Iraq: Violence 70% Down Since June

From Faux News:

Previously dead Iraqis are now strolling home after being resurrected! Cheeses be praised!!!
 
"We seem to be having the same trouble getting numbers out of the official sources that we have always had, and the reporting from Iraq is just as constrained and stage-managed as ever."

No, it's much more contrived and stage-managed than ever. The neoconservatives are attempting to spin this fiasco into a near-victory spoiled by the next administration, in hopes of returning to power and having a positive legacy someday. They will similarly spin the looming recession. Hani, Countezero, and many duped Americans must learn to pay better attention before they will see through this and similar deceptions; the slow learners are forcing the whole class to learn the truth the hard way.

It's funny monsieur hypewaders that I end up being the duped one. It's not a surprise to me to hear you talk conspiracies, you belong to the school of Michel Aoun who is an institution in paranoia and conspiracy theories. He ****** the sister of his Christian community because he's the only good honest man in the world and everybody else are sons of bitches, even the patriarch. All the people in the world, Christians, Muslims, Arabs, Americans, French etc are all conspiring against him, they are jealous of him because he's the only one who's got the Holy Spirit in him. All the media is lying and trying to defame him, he's not allied with Hizbullah, he's not allied with Ba'th party, he's not allied with Bashar Assad. Those are all media conspiracies against him.

I wish you even more smartness. Let me be duped, I'm happy with it.
 
Personally, I think you're a delusional fanatic. The AP is wrong. The NYT is wrong. The Economist is wrong. Everyone is wrong — and you and your friends are right. Such solipsism, while comforting, is not palatable to me. Sorry.
 
So did you believe it when the news media showed Bush with a mission accomplished banner years ago?
 
So did you believe it when the news media showed Bush with a mission accomplished banner years ago?


Mission does accomplished, does not equal war over.

Many missions make a war, I flew 1,200 missions in Vietnam, all accomplished, but that didn't mean the war was over every time a mission was accomplished.
 
So did you believe it when the news media showed Bush with a mission accomplished banner years ago?

That's an inane argument. The Media was covering an event where the president was speaking. It was not "showing" him, whatever that means. Furthermore, it cannot control (or edit) what they president says or what he chooses to hang in the background for effect. Politicians speak in front of backgrounds with messages on them all the time. So I fail to see what your remark is attempting to postulate.
 
That's an inane argument. The Media was covering an event where the president was speaking. It was not "showing" him, whatever that means. Furthermore, it cannot control (or edit) what they president says or what he chooses to hang in the background for effect. Politicians speak in front of backgrounds with messages on them all the time. So I fail to see what your remark is attempting to postulate.

Hmm did the media refute his statements, call him a liar?

And are we to assume that you believe the media but not the President?
 
You're not to assume anything. I asked the point of what you've written, you haven't answered. Instead you've shifted the focus to what I believe, which is immaterial.

For the record, the Media can and should only refute his statement if they have evidence to the contrary. At the time of the announcement, they did not. The proof of that the stunt was a stunt came in the months and years after the actual event, when the wheels actually came off the wagon in Iraq. So again, what's your point?
 
count said:
For the record, the Media can and should only refute his statement if they have evidence to the contrary. At the time of the announcement, they did not.
They did. Or at least some of them did, because I recall reading refutations backed with evidence at the time, and both before and after, the "Mission Accomplished" theatrical.

It was frequently described, for example, by comparing it with the pageantry and pomp involved in Big Lie presentations of 1930s Germany.
 
You're not to assume anything. I asked the point of what you've written, you haven't answered. Instead you've shifted the focus to what I believe, which is immaterial.

For the record, the Media can and should only refute his statement if they have evidence to the contrary. At the time of the announcement, they did not. The proof of that the stunt was a stunt came in the months and years after the actual event, when the wheels actually came off the wagon in Iraq. So again, what's your point?

So you did believe the President since you appear to have missed the contradictions. Thanks, just what I wanted to know

:D
 
Here's another Iraq story. It's similar to the Times piece, but a little more negative.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201568_pf.html


They did. Or at least some of them did, because I recall reading refutations backed with evidence at the time, and both before and after, the "Mission Accomplished" theatrical.

Someone had evidence the mission of major combat operations (IE the war) wasn't accomplished? Please, provide a link, because I'd love to read it. The major combat was over. Period. What's made Bush's PR stunt seem ridiculous is the fact a Civil War erupted after the regime was toppled. I don't see how any media organization could have reported what had not happened yet. I mean, what would you and Sam have had them ask? What was appropriate, in your mind?

It was frequently described, for example, by comparing it with the pageantry and pomp involved in Big Lie presentations of 1930s Germany.

Sorry, I don't read publications that would make such an inane remark.

So you did believe the President since you appear to have missed the contradictions. Thanks, just what I wanted to know

:D

I've tried to talk with you, but as usual, you're incapable of following an argument on making a point that approaches anything that is cogent. When you get done trying to pigeon-hole and one-up me and you have something to say that makes sense, we'll speak again.
 
That was an interesting link, countezero. Although you claim that you don't read publications that would compare the official US description of progress in Iraq to Nazi propaganda, the link you provided exposes a very similar subterfuge, if you will only make the effort to compare.

Iraq is not a triumph of liberation. It is a civil war in lockdown, and for a number of clearly-visible reasons (that we can readily explore if you like) that lockdown is unsustainable. Nazi comparisons should only be taken so far, because their purpose is only to stimulate analysis from a different angle. If you find the comparison too distasteful, then compare official American platitudes about Iraq and Baghdad to the Soviet "Potemkin Village" phenomena. The Bush Administration persists in entertaining dangerous deceptions. The more you widen your sources, the more this will become apparent to you.
 
The problem with your paranoid (and asinine) theory is that Bush administration (that figment of evil for you) does not control the Media the way the Soviets or Nazis did. The Times and The Post are independent Media organizations with independent reporters gathering their information free from government control. Any fool can see this, but apparently you cannot.
 
count said:
The Times and The Post are independent Media organizations with independent reporters gathering their information free from government control.
No US media organization gathers information in Iraq independent of US government influence and management.

As far as "control" - not to bog down in definitions of how much influence amounts to "control" of some kind, we note the extraordinary ability of the US military and executive administration to plant stories that receive national distribution, and frame the vocabulary and circumstances of media accounts -

we recall one such event discussed on this forum just a few weeks ago, when a couple of "respectable" "journalists" who presented administration PR as results of investigative reporting (that had not in fact been accomplished) were featured nationwide in all major media, described exactly as the PR setup required they be described (former "staunch critics" of the war effort and the Surge, just back from a stint of serious and independent nvestigative reporting in Iraq) in defiance of the plain facts -

and we note the extreme difficulty of obtaining reliable and independent information from much of Iraq, or any of the military forces there.
count said:
Someone had evidence the mission of major combat operations (IE the war) wasn't accomplished? Please, provide a link, because I'd love to read it. The major combat was over. Period.
The "mission" was not to end major combat - not at that time, anyway. Several disrespectable writers offered that as a revision of the "mission" (we win? great, let's leave now), but were dismissed then by the serious and respectable herd of patriotic media. Too bad, eh?

But even that meagre redefinition of "mission accomplished" was doubted at the time, by a great many pundits and such - I recall Molly Ivins for instance, a mere desk jockey columnist with no special expertise, predicted (just before launch) that the initial invasion as would be an easy military success, followed by "the peace from hell".
count said:
It was frequently described, for example, by comparing it with the pageantry and pomp involved in Big Lie presentations of 1930s Germany. ”

Sorry, I don't read publications that would make such an inane remark.
That must be how you end up saying things like this
count said:
What's made Bush's PR stunt seem ridiculous is the fact a Civil War erupted after the regime was toppled. I don't see how any media organization could have reported what had not happened yet.

Quite a few media figures found W's PR stunt not only ridiculous (and disturbing) but obviously premature, at the moment it was performed - the idea that it only came to seem ridiculous months later is either evidence of extremely narrow and biased news sources or another one of your remarkably consistent memory revisions.

The similarity of style and content between W&Co's pageantry and that of the fascist political parties in Europe in the 1930s is striking - not inane at all.
 
The problem with your paranoid (and asinine) theory is that Bush administration (that figment of evil for you) does not control the Media the way the Soviets or Nazis did. The Times and The Post are independent Media organizations with independent reporters gathering their information free from government control. Any fool can see this, but apparently you cannot.

That is true, the control is more subtle (and voluntary). Look at who sits on the board of directors at those companies, and all the pending legislation that pertains to the companies that share those same members.
 
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