The following was posted by Jeff in the comments to this post.
Just found the article. It quotes me as saying that the AP has been using a fake source since at least April to report on Shia violence against Sunnis. Nobody has turned up Jamil to this point, so I stick by that.
The crux of the article, though, is that we wingnut warbloggers seize on a teensy fabrication and blow it all out of proportion. Fake but accurate, you seeâ€â€the story of violence is what’s important, the big picture, not little picayune details like phony sources. Or, if to be charitable, let’s call these sources what I’m sure Boehlert, in his private moments, rationalizes them as: composites.
But is Boehlert correct? I don’t believe I spent an inordinate amount of time covering the story, but I most certainly do believe it significant when a story like this comes up. Boehlert and his Media Matters “fact checkers†hope to present this as a straw that we desperate warmongers are clinging to at the tail end of a failed war. But our point is, how can people like Boehlert be so sure these stories are outliers? We’ve seen several other stories of media fabrication and enemy propaganda posted as news. And those are just the ones we know about.
So yes, it’s true, one or two instances don’t make a trend. But we’ve long surpassed that threshold, and now a number of us are concerned that this is indeed a media trend. From there, speculating on how phony media reports could be having an impact on domestic support for the war is hardly the stuff of conspiracy mongers (as the article tries to present us. Hell, from the article Boehlert wrote, you’d think I was Eric Rudolph or some such).
Anyway, here’s one of the comments I pulled from the thread, which should tell you everything you need to know about those who haunt media matters and consider it an information clearinghouse:
The wingnuts are the ones that really hate our freedoms, not the Muslims. The Muslims may disagree with our cultural norms and the way we live our lives here, but they are not really out to change us. Much of what we have they also want.
The ones that really hate our freedoms are the Malkins, Coulters, Becks, etc. They want a dictator to lead us and tell us what is acceptable to think. They want all of us to have a herd mentality and turn on any that stray from the official line. They are more than willing to use the Constitution to give themselves the power to take our Constitutional rights away from us.
There is no “Clash of Civilizations,†there is a clash of cultures. We can’t have a real debate with them; they don’t want to recognize any rightness on our part. Their hope is that they can shout loud enough to cow us into submission.
* – BearCountry / Tuesday December 12, 2006 07:33:02 PM EST
A clearer case of muddleheaded thinking, wilful blindness, and transparent projection you are not likely to find elsewhere.
It is like a lump of pure lefty coal that has been held onto so tightly that it now sparkles like a progressive diamond.
update: Just received this hysterical email from one Kevin Woodman. I must share:
Very funny!
I actually laughed out loud!
So if it’s a lie it’s OK because the “Facts” are accurate? My God, did you even read what you wrote? Bush made up his “Jamil” too to get his point across to start the war yet you and the rest of the media tear into him for lying. So let me understand this….it’s only lying if a conservative does it. If a liberal does it, it’s called “little picayune details”What a joke!
Methinks Kevin misunderstood. Completely. And with a very embarrassing insistence.
Now then. Who wants to wager that when it finally dawns on ol’ Kevin (thanks to my return email) that it is actually Boehlert and his buddies on that side of the aisle that are pushing the “fake but accurate” school of journalism, he won’t apologize for making such an ass of himself?
Takers? I’m giving 15-to-1 odds…
More likely they use the coals as suppositories. Makes purer quality diamonds with all the pressure and heat.
Someone (Boehlert) on the left that makes the most stupid liberal look smart. Islam is not out to change us? Na, they only want to change us from breathing to dead and have been taught that from birth. Some even believe the Islamist in the U.S. are peaceful. B.S. they are simply terrorists in waiting. People in this country are due a rude awaking any day now.
It’s all part and parcel of what comes from forcing the ‘facts’ to fit a pre-determined outcome. Jeff’s been re-inforcing this concept of late but it really does date back at least as far as Orwell, white being black, deviancy being conservative and all that.
If the AP actually owned up to their error(s) and took positive corrective action then maybe the proggs dissmissive arguments could carry some water. As it is the denial, dissembling, and obsfucation serve as the greater indictment of what lies at the heart of the problem.
“The Muslims may disagree with our cultural norms and the way we live our lives here, but they are not really out to change us.”
Well, no, except for that pesky beheading thing. Probably just a composite, though.
Well, that’s a relief.
Uh huh. I hear they just can’t get enough gay porn and lap-dancing in those countries.
What’s a little dhimmitude between cultures?
Oh, was I supposed to say that? I didn’t get my talking points today.
I tried to read the linked article, and I could get only three graphs in. The putrid stench of smug self-satisfaction was just too, too much.
I’m glad that someone could read and report on it, tho.
For some reason, even though I should know better, I’m always surprised at how incredibly stupid people on the left can be about what the right actually believes on just about any issue. People on the left can sometimes be correct or have valid contributions (ok, I’m probably being generous) but if there is one area where they are completely useless is in understanding the point of view of those on the right. Of course, I sometimes see stupidity or strawmen being created by people on the right but it is a lot more rare. I guess we righties just don’t have an excuse since we swim in a sea of lefty thought by virtue of the MSM. We need to actually engage different thoughts.
I guess this is why I rarely find myself even debating anyone on the left anymore. While I try to understand and respond to what they are saying, I find that they don’t even make a good-faith effort to listen to your words. They have a caricature of who a right-wing person is and they debate that instead of the actual person.
You mean progressives can negotiate with the Terrorist who are bent on killing us but they can’t have any dialouge with someone who unviolently expresses their opinion, which I thought was a right in this country.
Silvestre Reyes is “BearCountry,” but I digress.
I have a suggestion for our neighbors to the left on the spectrum…how about you read what “The Muslims” (i.e., jihadis and that obvious alien implant in Tehran) actually, you know, SAY.
And then read what all your demons on the right, you know, SAY.
And then read The Gathering Storm and see if you can avoid saying the Nazis wanted many of the same things we do. Or that Churchill sought dictatorship. I know it will hurt your pointy thick heads, but give it all a shot.
And remember–calling lefties dumbasses is not hating freedom or seeking to change anyone. It also does not, through some magical inverting machine, negate the fact that they are dumbasses.
It’s absolutely amazing. Whenever I say the word “Bush” to my left leaning colleagues, their heads explode. KA-BOOM!
I haven’t figured it out yet, but I think it has to do with an aversion to the truth. Fuck facts, because Bush talks funny. How much more can you be committed to reality than that?
You’re right Jeff, who needs pesky details. All the dictator worshipping warmonger has to do these days is utter two words, Republican and Christian, to experience the wrath of Leftist freak-out.
Does this mean that the Democrats taking control is really a vast Bush-Heil-Reich-Wing conspiracy created by Katie Couric for ratings week?
Along these same lines–what are all these kneebiters going to do January 20, 2009 around noon eastern time? Dictators don’t climb on Marine 1 for the first leg of a quiet flight back to Crawford. (Just for fun, however, let’s see how many of them laud a real dictator when he finally goes to meet his eternal “reward” down Havana way.)
It is amazing how many lefties won’t take a bet on whether Bush will step down at the end of his term. It seems that once the logical part of their brain steps in and starts calculating cold-hard cash they aren’t so sure about the “dictatorship”. It is too bad that they can’t live the rest of their time in a logical world. I guess that if they did, they would no longer be lefties.
BTW, it is surprising how many of them won’t also take a bet on whether we will still be debating global warming 10 years from now despite the threats that if we don’t take action RIGHT NOW it will be too late. It seems that even they don’t really believe that the results of this “imminent” threat will be obvious in 2017.
Call their bluff, it infuriates them and is so much fun! I’m going to have fun over the Holidays.
At least we can savor the irony of the Brock/O-Dub axis getting their panties in a twist over someone criticizing the media and suggesting there’s a political motive behind such criticism. Project much?
Remember when you were young?
You shone like the sun . . .
Shine on, you sec-progg diamond.
Now there’s a look in your eyes
Like black holes in the sky . . .
Shine on, you sec-progg diamond.
Somebody somewhere recently posted a comment (wish I could recall who) to the effect that the Left are a group that uses Orwell’s 1984 as a guidebook rather than a cautionary tale. An observation I’ll use for the rest of my days.
So that I maybe yelled at, I think Bohlert’s piece was a little over the top (warbloggers want to see journalists die? Hard to believe), the gist of his article is mostly correct. There is a group of people, who supported the war from the beginning and continue to support the war loudly, who are in denial about the truth of Iraq and are blaming the media for reporting car bombs and chaos.
When many supporters of the war make the point that the press over-emphasizes the violence in Iraq, they then go on to excplain that without that essential narrative from Iraq, the American people wouldn’t be against the war and the jihadists would not be fighting as hard.
Bohlert’s piece is how a possibly false story (or even 61 such stories) by an Iraqi Jason Blair is used by folks like Malkin to claim the everything reported from Iraq is false and designed to sap the will of the American people.
He uses the examples of the tens of dead bodies strewn throughout Iraq in the days immediately prior and after a story about SIX PEOPLE dying to illustrate that the people who support the war are missing a vast forest for the trees.
Personally, I think it’s because most of supporters of the “The Press Lost Iraq” theory (and I am obviously excluding Mr. Goldstein frrom this) think the real War in this country is against a)the left, b) the press, c) all of the above….instead of a war against terrorism.
I realize few of you agree, but I knew you were dying for my opinion
timmy:
Isn’t there a well that you could be exploring?
If the press were reporting car bombs and chaos in the context of everything else, there’d be little issue. There are, without question, car bombs and chaos. Bit that’s not the whole story.
An example: Yesterday the Iraqi Police in Tikirit prevented a rocket attack on a coalition base. But you aren’t going to find that story in the media. Only on the CENTCOM press release site. The reason is that it contradicts the Baker-Hamilton/DLC/McCain/NYT position that the IRaqis are ineefective and will not step up.
Similarly, everyone knows that we lost over 100 troops in October. Almost no one knows that the Iraqi services lost more than 3 times that. Same reason.
At least part of the “The Press Lost Iraq” position comes from a series of statements from the opposition that this was a strategy they were deliberatly going to persue. I can’t find a single reason not to take them at their word.
McCain? The McCain who supports the war and argued for more troops and adamantly refuses say we need to withdraw?
What does he have to do to convince war supporters that he’s a war supporter? Obviously, being for it–loudly and vociferously from every hill in the country doesn’t convince you…
By the way, do we know when Jim Baker joined the DNC? Was it after he helped George win the fighht in Florida? After the Republicans in Congress tapped him to lead the ISG? Or after he delievered a report people who support the war don’t like?
You don’t keep up with the news much do you, Timmy? Kind of explains your confusion.
This is what I most appreciate about Jeff–beside the free liquor, of course: he is great at cutting through the disinformation that is raining down on us.
This is a great calling, Jeff, if you want it.
I’ll do you one better, the press didn’t lose the war because it hasn’t been lost. The US can not be defeated in Iraq but they can choose to retreat because of loss of nerve. So far that doesn’t look that will happen while Bush is still in power so nothing has been lost. All the front-runners to replace him in two years also seem to support finishing the mission so the will may survive him.
I’ll grant you that Bush went in with the dream of turning Iraq in to an ideal democracy. The results will probably won’t be perfect at the end of the day but the Iraqis and the region will be a lot better off than they were before.
Just in case anyone else is reading: Timmy here is an excellent example of the present disconnect in communication in our country.
Rather than accept that I meant what I said the way I said it, he’s decided to reinterpret it. I’m at a loss as to the context for this creative interpretation.
Specific: He exhibits confusion as to why I included McCain in the group. Obviously he’s disassociated the subject with the predicate in the same sentence. This is a prescription for certain failure to understand. (Or to develop a red herring–but I’ll go into that in a moment.)
In this way, by ignoring that the sentence was about accusing the Iraqis of failure, a accurate precis of McCain’s statements, he gets to ignore the larger message of the post, segueing into further claptrap about Baker’s political affiliation, which I did not represent or characterize at all.
It’s possible this is not deliberate, that Timmy is simply that confused and that poor at reading comprehension. It’s also possible that its an attempt (clumsy, but still deliberate) to deflect attention (the red herring) from the actual subject.
So how about it Timmy? Is there a reason you don’t want to talk about the press reporting stories in a highly selective manner? Is there a reason you don’t want to talk about statemetns made by al Qaeda that they were deliberately setting out to manipulate the media and thus public opinion in the US?
I don’t believe Baker has been characterized as a Democrat here. Instead, I think it more accurate to say many national Democrats have embraced the foreign policy realism that was a staple of Republican administrations for many years. In short, they’ve embraced their inner GHW Bush. WE ARE ALL HENRY KISSINGER NOW.
Add to that their embrace of the economic protectionism of the paleoconservatives—even while they (incoherently) remain apologists for illegal immigration—and you have a modern democratic party that appears the unholy offspring of Pat Buchanan, Colin Powell, Richard Nixon, Ted Kennedy, Jane Fonda, and Country Joe McDonald.
This is ironic, of course, because Bush the son—and “neoconservatism” in general, in the realm of foreign policy—is very similar to the JFK muscular Dem model.
And as I recall, Uncle Walty cried at the loss of the nation’s great idealist in Dallas town. Which is doubly ironic because, were JFK alive today, Walter’d be joined by Mary Mapes and Dan Rather in questioning Kennedy’s war record, while Jon Aravosis poked around the internet looking for evidence that Jack was banging Rock Hudson.
Up is down. Black is white. Squiggy is the Big Ragu.
“Baker-Hamilton/DLC/McCain/NYT position that the IRaqis are ineefective [sic] and will not step up.”
Not sure how many are ways to interpret you mentioning McCain with the usual suspects, but you’re the expert on your writing.
As for “Al Queda”, perhaps they could explain why the strategy is not working in Afghanistan. Chaos reigns there, but there is a virtual consensus that MORE troops should be sent there.
Bud, I’m in Afghanistna and I can, using my own Mark-1 Eyeballs, assure you that there is little chaos here, let alone reigning.
We are tryingot do more, faster, becasue the electorate is getting impatient, so yes, more troops, or better use of the troops here, is a good and needed thing.
The Taliban are more active. Why? Ever kick a hornet’s nest? They are reacting to us, not we to them. This is a good thing.
One more time on your inability to read: the Direct Object of the sentence is “position” not “Baker-Hamilton/DLC/McCain/NYT” It’s not describing that group as being synonymous, only that they share a common theme, re: the object of the sentence. Which position is answered by an adjectival phrase “that the Iraqis are inefective and will not step up.” Only in a twisted interpretation can this be taken as some kind of equivocation of the politics of the individuals and entities referenced.
Hey RTO! Quit clouding the situation with eyewitness testimony! Don’t you know the MSM have a narrative to get out?
OMG, RTO is RME @ MSM. FICCL. MSM is FUBAR.
Sorry, it’s an acronym thing.
Well, sure. But that won’t stop Timmah aka neoconstink.
They never understand the psychology of those they oppose.
Which is one reason why they practically, always lose.
We tend to understand left psychology pretty well, many of us are former lefties, snd anyone decently educated in psychology would never choose a socialist system.
Yeah, RTO, your perch in Afghanistan means all of Afghanistan is safe. Opium production wasn’t at an all-time high. The friggin’ British general attempting to pacify Kandahar has begged for more more troops and claims he cannot beat the Taliban with what he has.
You know more than he does because you’re there. And, given you frequent internet access, my guess is your’re right there on the border with Pakistan directing fire. That must be why you all this time to diagram setnences.
I’ll call NATO for you tomorrow and let them know your anecdotal assessment.
Lastly, since you have all this time on your hands, grab a book on The Great Game (there are several good ones wiritten in the last few years) and let me know how the Brits did in 1840 and 1870 after three years after occupying Afghanistan. Pay specific attention to Dr. William Brydon.
Things always look peachy in Afghanistan if you don’t more about the history, people, and military situation than you can see on your back porch.
Godspeed
PS Of course the MSM is fubar. Theya re on the side of the terorists. Don’t you read your own posts?
And you know more than he does (remember, he has access to a lot more sensitive info than he can divulge here) because???
Weer you mugged by an opium poppy as a child? Is that why you think that opium production has something to do with stability?
Its a separate problem, albeit and important one.
I note you offer no link to support your (mis) quote of the generic “British general.” Wanna know why? I know why. It’s because there isn’t one. You may genuinly beleive that that’s what he said. You twist my words around pretty well. But that’s not what he’s said.
Good lord, did this nut bar just lecture me about the importance of history? You’ve no clue my man. About me, about what I do here, nor about the history of this place and how we fit into it. And I’m not going to help you with any of it.
Laughing @ your expense.
Too rich. You got me Timmy boy.
I’m actually in an underground command center in Grapevine, TX. The whole war thing is just a government hoax like landing on the moon. Haven’t you seen “Wag the Dog?” Its just like that war with Albania.
Grapevine, TX?
Darn, I’ll have to wave on my way to work on Monday.
[sarcasm off]
TW: youre55. No, you turing twit, but I will hit 50 next week.
Don’t tell the wife. She thinks I’m in Afghanistan.
Or did I tell her Jakarta.
Interesting.
If you don’t serve but have the temerity to opine on the war, you are a “chickenhawk”. But if you actually bother to set your boots on the ground you don’t really know what’s going on because you’re too isolated.
Only those enlightened people that read (and uncritically believe) the AP, et.al. are allowed to give their opinions.
Very telling…
Hmm…
oh really?