almost all were allied with and dominated by Al Qaeda at the time.
Perversely, the disconnect between the various Sunni groups and Al Qaeda should be looked on as a favorable sign by the Sock Puppet, since the widening split that has developed has been an important goal, and a key behind the turnaround in Anbar (where Fallujah lies.) If Al Qaeda is not such a large problem, one might ask oneself why when the local Sheiks turned against them the province showed such dramatic progress? All of which Mr. Greenwald cannot get himself to admit, because the mess that Iraq is does not suffice for his purposes, there can be no positives, nothing but unrelieved gloom and evil conspiracies.
Posted by: Lance at June 25, 2007 01:48 PM (9fQ4G)
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I see Gleen the All-Knowing Sock-Puppeteer is embarassing himself again.
How would a patriot support the troops in time of war? By calling them lying shills for the administration in total contradiction of the facts, apparently. Hey, anything to advance the partisan cause! In the mind of Greenwald and his fans (real and imaginary), the only real war is the one against Bush.
What a traitorous, moronic douchebag of a hack. There's a special circle of Hell awaiting this guy.
Posted by: TallDave at June 25, 2007 01:59 PM (oyQH2)
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I see Gleen the All-Knowing Sock-Puppeteer is embarassing himself again.
How would a patriot support the troops in time of war? By calling them lying shills for the administration in total contradiction of the facts, apparently. Hey, anything to advance the partisan cause! In the mind of Greenwald and his fans (real and imaginary), the only real war is the one against Bush.
What a traitorous, moronic douchebag of a hack. There's a special circle of Hell awaiting this guy.
Posted by: TallDave at June 25, 2007 02:01 PM (oyQH2)
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Freemasons? S & B? No, CY, it's clear that the liars of the Left are trying to immanentize the aeschaton.
Posted by: Mike at June 25, 2007 06:18 PM (h346G)
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sorry, but you have your facts wrong.
among 21 press releases on the 25th, there are
al-qaeda........ 7
terrorists...... 5
IED cell........ 2
insurgents...... 5
(nothing)....... 2
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=1&id=4&Itemid=21
Posted by: sod at June 26, 2007 08:24 AM (e1Cg2)
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sod, at the time I posted, those numbers were 100% accurate. That does not mean I was wrong, that means they added nine more releases after I posted.
Still, for giggles, let's use your numbers (which I can't verify right now; their site is screwy at the moment).
If MNF-I did mention seven contacts with al Qaeda out of 21 stories, that means that on this particular day, then they said that a whopping
third of enemy actions where attributed to al Qaeda, and this during a series of operations
targetting al Qaeda.
Glenn Ryan Wilson Thomas Ellers Rick Ellensburg Greenwald's claim that the military is referring to all attacks in Iraq as "almost exclusively now" coming from al Qaeda is still handily debunked, no matter how you slice it.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at June 26, 2007 08:47 AM (9y6qg)
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our numbers don t add up. you had 12, i had 21. the difference is only 9, but i added 5 al-qaeda and 5 EXTRA "terrorist" reports.
a few of the reports simply mention events, that can t be blamed on al-qaeda, so they aren t. you d need to disregard those from the total number.
and this during a series of operations targetting al Qaeda.
and this is the real problem. why do you think this operation is targeting al-qaeda alone? no baathists? no angry sunnis? no shii death sqaud in that region?
you re making exactly that wrong claim, the "left " are talking about!
my feeling is, that these press reports are more acurate than talking points of politicians and commanders.
but even they call it al-qaeda, if a neighbor said it was al-qaeda. and terrorists, if a civilian got hurt.
that leaves a stray shot in sunni/shiite heartland for "insurgent activity".
Posted by: sod at June 26, 2007 04:33 PM (JukHi)
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June 23, 2007
SockPuppet Strikes Out Again
Glenn Wilson McEllensburg has suddenly become a terrorism expert, and can't wait to get a
conspiracy off his chest:
Josh Marshall publishes an e-mail from a reader who identifies what is one of the most astonishing instances of mindless, pro-government "reporting" yet:
It's a curious thing that, over the past 10 - 12 days, the news from Iraq refers to the combatants there as "al-Qaida" fighters. When did that happen?
Until a few days ago, the combatants in Iraq were "insurgents" or they were referred to as "Sunni" or "Shia'a" fighters in the Iraq Civil War. Suddenly, without evidence, without proof, without any semblance of fact, the US military command is referring to these combatants as "al-Qaida".
Welcome to the latest in Iraq propaganda.
That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term "Al Qaeda" to designate "anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq" is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."
Actually, that isn't obvious, Glenn. What is obvious is your own industrial-strength ignorance, which apparently seems to be quite contagious among the more irrational actors of the far left.
The reason that we've been reading more over the past few days about attacks directed against al Qaeda—more than Sunni insurgents, more than Shia militiamen—is that elements of al Qaeda have been specifically targeted by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Diyala Province, in Operation Commando Eagle southwest of Baghdad, Operation Marne Torch southeast of Baghdad, and in other operations throughout the country.
If Glen Greenwald or Josh Marshall weren't above a Sullivaneque "floating of a theory" by a conspiracy-minded reader (to excuse their own inherent distrust of our military, of course), they might have bothered to recognize, or God forbid, research a few key facts.
The first of those facts is that we are in offensive operations surrounding and targeting al Qaeda cells specifically, often with information provided by their former allies in the Sunni insurgency.
Second, the military is consistently releasing stories about contacts with both Sunni insurgents and Shia militiamen, and our military is calling them such as they contact them.
Let's got back "10-12 days" and see what Multi-National Force-Iraq has been saying in their press releases. According to Greenwald, the enemy the military talks about is "almost exclusively now" al Qaeda.
And yet, when we go back 12 days to Monday, June 11, we find that in MNF-I's three combat-related press releases, only one addresses al Qaeda. The following day, U.S. forces raided an insurgent weapons cache, came under attack from an insurgent VBIED, and engaged "enemy fire" coming from a mosque, without ever specifying who that was.
On Wednesday, June 13, MNF-I published 17 press releases. Of those a Grand total of four mentioned al Qaeda. Five others mentioned Sunni insurgents, five more couldn't specify the attacker, and one wrote about Iranian-affiliated Shia militias.
I invite Greenwald, Marshall, and others who seem to like this meme to do their own digging through MNF-I's archive of press releases, where they'll find more days very similar to this.
As the offensive operations cited above--part of an overall operation called Phantom Thunder--are specifically targeting al Qaeda cells, we will be reading about those terrorists that our soldiers are directly targeting. But as accounts from Saturday show that we are still encountering Shia militias and Sunni insurgents even today, the theory being aired by Greenwald and his conspiracy-minded followers is shown—with only passing research—to be complete and utter bunk.
Update: Undaunted by the facts, Greenwald attempts to shore up his flimsy argument by citing other liberal conspiracy theorists and letters to Salon.com, forcing yet another debunking of his claims.
Reality. He should check into it sometime.
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1
Their neatly crafted fantasy is crashing on the hard rocks of reality.
When the 1920's are working with us now to zap'em, its pretty clear that there IS indeed a distinct AQ presence...much to the despair of the leftists.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at June 23, 2007 03:21 PM (9yWTK)
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What's so funny is that the *news* this "reader" gets, especially the *news* from Iraq, is from the *News Media*, and when these organizations report who we're fighting against they often substitute their personally preferred terms over whatever the Government might use, unless it is a quote. such as UPI's "guerillas".
You're right on target with your capsuling of MNF press releases, CY, though I don't think you emphasize enough the fact that in the southern belts and in many of the Baghdad district, the MNF identifies Madhi not Al Qaeda.
Don't bother scanning the actual *news* that "reader" or his meme trumpeters get, let them do it if they really think they can support their drivel. They can't. A flip to using Al Qaeda hasn't happened. Just look at typical *news* weasel Richard Oppel's brief story in his own words in the NYT today. Not a mention of Al Qaeda.
The left has no grasp on reality.
Posted by: Dusty at June 23, 2007 05:30 PM (GJLeQ)
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Greenwald has become increasingly desperate of late trying to turn light into gloom with respect to Iraq. It's clear that he either doesn't read much on the subject or wilfully ignores material which is out there relating to our operations against Mookie's Militias and the Sunnis. He's turned into a stenographer for Tehran with respect to Iran's involvement in Iraq. He views anything said by anyone from Iran as fact, while anything said from the U.S. as unconfirmed, third-hand supposition.
He can't write anything these days without beclowing himself. What would a patriot do? If Glenn Greenwald still considers himself a patriot he should recognize that he's gone over the edge and hang it up for a while.
Posted by: daleyrocks at June 23, 2007 07:25 PM (0pZel)
4
Greenwald and his ilk have basically become modern day Lord Haw Haw's pimping for the enemy.
Not only gone over the edge, but gone over to the other side. This is basically "terminal stage" BDS.
Posted by: Purple Avenger at June 23, 2007 08:55 PM (9yWTK)
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GG should avoid cameras for a few days, or at least until the imprint of your keyboard on his face fades away.
Posted by: ErkW at June 24, 2007 01:52 AM (BMyIZ)
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Gotta admire a thorough debunking! Fortunately, on a day to day basis, all it usually takes is actually following Greenwald's own links.
Posted by: JM Hanes at June 24, 2007 03:48 AM (bKtAF)
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CY - a good example of why systematic observation is better than casually noticing something unusual and building a theory around it.
The example could be translated into terms the lefties might understand: you are walking down the street. 19 ethnic minority people pass you by peacefully so you don't really notice them. The 20th mugs you. You notice him. You draw the conclusion that ethnic minorities are "almost exclusively" violent criminals. That's Greenwald's logic here.
Posted by: PB at June 24, 2007 07:44 AM (7FGDT)
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Speaking of Josh Marshall, he ran a contest a while back looking for examples where the administration actually called into question their opponents patriotism.
I never did see a follow up. Probably because being accused of questioning somebody's patriotism by one side in the debate is not the same thing as actually doing it.
Posted by: moptop at June 24, 2007 07:48 AM (AbzfF)
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I agree with whatever Glenn Greenwald says.
Posted by: Ima Pseudonym at June 24, 2007 08:58 AM (neoiq)
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Greenwald and his ilk have now gone from denying ANY kind of connection between Al Qaeda and other Islamists, to denying any connection between Al Qaeda and itself.
Posted by: CK MacLeod at June 24, 2007 09:46 AM (dvksz)
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The conspiracy line of thought only works if you first believe Al Queda to be a creation of the Bush Administration to focus the country's ire upon post-911 (to justify occupying Iraq for its oil, instead of occupying ANWR for its oil I guess).
Posted by: Neo at June 24, 2007 10:28 AM (HsB92)
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Neo: Everyone knows Rove masterminded 911 to perk up moronic Bush's tanking poll numbers, Bush lied us into war to clinch his 2004 re-election.
Posted by: ic at June 24, 2007 11:16 AM (NM7Uv)
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LOTS of truth here the comments are better than the post
The left has no grasp on reality.
yes
He views anything said by anyone from Iran as fact, while anything said from the U.S. as unconfirmed, third-hand supposition.
YES
Not only gone over the edge, but gone over to the other side. This is basically "terminal stage" BDS.
YES!!! he hates W so much hes pulling for the ENEMY
dont know for sure but rumor is that he lives in brazil with an arab BOYFRIEND
AMERICAN??? maybe NOT
Posted by: Karl at June 24, 2007 11:42 AM (5zEhw)
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ItÂ’s relatively straight forward, when the Iraqi insurgents were fighting alongside Al Qaeda they werenÂ’t sharing information about the nature of the insurgency with the newspapers. The media outlets had two sources for their information, military sources and Iraqi news stringers. After the WMD flap the media thought it could disregard military sources as biased and unreliable. The Iraqi news stringers were almost always Sunni and often had ties to SaddamÂ’s old information ministry. The role of Al Qaeda was downplayed as minor foreign segment of the insurgency that didnÂ’t have a leadership role and didnÂ’t have real ties to the real Al Qaeda anyway.
A lot of the local insurgents have flipped sides or are now in Jordan waiting it out. They are now available to the press and they are talking. The accounts that they are telling are consistent with each other and with what military intelligence sources have been saying all along. The talking heads and institutional sources back in the US can say what they want, but they are uniformly contradicted by local Iraqis on the ground. The Reporters on the ground for the major newspapers are now calling them Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda always had a central role in the insurgency ever since Fallujah in 2004. When Fallujah flared the Sunni tribes of Anbar joined up in a loose coalition under the Al Qaeda banner. There has been a progression over the last years of how Al Qaeda has largely taken over much of the insurgency. If you want to know what Al Qaeda has been doing in Anbar province go ask people in Anbar. Likewise, we will get to hear all about whatÂ’s been going down in Diyala province once reporters can interview the people there.
Posted by: Neo-andertal at June 24, 2007 12:35 PM (i5gs6)
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Come on!
If we just give them Czechoslavkia, they'll be satisfied! We can achieve peace in our time, we just have to be flexible.
Posted by: Dirk DIggler at June 24, 2007 04:03 PM (iFo3G)
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I note he's posted some updates in obvious defense of his thesis. And yet these are some darned shallow defenses. The hazard of such a tack is that one gains a reputation for freighting gossamer implications with the weight of full-blown alarums. It's just ridiculous.
Posted by: rasqual at June 24, 2007 10:16 PM (fwvXX)
17
Wait a sec. Who's Glenn Greenwald again? Some sort of self-stroking sock puppet?!?!!? And we depend on him, why?
Oh yeah, that self-referential partner, or whatever. Oh, Glenn Greenwald, he's a *wealth* of *hot* *spurting* *liquid* knowledge about Iraq. Ummm, good.
Cough. A-hem.
Posted by: Patrick Carroll at June 24, 2007 11:38 PM (Ejb+P)
18
It was easier to get Iraqi insurgents to join in the fight against al-Qaeda than democrats.
Posted by: Bacchus at June 25, 2007 10:34 AM (HUWtL)
19
GG writes smart stuff, you are a moron. This is strongly supported by your random spittle specked flailings and the weirdo writing of inadvertantly self-disclosing me-tooer freaks like Patrick Carroll. Seriously Patty wtf is up with that post, it's more content free than this one. Just had to release some hot sticky tension. If GG wasn't gay and hadn't made that one slip wtf would you have to say about him? Hard to see the merits of your arguments sunk so deep in to the morass of your hate.
Keep it up though your support and the support of your shut-in readers has done wonders for the GOP and the fictional GWOT.
Shaboodi Shaboodi
Posted by: shaboodi shaboodi at June 25, 2007 02:07 PM (k/JYL)
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June 20, 2007
Anybody Hiring?
The six-month contract I was hired into in 2005 is finally closing at the end of this month after three extensions, and a few folks have suggested that I should investigate attempting to find a new media journalism gig, either here in the Raleigh area, or one from which I could telecommute.
I know via Sitemeter that a few media outfits check in on this site on occasion, so I'm wondering...
Any takers?
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I know you looked at the comment number and hoped I had news of a job, but I just wanted to wish you the best of luck, Bob.
Posted by: Granddaddy Lonhg Legs at June 20, 2007 03:38 PM (klw4o)
2
Didn't Ian Schwartz just leave Hot Air recently? Don't know if they're looking for a replacement or not but it looks like a fit to me.
Posted by: Bill Faith at June 21, 2007 04:46 PM (n7SaI)
3
Uh, speaking as a professional (yes, MSM1 the horror .. the horror) journalist, I'd suggest you consider a new career.
Posted by: al_in_arabia at June 22, 2007 03:03 PM (Y0gy2)
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June 14, 2007
Reid Betrays the Selective Memory-Based Community
At Daily Kos, "BarbinMD" went to bat this afternoon for an embattled
Harry Reid:
Since its inception a few short months ago, Politico, the online soul-mate to the Drudge Report, has gotten into the habit of creating news stories through innuendo, omission, outright error, and now today, out of thin air.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "incompetent" during an interview Tuesday with a group of liberal bloggers, a comment that was never reported.
Reid made similar disparaging remarks about Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said several sources familiar with the interview.
Of course the reason this comment was never reported is quite simple: the bloggers on the call don't remember this quote. I, along with mcjoan and Kagro X, participated in that conference call and none of us heard Reid say it. And of the four other bloggers who were there, Joe and John from AMERICAblog and Jonathon Singer, have no recollection of it.
Please make note: according to this Kos frontpager, she and two other prominent Daily Kos bloggers never heard Harry Reid call General Pace "incompetent," and of the other four bloggers on the call, the two representing Americablog, and one from MyDD, didn't recall anything, either. "Ain't nobody heard nothin,'" as it were, from six of the seven highly respected liberal bloggers on the conference call with the Democrat Senate Majority Leader. But don't question their integrity.
The last man standing, Bob Geiger, recalled things a bit differently, but still attempted a fanboy's "I don't think that word means what you think it means" defense of Reid:
Here's exactly what Reid said:
"I guess the president, uh, he's gotten rid of Pace because he could not get him confirmed here in the SenateÂ… Pace is also a yes-man for the president and I told him to his face, I laid it out to him last time he came to see me, I told him what an incompetent man I thought he was."
So, did Reid utter the word "incompetent" in the same sentence with General Pace's name on the conference call? Yes, he did.
Geiger then went on to make a pathetic attempt to wrangle Reid's mangled syntax into an attack on President Bush instead of Pace.
The seven liberal bloggers on the conference call with Harry Reid either suffered from a convenient form of group amnesia, or from the inability to honestly parse the English language, but perhaps what was important from their perspective is that they rallied together for Harry with strongly-worded claims of "I can't recall," and "I don't remember," and "It depends on what the definition of the word 'is,' is."
But sometimes irony and justice come hand in hand, and Harry Reid soon did to these radical anti-war bloggers what they are collectively trying to do to the American military and the Iraqi people: he cut and ran:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Thursday that he told liberal bloggers last week that he thinks outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is "incompetent."
Reid also disparaged Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of Multinational Forces in Iraq.
But Reid, whose comments to bloggers first appeared in The Politico, also told reporters: "I think we should just drop it."
For the Selective Memory-Based Community, Reid's betrayal must have been awful.
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1
Let's remember Gates fired Pace, not Reid. We now have a War Czar, SecDef and an incoming Chair of the Joint Chiefs who are all skeptical of the surge.
What does that tell ya?
Posted by: markg8 at June 14, 2007 11:12 PM (7xxF4)
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That's silly--it's not as if Gates could fire Reid even if he wanted to. The surge itself is still being executed, as the full number of combat troops are still being added into the mix. What it does tell me is that there is no silver bullet for Iraq--if the surge is successful, there will still be a measure of internal chaos to deal with, as well as external agents (like Iran) that are helping to foment said chaos.
Posted by: Nathan Tabor at June 15, 2007 12:43 AM (HQYcw)
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As Gen. Petraeus has said before - The Surge™ - in an of itself, will not fix the problems of Iraq. Will it enable central Iraq to be a bit more stable? Yes. Will it enable former insurgent groups to fall in line (ala 'Sunni Awakening' councils)? Yes. Is it allowing those Iraqi who want peace and stability a better chance at 'standing up'? Yes.
There is still a long way to go. Tribal and social customs prevent an immediate turnaround. It took Germany, Japan and S. Korea 40 years to develop into thriving democratic societies where freedom and equality under Rule of Law hold sway. In addition there are many powers in the area that want Iraq to fail. It's in Saudi Arabia and Iran's best interest since thriving democracies tend to make despotic regimes look bad.
Posted by: Dan Irving at June 15, 2007 09:39 AM (zw8QA)
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So the Kos Kidz accuse the Politico of lying. They claim that they, not one of them, heard the quote and when it turns out that the Politico's story was accurate and BarbinMD flatly denied it: grudging update with caveats. No apology, even in the comments. No indication of contrition for a rush and a mistaken statement.
Which website is staffed with liars? Who is incompetent, if not one of
three separate hand-picked citizen journalists even registered the words that would assuredly be red meat to their base? Why should anyone believe them, if they didn't have their hearing-aids plugged in?
1st deaf blogger: happenstance.
2nd deaf blogger: coincedence.
3rd deaf blogger: concerted lies from an agency organized against reporting or even acknowledging the truth.
Posted by: Uncle Pinky at June 15, 2007 08:03 PM (2eQlr)
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"For the Selective Memory-Based Community, Reid's betrayal must have been awful."
Well, maybe, but they won't remember it for long.
Posted by: George Bruce at June 20, 2007 01:33 PM (tj2NC)
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"The Army strives for a "rule of threes": for every combat unit on a mission, a second is recovering and a third is preparing. But today, more than half the Army's fighting units are deployed abroadÂ…
Â…Deep inside the Pentagon...a nightmare scenario hangs in the air, unmentioned but unmistakable. With 140,000 U.S. troops tied down stabilizing Iraq, 34,000 in Kuwait, 10,000 in Afghanistan and 5,000 in the Balkans, what good options would George W. Bush have if, say sometime next spring, North KoreaÂ’s Kim Jong Il decided to test the resilience of the relatively small "trip-wire" force of 37,000 American troops in South KoreaÂ…
…America’s military has been shrinking for the past 35 years...All four services have been cut in strength, and leaders of both parties have overseen this decline. President Bush's father reduced the number of Army divisions from 18 to 14; Bill Clinton cut it further, to 10...The Bush team's vision for the U.S. Army involved making it learner, faster, more efficient and more open to change…" – TIME ‘03.
The impression I had was that the surge amounted to 30,000 more troops. However, I think that means all troops and not just "combat” troops. I have heard before that if the military has around 1,000,000 people, somewhere around 1/2 are support personnel. So, if there are only 500,000 "combat" troops and they are supposed to have an equal amount at home to rest and recuperate as they do at war, plus taking into consideration the other commitments such as Korea and Japan, etc., you have a better idea of what is really being asked of the troops:
"Inside a fortified conference room, through the prism of U.S. and Iraqi
military officials, a security plan to pacify the country was working on
WednesdayÂ…Outside, extremists blew up mosques, lobbed mortars into Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone, and generated a steady drumbeat of violence." The Kansas City Star - 6-21-07.
Conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a
drawdown of U.S. military forces, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Sunday. Asked whether he thought the job assigned to an additional 30,000 troops deployed as the centerpiece of President Bush's new war strategy would be completed by then, Gen. David Petraeus replied, "I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do." The Kansas City Star - 6-18-07.
"In Washington, Pentagon officials urged patience...But Pentagon planners
privately expressed concern. 'We don't have enough troops,' one said. 'It would take another 100,000' to properly protect Baghdad."
(That day there was an inset saying the troops would get extra days off in lieu of extra pay for the extra deployments. I guess times are tough all over.) The Kansas City Star - 4-19-07.
"Last summer the U.S. military in Iraq, led by Gen. George Casey...increased the U.S. forces patrolling Baghdad's neighborhoods by 3,700, to a total of more than 15,000...The current surge was to be different. U.S. forces in Baghdad were to increase by at least 17,000, bringing the total U.S. force in Baghdad to more than 30,000. The troops were to work alongside 30,000 Iraqi army and national police forces and 21,000 policemen...That hasn't happened as rapidly as U.S. commanders had hoped..." The Kansas City Star – 6-09-07.
"Most Iraqi military units arriving in Baghdad...have only 75% of their assigned soldiers...About one in six Iraqi policemen trained by U.S. forces has been killed or wounded, has deserted or has just disappeared..."
The Kansas City Star – 6-14-07.
Posted by: incognito at June 22, 2007 06:45 PM (vAWqE)
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June 04, 2007
It's a Slow News Day, so Why Not A Little Indignant Stupidity?
Many of us have heard the term "spearchucker" used as a racial slur against African-Americans, so when I saw via
Memeorandum that Fox News anchor Brit Hume used the term, my immediate reaction was to cringe.
The context:
Hume: …he had a mixed record in the Senate and he's a man who always seems somewhat frustrated and bored by the Senate...I particularly remember an investigation that occurred after the Clinton/Dole campaign. We were new here at FOX news and we carried a lot of the hearings live. It was in the campaign finance alleged irregularities with monies supposedly seeping into the American political campaign of Bill Clinton from Chinese sources and so on—it was pretty juicy stuff it looked like a very big deal.
Fred Thompson was the chairman of the Investigating committee and it went absolutely nowhere. he was effectively buffaloed in that investigation by none other than John Glenn—who was a wonderful man, but not somebody normally you would think capable of being a real partisan..ahh…ahh.. spearchucker, who could, who could undo an investigation. So it didn't go very well and I think Fred Thompson has acknowledged since then that it wasn't his finest hour...
But how could Crooks and Liars get all indignant considering the comment was directed at this guy?
To put it mildly, it seems a stretch, but any chance to slur a conservative--especially one on the hated "Faux News" network--on even the flimsiest of grounds is a good one, isn't it?
John Amato, after making the weak case that Hume (an older white guy) was being a racist for calling Glenn (an even older white guy) a spearchucker, then goes on to provide the word Hume was must likely looking for all along, a spear-carrier. That Hume was fumbling for the right term was obvious in the transcript that Amato provided (my bold this time):
...he was effectively buffaloed in that investigation by none other than John Glenn—who was a wonderful man, but not somebody normally you would think capable of being a real partisan ..ahh..ahh.. spearchucker, who could, who could undo an investigation.
Hume fumbled, and produced an embaressing slip, but a purposeful slur? I don't think so.
What should be embarassing...but obviously won't be... is Amato's probable little "white lie" about why he wrote this entry to begin with.
I had to watch it a few times for it to sink in. I looked up "spearchucker," on Dictionary.com, but they didn't recognize it so I wonder how he will explain this one away?
Really, John? You had to look up the term to know it was offensive?
If you didn't know it was offensive, then why did you key in on it in the first place, instead of letting it waft by as the one of the dozens of idiomatic expressions one hears in an average week that most normal people never bother to look up?
No, I suspect that Mr. Amato was well aware of what that slur meant all along, and that he was well aware of what it meant long before Brit Hume spoke it on Fox News.
What is far more likely is that Mr. Amato, as a representative of the politically correct progressive blogosphere, instead decided to play dumb and act as if he had to look it up. Why?
Hume made a mistake, and grabbed the wrong term.
John Amato, on the other hand, acted as if he didn't know what "spearchucker" meant, when clearly he knew it was a slur all along, or he wouldn't have keyed in on it.
Here's another word for John Amato to look up: "honest."
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
06:01 PM
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Post contains 629 words, total size 4 kb.
1
Really nice post, CY. But why did you expect better from Crooks and Liars?
Posted by: Dusty at June 04, 2007 06:36 PM (1Lzs1)
2
I think he meant bomb-thrower. Jeez, can we get back to the important stuff, like the cost of John Edwards' haircut?
Honest to God, if this is the way the campaign season is going to be, somebody should just shoot me now.
Posted by: David Terrenoire at June 04, 2007 07:15 PM (tk0b2)
3
Or maybe "water-carrier"?
Posted by: Jim Treacher at June 04, 2007 07:44 PM (0jtcT)
4
No biggie. It's like "macaca." He just invented it on the spot, and it just
happens to be a racial slur. Honestly, these LIEberals are acting like a bunch of.....junglebunnies. Another invented word.
Posted by: jpe at June 04, 2007 08:38 PM (p/TE5)
5
David, as the compassionate conservative that I am, all I can say is "Stand up so I can take a better shot."
Posted by: Dusty at June 04, 2007 11:23 PM (GJLeQ)
6
I wonder if Brit Hume ever read the novel M*A*S*H:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearchucker_Jones
Posted by: CKMacLeod at June 04, 2007 11:29 PM (dvksz)
7
LIEberals like john amato talk a good game but how many colored do you see sipping wine at the bistro the LIEberals are HIPPOCRITS
LIEberals like immigration cause it don't AFFECT THEM ANYWAY and keeps wages and thus prices cheap
do you read SHAKESPEARE while your sipping that fine wine Lefty????
Posted by: Karl at June 04, 2007 11:50 PM (+Z9xC)
8
Dusty,
All I ask is that you move in close and make it clean. With my luck you'd just put me in a hospital room with the TV permanently stuck on Fox News.
I don't think I could take another Bill Frist Video Diagnosis.
Posted by: David Terrenoire at June 05, 2007 07:33 AM (kxecL)
9
Bashing C&L must be fun for you guys, but Mr Amato doesn't seem so indignant to me. He is simply pointing out the gaffe--even making clear in the headline that it was aimed at John Glenn--and using it as a way to bring up past transgressions.
This is way short of the high dudgeon you guys get into over misidentified troops and other MSM malapropisms.
It does not, however, address Amato's real implication--scarcely driven home--that in slipping up Hume reverted to a very loaded characterization that may reflect his real attitudes. Freudian slip, anyone?
It might have been interesting to read a discussion among conservatives about whether people reveal supressed attitudes in this way, and if so whether it is important politically. Any of us is likely to spit out an insulting word or phrase in the heat of discussion (Blank you, Sen. Leahy!)--so why get all backed up about it, on either side?
Instead, commenters here sieze an opportunity to once again start in on the name-calling and accusations ("LIEberals," "HIPPOCRITS"). And in such a civil venue!
A bit of self-reflection might be in order here. You think attacking the MSM for silly slipups and editorial mistakes is fair game, but criticizing conservative mouthpieces for chewing on their size tens is out of bounds. Liberals here are accused of incivility for the slightest transgression, but ad hominen attacks on liberals seems a staple of the site.
You can dish it out, but you can't take it.
Posted by: R. Stanton Scott at June 05, 2007 08:10 AM (mItUg)
10
Mr. Scott,
You have to learn to ignore the semi-literate rants.
The guy's either suffered a head wound, is developmentally disabled, or is an ESL student. Either way, it's best not to notice when he spews.
It's like pointing out when grandpa is incontinent. It's just not polite.
Posted by: David Terrenoire at June 05, 2007 09:28 AM (kxecL)
11
Wit well done. Kudos, David.
Posted by: Dusty at June 05, 2007 09:48 AM (GJLeQ)
12
I must live in the wrong part of the country, because I've never heard it used to describe anyone racially. I have heard it used in the "bomb-thrower" context, which seems to cover Sen. Glenn appropriately.
Posted by: Old_dawg at June 05, 2007 12:38 PM (mvlLy)
13
Mr. Terrenoire,
Yeah, yeah, I know. What happens on the short bus should perhaps stay on the short bus.
But if we let Grandpa take his incontinence public, it embarrasses the family and makes a mess that someone has to clean up.
There comes a time to tell the nurse that people notice the stench.
Posted by: R. Stanton Scott at June 05, 2007 01:04 PM (fnBVi)
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