IRAQ WAR TODAY
Keep Your Helmet On!




Be A Part of a Tribute to Fallen Heroes - Help Build the Fallen Soldiers' Bike
Help support the families of our deployed Heroes - Visit Soldiers' Angels' Operation Outreach
Help Our Heroes Help Others - Click Here to visit SOS: KIDS
Nominate your Hero for IWT's "Hero of the Month" - click here for details!
Search Iraq War Today only

Saturday, February 12, 2005

A Dime's Worth of My Two Cents

I haven’t spouted off in a little while, largely because there have been a few events in the last couple of weeks that have, quite frankly, left me speechless (My husband may be marking this date as an important event in marital history). I’ve recovered now...

The fact that the media, and some radical, nigh-Socialist Leftists have been eager to attack the President and our troops likely isn’t going to be a surprise to anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock for the last few years. But lately, there have been some lengths that this venom has gone to that have been just plain frightening.

First off, the kidnapping of “Special Ops Cody”
I’ll admit, when I first heard the rumor of an American soldier held hostage, my heart skipped a beat to leap into my throat. But I’ve learned not to trust anything from the MSM, so I looked up the info myself and found the picture. Give me a break. Most disturbing about all of this was the eagerness, the bloodlust, with which the story was reported at first. It was as if they were, horribly, hoping this was true. No one stops on the highway to watch a happy picnic, folks, but put a fifteen car pile up out there, and you’ve got rubberneckers for miles. A story about an American troop held hostage is a ratings windfall. The palpable disappointment with which they reported the fact that this “appeared” to be a doll turns my stomach.

And did anyone comment in the major media outlets about the fact that if the lunatics are putting up pictures of kidnapped dolls they’re getting desperate? That this is an indication of just how bad we’ve hurt them? Of course not.

Blogs that covered Cody’s harrowing ordeal:
BlackFive
And for a little humor
The Ripper
Tech Central Station

Next, Marine Madness and Radicals on Parade
OK, maybe it’s me, but Lt. General Mattis’ comments elicited a wry smile from me, not outrage. He’s a Marine, for Pete’s Sake, not President of the Hug-a-Terrorist Society! He’s not supposed to be sorry he does his job. He’s a decorated Marine General who’s served honorably for years, and if he doesn’t mind killing terrorists, that’s just fine with me.

Contrast this with Ward Churchill, who basically says that the victims of 9/11 got what they deserved. This is a guy who, according to The Rocky Mountain News ,
pals around with guys like Moammar Gadhafi. While bloggers and conservative talk show hosts are ripping him, all the left can cite is freedom of speech. Newsflash – freedom of speech guarantees that you will not be imprisoned for your beliefs. It doesn’t say that you won’t get well-deserved comeuppance. It also doesn’t guarantee you the right to work for a specific location. Nor does it give you the right to fraudulently gain advantage by claiming you’re Native American when you’re not.

Then again, maybe it’s not me, because a lot of other people are saying the same thing:

Check out both of these on any of a host of blogs, among them:
For Marine Madness:
Backcountry Conservative
Blackfive

For Radicals on Parade:
Instapundit
My View of the World

And finally, Eason Jordan
From
Easongate.com (a post by LaShawn Barber)

CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit Friday amidst a furor over remarks he made in Switzerland last month about journalists killed by the U.S. military in Iraq.

Jordan said he was quitting to avoid CNN being “unfairly tarnished” by the controversy.

During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum last month, Jordan said he believed that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.

He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place where a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy.

“I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise,” Jordan said in a memo to fellow staff members at CNN.

Check it out at:
Prince Pundit
Michelle Malkin
Easongate
Blackfive
Rebecca MacKinnon
Hugh Hewitt
The Truth Laid Bear.

That was pretty much the final straw of the last few weeks. Jordan finally resigned after his comments, but this should by no means be the end of this issue. He resigned citing that he didn’t want CNN to be “unfairly tarnished” by his remarks. That would be a neat trick. Unfairly tarnished? This is the sort of thing that can be expected from CNN and other media sources. It’s not going to tarnish them; it’s more or less just confirming their place on the map.

Eason initially stated that he believed that journalists had been targeted by our troops, then once he took heat, backed off and said that they weren’t so much targeted as they were mistaken for insurgents. Nice courage of your convictions there, Eason.

These stories merely illustrate a bitter reality; the Left owns the media, and the media at worst despises the troops. At best, they’re willing to lambaste them if the story sells. Integrity has been thrown in the can like a Styrofoam coffee cup (if we even use Styrofoam in Leftland).

Fox News and the bloggers were credited with blowing the lid off of the CBS scandal not too long ago, as well as a host of other bouts of madness in the past few years. Easongate is credited with prompting Jordan’s resignation. This is the job that mainstream media ought to be doing, but won’t. They are supposed to be objective, to report facts, stories of interest, to find the truth. That’s not what’s happening, and anyone who tells you it is, is delusional.

I don’t claim to be a journalist. I’m a blogger, and a baby blogger at that. I don’t try to be objective. I don’t have to be. I don’t post anti-war and anti-military stories, unless I’m reacting to them and hoping that other people will, too. There’s no point in my posting that stuff, anyway. That you can find on your own, in unfortunate abundance. How sad that it is much more difficult to find positive stories on our troops, with all of the wonderful things they’re doing.

There comes a time when this stuff crosses the line between nutty liberal rhetoric and becomes something far more sinister – providing aid and comfort to the enemy (John Kerry). Our troops are hearing these stories. I’ve personally read emails and letters from our troops stating that the media isn’t telling the truth, and that they’re worried about what we think of them. I tell them every time. Yes, there are negative stories in the media. But your country supports you, and you’ve got millions of adoring fans. We love you, we’re proud of you, and most of us recognize that jibberish for what it is.

But I don’t have an audience of millions of American Homes. I don’t have satellites to broadcast with. The media does. Ted Kennedy does. Ward Churchill is now smack dab in the middle of tons of press. And the old adage is, any publicity is good publicity.

But the tide is changing. The bloggers have made a huge step in that direction. CBS was forced to face the music on forged documents and a story timed to influence the election. The press was actually reporting stories to influence an election, folks – to hijack our government. That should leave you cold. Fortunately, the American people didn’t believe it.

It’s a sad day when we have more to fear from the enemy within than the enemies outside our borders.


"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."-- General William T. Sherman

Labels: , , ,

|

nocashfortrash.org