Target Centermass

Category: Middle East

  • U.S. Demands Action, Global Yawn Expected

    My, but we Americans are a demanding and, at times, pathetically optimistic bunch.

    On Iran:
    U.S. demands swift action for Iran’s nuclear noncompliance

    As the deadline set by the UN approaches, the US is pushing for swift sanctions against Iran for its lack of compliance with the international committee’s demand to stop its nuclear enrichment program, American officials said Monday.

    Iran is expected to provide its response to the European incentive package on Tuesday, but the US is looking ahead to the UN deadline set August 31. Sources in Washington speculated that the Iranian response to the incentive package would not be conclusive, yet would include no sign of willingness to stop the uranium enrichment process.

    US President George W. Bush said Monday he hoped the international community moved quickly to impose sanctions against Iran in case it decides to go ahead with its nuclear project.

    On Lebanon:
    UN force must be deployed immediately, says Bush

    George Bush called yesterday for the urgent deployment of a UN force in southern Lebanon, while offering American help with logistics, communications and intelligence. He also urged France to contribute more troops.

    Mr Bush was speaking as the week-old ceasefire was in danger of unravelling, following an Israeli raid into Lebanon and an increasing reluctance among European countries to contribute soldiers to an expanded UN force.

    Under the terms of a UN resolution passed this month, the force was to number 15,000 and be joined by a similar contingent of Lebanese government troops at the southern border, providing a buffer between Hizbullah and Israel.

    But France, which was supposed to lead the expanded UN force, has offered only 200 troops, while Israel has blocked the participation of countries with which it has no diplomatic relations, ruling out Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh.

    Romano Prodi, Italy’s prime minister, said yesterday he was willing to accept Israel’s request for it to command the peacekeeping force, but said that the UN secretary general would have the final say in who should lead the peacekeepers.

    On Sudan:
    U.S. Urges UN Force in Darfur ‘Without Delay’

    The United States Monday called on the government of Sudan to allow deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur “without delay.” The current African Union observer mission in the region is ill-equipped and under-funded, and lost two members killed in an ambush Saturday.

    Officials here are pointing to Saturday’s ambush as further evidence of a deteriorating security situation in Darfur that they say requires the early deployment of a full-scale U.N. peace force.

    The United States and Britain last week introduced a resolution in the Security Council that would re-make the current African Union mission in Darfur into a United Nations peacekeeping force.

    But the Sudanese government continues to oppose the idea, with President Omar al-Bashir threatening to forcibly resist its introduction.

    Of these three stories, I expect the U.N. and the global community to respond quickly with grumblings, stutterings and grandiose pronouncements of nothingness, respectively. If not respectively, then in any order the reader elects to apply the three courses of inaction to the three stories.

  • New Blog: Supporting Troops

    And I mean brand-spanking first-month new.

    Supporting Troops is already chock-full of pictures of soldiers receiving care packages and is the most recent endeavor of Brad Blauser. Who is Brad Blauser? Well, he’s a civilian on the ground in Iraq and is the driving force behind an amazing effort I’ve mentioned once before, Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids.

    Go check out Mr. Blauser’s amazingly good deeds.

  • Israel-Hezbollah-Syria Link Dump

    To quote Tanner Boyle: Crud!

    Nothing really tonight from me. Oh, there was going to be something about the cease-fire in southern Lebanon that I was working on while bouncing back and forth between this and my real job, and I was well on may way to stringing together several different items when my Firefox browser bit the dust. Now I’m just going to see if I can gather up all or some of the pieces I was trying to intricately weave together into a coherent read and, instead, salvage a bit of a link dump.

    Krauthammer: A Moment to Be Seized in Lebanon

    The charm of any U.N. Security Council resolution lies in the preamble, which invariably begins by “recalling” all previous resolutions on the same subject that have been entirely ignored, therefore necessitating the current resolution. Hence newly minted Resolution 1701: Before mandating the return of south Lebanon to Lebanese government control, it lists the seven Security Council resolutions going back 28 years that have demanded the same thing.

    We are to believe, however, that this time the United Nations means it. Yet, the fact that responsibility for implementation is given to Kofi Annan’s office — not known for integrity, competence or neutrality — betrays a certain unseriousness about the enterprise from the very beginning.

    Now, it is true that had Israel succeeded militarily in its strategic objectives, there would have been no need for any resolution. Israel would have unilaterally cleaned out south Lebanon and would be dictating terms.

    But that did not happen. The first Israel-Hezbollah war ended in a tie, and in this kind of warfare, tie goes to the terrorist.

    Read it all.

    Under-equipped, under pressure: the Lebanese Army rolls in after an absence of four decades

    Nawal hurled a fistful of grains into the air showering a Lebanese Army Jeep with rice, startling the young officer trying to navigate his armoured column through the narrow streets of this southern town.

    “We have waited a long, long time for this,” said Nawal, who lined up on her balcony with three generations of her family to wave at the young soldiers below. “Finally we feel we are part of Lebanon once again.”

    The scene was repeated in towns and villages across the south of the country yesterday, when some 2,500 Lebanese soldiers returned to a region from which the Army has been virtually absent for nearly 40 years. In the 1970s the area was largely under the control of Palestinian guerrillas, in the 1980s Israel occupied much of the region and in the 1990s and until yesterday it was governed by Hezbollah, the militant Shia Muslim militia.

    Under orders to secure the Lebanese-Israeli border and disarm anyone with an unauthorised weapon, Brigadier General Charles Sheikhani said that his troops were up to the job. The initial force will be strengthened over the coming weeks until 15,000 soldiers are deployed alongside UN peacekeepers.

    I’m currently doubtful about this story for three reasons: I don’t think the Lebanese will go to any great length to disarm Hezbollah, I will possibly believe that the Lebanese army and the U.N. peacekeepers have the slightest chance of being even somewhat effective only when I see the actual boots on the ground in the numbers called for, and I’m still bitter that this is the story that killed my browser and my earlier work.

    So, the region stands now at a cease-fire and yet another worthless U.N. resolution. Who won? I doubt anybody did … yet. Israel could have, but played their cards too tightly for fear of excessive collateral damage in light of a world that has been historically way too eager to condemn its efforts. Did Hezbollah and its accompanying parental units of Syria and Iran win just by avoiding obliteration? Possibly but, as I said, the big “yet” looms near. Still, that doesn’t mean that Syria will not hesitate to take the wrong lessons from the fight.

    Syria warns Israel over Golan

    Syria has warned Israel that the occupation of the Golan Heights “cannot last forever” and said Syrians will emulate Hizbollah to recover their land.

    “We say to the forces occupying our land that our people warn you that they will not allow our land to be occupied forever,” the government’s daily Ath-Thawra said.

    “You must understand that our people will fight the way the Lebanese resistance (Hizbollah) fought you,” it added.

    “Our people will fight you … on every inch of the Golan,” it said.

    However, the newspaper urged decision-makers in Israel “to open up to new perspectives”, noting that some in the Jewish state were in favour of making peace with Syria.

    “The leaders of this expansionist entity have a choice: either they heed the voice of reason that prohibits them from violating other people’s rights or they will face action similar to that carried out by the Lebanese resistance.”

    Syria has repeatedly demanded the return of the Golan Heights which Israel conquered in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed in 1981.

    Why stop at just the Golan?

    Assad: Future generations will find a way to defeat IDF

    Syrian President Bashar Assad congratulated Hezbollah yesterday for what he described as their success in “defeating Israel.” Assad said that the members of the resistance used their “will, determination and faith” to counter Israeli arms, enabling them to defeat Israel.

    “The resistance is necessary as much as it is natural and legitimate,” he said. Assad said this war revealed the limitations of Israel’s military power.

    […]

    Assad said that the United States’ plan for a “new Middle East” has collapsed after what he described as Hezbollah’s success in fighting against Israel, and warned Israel to seek peace or risk defeat in the future.

    “They should know that they are before a historic crossroads. Either they move toward peace and the return of [Arab] rights, or they move in the direction of continued instability until one generation decides the matter,” he said.

    Ah, there we have it, threats on the Golan aren’t enough. Now we already have essentially the old threat of Israel’s destruction, of pushing the Jews into the sea. Surely Syria must recognize the difference between engaging a hesitant IDF, assaulting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon but playing on the stage of global public relations, and an IDF that would face Syria on the Golan Heights and certainly on any incursion into Israel.

    Yes, this is mere bluster on the part of the Syrians. Still, it is bluster that has shown they have no interest in a lasting peace that includes Israel, and it is bluster that has triggered a somewhat surprising diplomatic rebuke.

    Opinion: A Time to Say “No”

    Because of the Syrian president’s belligerent rhetoric, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had no choice but to cancel his visit to Syria, says DW’s Peter Philipp.

    At some point, one should be able to say “no.” This happens all too rarely in international diplomacy, because it is simply characteristic of diplomats to stay non-committal even when they disagree and continue as if nothing had happened. That’s a false understanding of international communication, because diplomacy increasingly appears as a business without backbone or conscience.

    Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s decision to cancel his visit to the Syrian capital Damascus on short notice is a positive deviation from the above scenario. In his speech before Steinmeier’s arrival, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made it clear that there was no longer a reason for this visit.

    Not because he described Israel as the “enemy.” Israel is that, as long as the two states are officially at war with each other. But Assad went further than that: He rejected the peace efforts in the Middle East. Although the Syrian president spoke about his country’s readiness for peace, he added that this would not apply to Israel. Who does Assad want to make peace with, if not with the enemy of today? One could almost conclude that he doesn’t want peace at all. And that that is why he is disqualifying himself as a constructive partner in the permanent Middle East settlement.

    Not that any of those supposed revelations haven’t been obvious for more than half a century, mind you, but at least Germany showed a moment of enlightenment.

  • Ralph Peters: Lessons So Far

    Ralph Peters looks at Israel’s current campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah, the most recent engagement against expansionist and radical Islamic terrorists, and his outlook ain’t cheery.

    Israel’s war against the Middle East’s first true terrorist army provides tough military and strategic lessons – old, new, and all too often disheartening. Israel’s been winning on the ground. And still losing the war.

    This bitter conflict – in which most casualties on both sides of the border are civilians – raises troubling questions, too. Some are identical to those confronting us in Iraq. Many have troubling answers. Others have no real answers at all.

    The elementary fact – which far too many in the West deny – is that our civilization has been forced into a defensive war to the death with fanatical strains of Islam – both Shi’a and Sunni. We may be on the offensive militarily, but we did not start this war – and it’s all one war, from 9/11’s Ground Zero, through Lebanon and Iraq, and on to Afghanistan.

    Until that ugly fact gains wide acceptance, we’ll continue to make little decisive progress. American or Israeli, our troops are trying. But the truth is that we’re really just holding the line.

    We have not yet begun to fight. And many among us still dream of avoiding this war altogether.

    It can’t be done.

    Mr. Peters goes on to state and expound upon seven lessons to be taken to heart from the current Israeli-Hezbollah affair.

    • 1. You can win every tactical engagement and still lose at the strategic level.
    • 2. The global media can overturn the verdict of the battlefield.
    • 3. If you start off on the wrong foot in war, you may never recover your balance.
    • 4. Technology alone can’t win 21st-century wars.
    • 5. Never underestimate your enemy.
    • 6. In war, take the pain up front, and the overall suffering will be far less.
    • 7. Terrorism is no longer a limited, diffuse, disorganized threat.

    [hat tip to Chap, who lists the above seven lessons before adding his own thoughts]

    Mr. Peters follows these lessons by asking and answering two key questions, the second of which is the one which could devour many depressing hours of meditation — “Can we win “Eastern” wars with Western values?” I must concur with Mr. Peters answer to his own question:

    I doubt it.

    This question is going to eat at our consciences for years to come – even as we learn to do what must be done.

    […]

    The wars of the future will be won by those with the greater strength of will.

    The emphasis in the last quote was added by me and I want to expand a little on that quote. This is not only true of the wars of the future but also of wars of the past and present and essentially any war that is fought to be won. At some point in time after World War II, Western Civilization took up the notion that wars can be fought in a civilized manner. Actually, that has been a periodic historic flirtation, with such short-lived traditions in the past as not targeting officers, agreed-upon truces to clear casualties from battlefields, etc. Still, after WWII, when the West last took the gloves off to a large degree, we have yet again to pursue war so fully, even though our advances in technical lethality have repeatedly been faced by uncivilized barbarity, cruelty and bloody sacrifice by our enemies. It should be noted that our enemies have happily utilized advances in technology also, but have shown no restraint in their employment against targets from which the West has refrained. And yet, we continue to find our troops facing such foes on the battlefield, foes that would just as well kill our troops, slaughter our civilians or manipulate our seemingly-willing media.

    Western Civilization must stop hitting the snooze button and finally wake up to the threat. It is global. It is primeval. It is not going away via impotent United Nations resolutions and cease-fires.

    [Regarding Mr. Peters, as I’ve said before, I’ll always happily link his work, as previously done here, here, here and here. I’ll also happily plug my introduction to Peters, which was his somewhat-prescient novel, The War in 2020. I first cracked that entertaining adventure in the gunner’s seat of an M1 while waiting on a gunnery range at Ft. Hood, travelling in the way-back machine to May of ’93.]

  • John Batchelor: Prelude to War

    Interesting, though not exactly cheerful.

    Why is America waiting to be attacked by Iran? Why do we sit on the sidelines while Tehran makes war on our ally Israel in order to provoke America to join the fighting, first against Syria and then against Tehran itself? Why do we listen to the European appeasers as they pretend the Lebanon front is a regional conflict, a national liberation contest, when it is demonstrably the prelude to the wider war — the Spain 1936 to the continental war of 1939? What is the explanation for America’s willful fiction that the United Nations Security Council can engineer an accommodation in Lebanon, when it is vivid to every member state that this is a replay of September 1938, when Europe fed Hitler the Sudetenland as the U.N. now wants to feed the jihadists the sovereignty of Israel?

    The most threatening answer is that America waits to be bloodied because it has lost its will to defend itself after five years of chasing rogue-state-sponsored gangsters and after three years of occupation in failed-state Iraq against Tehran- and Damascus-backed agents. A grave possibility is that America is now drained, bowed, ready to surrender to the tyrants of Tehran.

    Then again, perhaps America has been here before, and it is part of America’s destiny as the New Jerusalem that we rarely start wars but that we are unusually good at finishing them.

    There is a strange parallel right now to the first days of December 1941, before the Japanese sneak attack. America was still not in the war in Asia and Europe, but it was busy getting ready for a momentous calamity and was filled with the presentiment of doom.

    Go read the whole article, which actually becomes more of a look back at a moment in time when the U.S. stood on the brink of World War II (hat tip to Smash).

    Something that adds to the intriguing nature of the column is that it’s the second time this week that I’ve linked to someone comparing current events to the Spanish Civil War with expectations of a wider war to follow. The first was by Grim at Blackfive and was included with a couple of other pieces to chew on just two days ago.

  • Israel-Hezbollah: Media and Psych Op

    Not much tonight again, but I did want to point y’all towards a couple of interesting looks at the propaganda fight around the actual conflict in Lebanon.

    First, the Jawa Report‘s Dr. Rusty takes a look at Yahoo!News and does some photo counting. It seems that the mainstream media are quite content to carry the propaganda water for Hezbollah’s “Oh! The (Lebanese only) humanity!” theme.

    Meanwhile, Debbie at In the Bullpen points out an interesting psych op that Israel is employing in region — the seizure of Hezbollah’s own airwaves twice daily to counter Hezbollah’s message. Chad Evans chimes in on the post with video.

    It’s like SNL’s old Weekend Update Point-Counterpoint, only missing Dan Aykroyd’s exclamation of “Hassan, you ignorant slut.”

  • Tonight’s Good Reads

    We’re Losing World War IV

    The Shiite mullahs who rule Iran and have seized the leadership of the Islamofascist war against us are as dangerous an enemy as America has ever faced. Although we have chosen to be deaf to them, their war aims have never been secret. They have been shouting them out on the world stage to a billion listening Muslims, ever since they handed us the first of many humiliating defeats in 1979. These Persian mullahs and their followers aim to restore Islamic supremacy in the 21st century by leading all Muslims everywhere to victory in a great global jihad against America, Israel, and what is left of the free world. In the time since their first act of war against us — invading our sovereign embassy territory in Tehran and holding our people hostage for 444 agonizing days — they have made enormous progress towards their goal, despite the double handicap of belonging to a minority Muslim sect and a non-Arab ethnic group.

    In the 1980s, Iran’s mullahs created Hezbollah, a Shiite Arab terrorist group in Lebanon, and used it to drive us from that country the way they drove us from Iran, but this time, they didn’t just humiliate us and mock our impotence; they tortured and murdered our embassy people in Beirut, and blew up 241 of our marines. In the 1990s, Iran’s mullahs took control of Syria, turning it into a puppet terror state and transit hub, and transformed Hezbollah from a purely local terrorist army into a sophisticated global terrorist network. In this decade, these Shiite mullahs reached across the great Sunni-Shia religious divide, establishing close ties with Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood; took control of the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, Hamas; and reached across the world to forge close military ties with nuclear-armed Asian states like North Korea and oil-rich enemies to our south like Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Along the way, they pioneered the terrorist arts of airplane hijacking and suicide bombing.

    And all this time, the Iranians — and their ever-growing legion of followers and fans — have been waging an increasingly successful propaganda war against America, Israel, and the West, among Muslims in the Middle East and far beyond it.

    Average Americans — if they remember them at all — consider the series of American defeats chronicled above and a host of others as an unconnected jumble of unfortunate events.

    It’s easy to do: Our media treats them that way. Muslim media do not.

    […]

    Today, Iran’s emboldened mullahs are on a triumphant roll, waging a bloody, three-front proxy war against us, using the Mahdi army to assassinate dreams of peace and democracy in Iraq, using Hezbollah to blow up those same dreams in Lebanon, again, and using Hamas to make a grotesque mockery of them in the Holy Land. Now they threaten to activate Hezbollah terror cells, here in America and throughout the world, to kill and maim us at home and inflict more carnage on our allies. This week, they mocked our efforts to prevent them from becoming a nuclear power, announcing that nothing we do — in the U.N. or elsewhere — will stop them from going nuclear, and sharing their WMDs with other rogue states and Islamofascist terror groups at will. More ominous yet, they threaten to unleash an apocalyptic surprise on us on August 22, the night they believe Mohammed lit up the skies by ascending to heaven from the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

    Despite all this and more, we have yet to admit that Iran is at war with us, or to seriously consider striking back at her, and, in speaking of our own war aims, we never dare use the v-word — victory — anymore.

    Go read the whole thing. In case one is confused by the title, many people, myself included, often choose now to refer to the Cold War and its many, smaller hot wars (e.g. Korea, Viet Nam and Afghanistan) as World War III.

    Where Are We Going?

    I suspect that we will one day speak of the war in Iraq the way we speak of the Spanish Civil War — that is, rarely by comparison to the greater war that followed it. Peace is not in the cards. Things are going to get worse.

    Normally I would refrain from quoting someone’s closing thoughts in this manner, but the meat of Grim’s piece is in his short-term predictions for the Iraqi theater and his anticipation for the wider war that is bearing down on its heels.

    Hezbollah’s Army Revisited

    We began discussing Hezbollah’s military capabilities on July 21, after it became clear during the ambush of the Golani Brigade forced the unit to retreat near Maroun al-Ras that Hezbollah was not your average militia. On that date we noted “Hezbollah also possesses mortars, RPGs, anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, anti-tank missiles and possibly surface to air missiles…. Hezbollah is using infantry tactics and fighting at the squad and platoon level.” The IDF’s slow advance (over two days) into Bint Jubayl and the ambush on a tank unit were clear indications of Hezbollah’s abilities to stand up to the IDF as well as the IDF’s cautious nature on the battlefield. Yesterday we confirmed Hezbollah is fighting at the company level, has specialized units (mortars, antitank, logistics, etc.) in its combat units and is using sophisticated communications equipment, body armor and other gear.

    This is not to say the IDF cannot defeat Hezbollah’s army on the battlefield; the IDF can, and has done so at Maroun al-Ras, Bint Jubayl and elsewhere. But this comes at a cost in casualties, a cost the Israeli government seems unwilling to pay.

    Hezbollah’s actions on the battlefields of southern Lebanon should give the Israelis, the West and neighboring Arab governments reason to worry.

    Are we looking at the next evolution in the conflict with Iran and its proxies? Are we now on the verge of actually seeing somewhat of a stand-up fight or is Hezbollah’s limited degree of success (read success as avoiding crushing defeat) more a matter of Israel’s electing to fight this with practically both hands tied behind its back? My suspicions lean toward the latter, as Israel is hoping for a more lasting victory by slowly wearing down the enemy while focusing tremendous efforts to keeping world opinion and condemnation at bay by minimizing collateral damage.

  • Houla: Forty to One

    Forty to one are not good odds, though they are better than James “Buster” Douglas faced in his epic upset of Mike Tyson.

    Forty to one is a great reduction, however, when it refers to a correction in civilian deaths. Confederate Yankee‘s Bob Owens has the coverage of the pre- and post-reduction story of today’s “massacre” at Houla (special kudos to his post title).

    In this case, for once I find that I cannot fault the media … necessarily. It seems to me that they were a victim of the ’round-the-clock, 24-hour news cycle. They printed what was put out by a government official and then corrected it. I cannot fault them for that, but can point that we have all become potential victims of poor information or slanted sources in this age of instant information. Basically, Houla is the small-scale, time-compressed equivalent of the Jenin “massacre.”

  • Reuters Withdraws All Photos by Lebanese Freelance

    First, it was forged documents that I’d Rather not write about right now.

    Yesterday and today, the story was poorly modified pictures.

    Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.

    Note: please realize that should read as two confirmed modifications. We wouldn’t want to imply that the other 918 are all legit.

    Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work.

    Again, see earlier note. Also, there seems to be legitimate questions of staged photos and deceitful captioning by Hajj. Feel free to follow up on this aspect by reading the excellent blogs I link to later in this post.

    “There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image,” Szlukovenyi said in a statement.

    “Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict and unalterable policy.”

    The news and information agency announced the decision in an advisory note to its photo service subscribers. The note also said Reuters had tightened editing procedures for photographs from the conflict and apologised for the case.

    Removing the images from the Reuters database excludes them from future sale.

    Reuters ended its relationship with Hajj on Sunday after it found that a photograph he had taken of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on suburban Beirut had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more and darker smoke rising from buildings.

    Credit for this initial takedown goes to Little Green Footballs.

    An immediate enquiry began into Hajj’s other work.

    It established on Monday that a photograph of an Israeli F-16 fighter over Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon and dated Aug 2, had also been doctored to increase the number of flares dropped by the plane from one to three.

    Dr. Rusty at The Jawa Report nailed this one and goes to the trouble of summarizing his related posts for his readers.

    Hajj was not in Beirut on Monday and was not responding to calls. He told Reuters on Sunday that the image of the Israeli air strike on Beirut had dust marks which he had wanted to remove.

    Questions about the accuracy of the photograph arose after it appeared on news Web sites on Saturday.

    Several blogs, including a number which accuse the media of distorted coverage of the Middle East conflict, said the photograph had been doctored.

    Folks, large portions of the mainstream media are being manipulated, sometimes seemingly willingly, by our enemies. “Our” media have become a weapon to be wielded against our civilization — we have no way of knowing what portion of this manipulation is actually discovered. As just a small piece of evidence of bias, I point to the Reuters piece actually acknowledging distorted coverage of the Middle East conflict, whether by shoddy practices or blinders caused by mindset, which is wrapped up with an almost snide description of a “number” of blogs which “accuse the media of distorted coverage.” Who cares if those blogs are right? Well, you should. At that point, accusation becomes pointing out fact.

    A belated hat tip, as I first read about it yesterday as the story was developing, to Ace and his oft-updated coverage.

  • Releases from CENTCOM

    First Dance

    As I’ve pointed out many times, it is my opinion that the mainstream media has had a tremendous downward effect on public support for our military’s efforts in the Iraqi and Afghan theaters. The problem stems from an old journalism adage that a building that does not burn is not news. Okay, there have been many instances of misrepresentations, of usage of stringers far too friendly to the terrorists, and of negatively spinning positives when they are actually reported. The real problem, however, has been the willingness to repeatedly bang the drum of bad news while selectively cherry-picking or completely ignoring any stories of progress.

    It’s not that the military hasn’t tried to put out news of progress — indeed, U.S. Central Command has issued press release after press release that has been ignored by the media. So desperate is CENTCOM to get out the good word that several months ago they began contacting bloggers asking for links and offering press releases. Well, I gave them the link in my sidebar, but now it is time to help them spread the word of their successes. Don’t worry, I won’t publish every one, but I will be far more receptive to their accomplishments than the New York Times.

    Today’s stories are as follows:

    Iraqi Army captures four terrorists, weapons

    MultiNational Division, Baghdad captures four suspected kidnappers

    Hooah!