The Acceptable Bounds of Discourse, Pro-War Version

Today, Glenn Reynolds put up this post:

THE OFFICERS' CLUB looks at the media and the war on terror.

Following the link—usually an interesting exercise when Glenn gets terse—and you see such measured analysis as this:

The media, while a single-edged sword against [the] US now, can have its edge doubled by reports of Arab reaction to the enemy's senseless women-and-children killing.

Italics mine, to emphasize a common theme that Reynolds has long helped to promote—that American journalists are monolithically serving the needs of, and perhaps even openly rooting for, American's enemies. It's a load of bull, but that hasn't stopped Reynolds from warning sadly about what will happen to the First Amendment if Americans start believing the nonsense his friends write.

But I was more interested by one of the pieces of writing The Officers' Club post highlighted, from genial weblogger and self-described libertarian Stephen "VodkaPundit" Green.

It's a long post, so I won't attempt to summarize it, but among other things he describes the media as the "Arm of Decision" in the war on terror; warns that "We could lose also because our mainstream media seems to find terrorists less unattractive than having a conservative Texan in the White House," and concludes:

But if we lose this Terror War, our media will be seen as largely to blame. They'll suffer blame for their ignorance and for their petulance. They'll suffer blame for seeing al Jazeera as comrades closer than the privates and NCOs and officers fighting to protect the First Amendment. They'll suffer blame for putting their hatred of a Republican President before their love of country. Whether that assessment is fair or not, it is how the public will see things.

Then the public would demand changes. And they'd probably get them, courtesy of a government looking for scapegoats, real or imagined. Should that day come, we'd lose our free press, and we'd lose our freedoms. We'd lose our country.

I don't think we'll ever "lose our free press," for these or any other reasons, though I'll note again that if the sky should indeed fall in this way we should reserve at least some finger-pointing for the people who popularized the inaccurate idea that the media is rooting as one for America's enemies.

But what I'm more curious about, especially in the wake of President Bush's "pushback" strategy, is Green's solution to the media crisis. Turns out, it involves strict definitions on the bounds of acceptable discourse:

It's fair to ask if the Iraq Campaign was a necessary component to the Terror War. It isn't fair to compare Iraq to Vietnam, when the two wars have nothing, zero, nada in common. It's fair to ask if our soldiers are dying in vain, or because of stupid policy, or because of inferior equipment. It's not fair to run headlines like "Battle Deaths Continue to Mount." No shit, Sherlock? A real story would be, "Battle Deaths Decline as Fallen Soldiers Miraculously Resurrected." It's fair to question Bush's policies. It's not fair to act as a conduit for enemy propaganda. It's fair to ask if Iraq is draining resources from our efforts in Afghanistan. It's not fair to complain that Afghanistan isn't perfect yet. It's fair to complain about indecencies at Abu Ghraib. It's not fair to virtually ignore atrocities committed by the other side everywhere else in Iraq.

So, if I'm getting the general vibe of the pro-Pushback crowd right, it's "fair" to declare that the U.S. media (and those who have the temerity, or should I say derangement, to believe that the White House manipulated pre-war intelligence), are deliberately (and again, monolithically) trying to lose the war by siding with America's enemies … but it's "not fair" to print the headline "Battle Deaths Continue to Mount."

Or maybe it boils down to this—it's OK to say that "Newsweek lied, people died," but don't you dare say such a thing about the guy who actually commands the world's most powerful military.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds says "Matt Welch is dissing me and Stephen Green for having the temerity to suggest that it's wrong for the press to peddle falsehoods about the war," and also: "By treating complaints about dishonest and politically motivated reporting as the equivalent of complaints about simply reporting bad news, Welch is attacking a straw man." Read the whole thing. I did neither, of course; never have, and never will.

Comments

[Ted]

As I pointed out at Vodkapundit, it’s the “stab in the back” argument. Anything that goes well is because of our Fearless Leader; anything that goes wrong is the fault of his treacherous domestic enemies.

[Brian]

Reynolds tied his wagon to Bush, for some reason, and it’s like someone holding onto their .com stocks thinking they’re going to turn around any day now. It’s over dudes. Turns out the american people aren’t all that interested in your little Unending Twilight Struggle.

I’m not too worried about the Stab in the Back stuff because we’re going to declare victory and get out, sooner or later. There will not be a defeat to pin on any treasonous fifth column at home. The media will go back to covering Michael Jackson or this week’s Missing White Woman or maybe Michael Jackson will go missing. It’ll be like the whole thing never happened, unless you or someone you know died over there. Tough break.

[Ed]

Until the next highrise goes down, Brian, then it’s Groundhog Day.

[gaius marius]

reynolds reads more like a paid political shill than most any journalist i can think of. i’m sure it’s what the unthinking war-party right wants to believe — just as i’m sure such tripe is a source of disgust for intelligent conservatives — but that is what it is. such claims say far more about reynolds and his brownshirted ilk than any reality.

[Akira MacKenzie]

When the Bush Administration and their brainless supporters stop telling lies about the War on Terror/War In Iraq, we’ll stop telling the truth about them.

[JK]

“It’s not fair”?!

How old is Stephen Green?

[Call me snake]

There’s a very important premise in this post: Monolithic.

Within the overall sample of American journos:
Would Welch concede, I wonder, that 90% are opposed?
What about the generously conservative 75% opposed?

Perhaps one could look at the extremely powerful DC press corps and recast his sample among all the major networks and newspapers. Including Fox, I’d bet that it’s at least 85% opposed.

So, while not monolithic, this overwhelming majority acts de facto as a very loud, uniformly negative chorus.

Call it “AMINFF” (Almost monolithic if not for Fox.)

Also, you reject categorically the notion that a steady diet of overwhelmingly negative news might actually help Zarqawi et al. Didn’t Ho say that the war was won on American television sets?
Was he wrong?

[Kermit]

When the Bush Administration and their brainless supporters stop telling lies about the War on Terror/War In Iraq, we’ll stop telling the truth about them.

Comment by: Akira MacKenzie at November 15, 2005 03:14 PM

So, if they start telling the truth about the War on Terror/War In Iraq, you’ll stop telling lies about them? Seems a fair trade.

[gaius marius]

But if we lose this Terror War, our media will be seen as largely to blame. They’ll suffer blame for their ignorance and for their petulance. They’ll suffer blame for seeing al Jazeera as comrades closer than the privates and NCOs and officers fighting to protect the First Amendment. They’ll suffer blame for putting their hatred of a Republican President before their love of country. Whether that assessment is fair or not, it is how the public will see things.

Then the public would demand changes. And they’d probably get them, courtesy of a government looking for scapegoats, real or imagined. Should that day come, we’d lose our free press, and we’d lose our freedoms. We’d lose our country.

but i will say — this is a very valid concern. things have gradually changed vis-a-vis the right to opinion very subtly but very profoundly. diversity of opinion is come to be seen by an increasingly desperate management class charged with holding together our fracturing society as mere obstruction to social solidarity — as opposed to the wellspring of social health it was once viewed as in the aftermath of 17th/18th c secularization.

the clichy-sous-bois riots starkly highlight the dangers of putting government-managed forced social conformity on the front burner, but i doubt we’ll see the management class do anything but reiterate those conditions throughout the society as different estates and proletariats come to be seen as “difficult to control” in the face of their efforts to cling to power.

[fyodor]

Didn’t Ho say that the war was won on American television sets? Was he wrong?

Doesn’t matter because Iraq has nada in common with Viet Nam! 😉

[Jesse Walker]

Didn’t Ho say that the war was won on American television sets?

Probably not, since Ho died in 1969 and his side didn’t win until 1975.

[The Groping Savage]

“It’s not fair”?!
How old is Stephen Green?

it’s OK
Dunno. How old is Matt Welch?

[Matt Welch]

snake — The premise of monolithicness (monolithicity?) is not in my post, but in writing such as “The media [is] a single-edged sword against [the] US now,” and “today’s press works to put the worst possible face on the war,” and “The American establishment, led by the media and politicians, is in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq.”

Note, too, that these writings aren’t just claiming that the media is monolithically “opposed” to the war, but rather that they are actively and consciously working “against [the] US,” “to put the worst possible face on the war,” and — at minimum, really — “talking the United States into defeat.”

That’s going one hell of a lot further than serving as a “negative chorus.”

[gaius marius]

So, while not monolithic, this overwhelming majority acts de facto as a very loud, uniformly negative chorus.

perhaps, mr snake, you missed cnn’s embedded (read: coopted) reporters jacking off to unquestionable american heroism every day for months.

Didn’t Ho say that the war was won on American television sets?

i’d say he was right. but then, what did television reveal? that america had been railroaded by mad politicos into an unwinnable war, was acting without rhyme or principle to dominate a poor third-world province and pouring massive treasure and some tens of thousands of american lives — not to mention millions of vietnamese lives — down a black hole to maintain an illusion of american invincibility.

vietnam may have been lost on american television — but what should also be said is that america should have lost in vietnam, and that it was right and proper for us to have our asses kicked out in the end. the only tragedy in that is that it hadn’t happened sooner and with less loss and destruction.

[thoreau]

fyodor, that was an excellent post!

[Jon H]

snake writes: “Also, you reject categorically the notion that a steady diet of overwhelmingly negative news might actually help Zarqawi et al”

Not as much as Bush helped Zarqawi by failing to take him out before invading Baghdad.

[Matt Welch]

Groping Savage — 37 going on 24. Mentally, at least.

[R C Dean]

reynolds reads more like a paid political shill than most any journalist i can think of.

Proving that gaius marius

(a) doesn’t read Glenn Reynolds all that much, unless gaius thinks that paid political shills are regularly and brutally critical of their paymasters on domestic and science issues even when they support them on foreign policy issues;

(b) doesn’t read very many “journalists” all that much, either, as I can think of examples from both the Rep (Sean Hannity) and Dem (take your pick of NYT types) sides that hew much closer to the party line that Reynolds;

(c) may or may not understand that Reynolds is not a journalist – not sure what his point is with his specious comparison of law professor and ur-blogger Reynolds to journalists.

[Matt Welch]

you reject categorically the notion that a steady diet of overwhelmingly negative news might actually help Zarqawi et al.

Did I? Where?

[gaius marius]

“negative chorus”

the chorus of greek tragedy was, after all, defined in part by its inability to affect the course of the action — it served only to comment on the protagonist’s actions, was often mired in conflicted feelings for and against them and was even on occasion metaphysically lost, unable to comment.

that strikes me as much closer to the truth of the press’ role than any fifth column fantasy adopted by pathetic hawks frustrated by the wasteful stupidity of their ideas in action and looking for a scapegoat.

[thoreau]

This war is nothing like Vietnam.

And just like Vietnam it’s the press’s fault that things are going wrong.

And nothing is going wrong.

And four legs are good but two legs are better.

[Call me snake]

1000 pardons Walker…. It was Giap who said “We were not strong enough to drive out half a million American troops, but that was not our aim. Our intention was to break the will of the American Government to continue the war.”

(BTW, Dwight Yoakam is going to be on that CBS Johnny Cash tribute. If I had to guess, he’ll cover Understand Your Man)

fyodor: It has at least one thing in common with Vietnam. The people in charge on the other side know that their collective will is likely stronger than an American public who in 19 out of 20 stories on Iraq sees ONLY a) cost and b) number of people dead.

Of course I have no desire to restrict or alter whatever EJ Dionne, Dana Milbank et al might want to write. It’s just not a load of bull to hypothsize that it might help Al Q. & the ex-baathists.

[gaius marius]

critical of their paymasters

depends on who his paymaster may be, doesn’t it, mr dean? i can think of a lot of dyed-in-the-wool trotskyite revolutionaries who would agree with reynolds on all three points you highlight.

[Kermit]

vietnam may have been lost on american television — but what should also be said is that america should have lost in vietnam, and that it was right and proper for us to have our asses kicked
Comment by: gaius marius at November 15, 2005 03:30 PM

Spoken like a true liberal. So proud, so free.

[James Feldman]

Didn’t Ho say that the war was won on American television sets? Was he wrong?

Absolutely wrong.

The goal of achieving stalemate put forward by McNamara and Westmoreland was simply an impossible goal. Victory as it had been defined by the government could not be acheived. That the Vietnam War lasted as long as it did is testament to the willingness of politicians to believe falsely that impossible goals can be met. All that people saw on their television sets was that the government was failing to meet its own goals.

Whether this is true in Iraq is of course a different question. I’m not sure I understand what our military strategy in Iraq is at this point, assuming that we actually have one.

As for the percentage of journalists who are opposed to the war in Iraq, disregarding the notion that good journalists can do their jobs regardless of personal feelings, I wonder what the difference would have been between the start of the war and now. I would imagine you’d find a lot of formerly pro-war journalists.

[Adam]

So, if I’m getting the general vibe of the pro-Pushback crowd right…

Yeah, because Steven Green speaks for anyone and everyone who supported the war, and all of us who think that the president has failed miserably to defend himself. He actually orchestrates our daily Hawk Cabal Conference Call.

the U.S. media…are deliberately (and again, monolithically)…

Ahh, yes, hawks are a monolithic bunch, but how dare anyone analyze the media as a monolith?!

[Matt Welch]

snake — I’m seeing a sneak of the Joacquin Cash movie Thursday, and will report back here….

[gaius marius]

Spoken like a true liberal

no — like an actual conservative not lusting after unlimited american Power — of which there seem to be extremely few nowadays, either republican or democrat.

[Kermit]

no — like an actual conservative not lusting after unlimited american Power

But unlimited communist power was just peachy, huh?

[Ken Shultz]

I agree with Gingrich’s remarks in regards to the War on Terror being a war of ideology more than anything else. …and we can only hope that someday people in the Middle East will be as ashamed of having said something positive about Al Qaeda as people in Germany were ashamed of having said something positive about the Nazis.

…I don’t care what web-law that comment broke, I think that’s what victory in this war looks like.

However, the problem isn’t that the media keeps pointing out that the Bush Administration keeps tearing up our constitution to detain and torture our enemies like a bunch of barbarians; the problem is that the Bush Administration keeps tearing up our constitution to detain and torture our enemies like a bunch of barbarians. …which as a strategy, if continued, will surely lose this war of ideology.

[fyodor]

thoreau,

Thanks! I was so hoping I’d say it first! 🙂

snake,

fyodor: It has at least one thing in common with Vietnam, etc.

There’s literally a gazillion things to be said and that have been said and will be said about this war, but limiting myself to one teensy-weensy aspect of it, I only hope that if you think it’s fair for you to draw conclusions about it from Viet Nam, that you’ll refrain from claiming that those who draw different conclusions from Viet Nam are off base for even considering the comparison.

[Call me snake]

As I understand it, Welch, you believe Reynolds is accusing the media of an active conspiracy to help the enemy in Iraq.

(sorry Thoreau, by enemy I mean the oppressed Iraqi patriotic nationalists)

If that’s what you meant, then of course I agree with you that probably no American journalists would actively help the enemy.

Going back to the Vietnam analogy, Zarqawi is probably relying on the current state of American media coverage to continue.

Unintended effects of being an antiwar journalist? Is that unfair?

[gaius marius]

because everyone who questions presidential autarky is a communist, of course. please — indict yourself further, mr kermit. 🙂

which as a strategy, if continued, will surely lose this war of ideology.

if it hasn’t been lost already, mr shultz — or wasn’t lost even before the outset.

[Akira MacKenzie]

But unlimited communist power was just peachy, huh?

Gee, Tailgunner Joe, I didn’t realize Red Baiting was back in season.

[Jesse Walker]

Thanks for the Yoakum tip, Snake. I’ll be in DC that night but hopefully my VCR won’t fail me.

[thoreau]

the oppressed Iraqi patriotic nationalists

Would you be referring to the people oppressed by Saddam Hussein? I’m really not sure who else would deserve that term. Certainly not the terrorists.

[gaius marius]

Zarqawi is probably relying on the current state of American media coverage to continue.

where does hnr get these people, anyway? does mr gillespie rent them by the hour to liven things up, like party favors? or has this thread been linked to nro or some equivalent intellectual mire? 🙂

[Kermit]

Gee, Tailgunner Joe, I didn’t realize Red Baiting was back in season.

Comment by: Akira MacKenzie at November 15, 2005 03:55 PM

That’s a thoughtful bit of bigotry, but Mr. Marius made the America deserved to lose Vietnam comment. So McCarthy slurs are good, and commie slurs are bad? Must be a nuance.

[Jason O.]

Welch, that’s exciting re: a sneak peek at Walk the Line.

The problem about the CBS thing is you’ve gotta mute Sheryl Crow and Brad Paisley to get to Dwight and Montgomery Gentry.

And what’s Kristofferson going to sing???

And Jerry Lee Lewis???!!!?!?!?!?

[Jim]

How can you even take vodka guy seriously? He claims G.W. Bush is a conservative.

[Akira MacKenzie]

where does hnr get these people, anyway? does mr gillespie rent them by the hour to liven things up, like party favors? or has this thread been linked to nro or some equivalent intellectual mire? 🙂

I was just wondering where all the war-pigs (a “hawk” is too nobel a bird to compare to these paranoid dolts to) are coming from too, gaius. My guess, hang out at NRO or some other right-wing blog until the word get’s out that someone has the termerity to question their dirty little war. Then they come a runnin’.

[fyodor]

snake, I’ll spell it out to you so you can’t claim to think otherwise. The people blowing up other people and fighting their stupid insurgency in Iraq are violent and highly misguided fuckwads. I think it’s a shame we went out of our way to create this enemy (as I think most of them are Iraqis not previously active in Al Qaeda), but there’s nothing they can gain by their activities now and I wish they’d quit blowing up anyone but their damn selves.

[Call me snake]

Thoreau: jesus h christ on a popsicle stick, I was just kidding around!

Marius: I think you disagree. Does Zarqawi dislike, or like, the current state of American journalism re: Iraq?

[theOneState]

Hmmm…I thought that was a very good piece by Green and not really unfair at all.

Matt, it’s not fair to conflate Vodkapundit’s reasoned critique and caution and Instapundit’s…um, stuff that’s not like that.

Green is a (very good) writer, Reynolds is a cheerleader. They could both be wrong, but Reynolds isn’t even a good analyst. It’s unfortunate that you pick on Green when you’re disagreement is really w/ Insta-schmuck-dit and his groupies.

For the record, Green is NOT saying what all those other guys are saying and he’s not saying it’s unfair to criticize the President. So maybe you’re getting the general (and juvenile) vibe of the pro-Pushback crowd, but you didn’t really get it from Vodkapundit, did you?

Anyway, I’m really confused. Is it fair or not to criticize a Democrat’s lack of patriotism?

[Jon H]

Kermit writes “But unlimited communist power was just peachy, huh?”

That’s not a very smart rhetorical gambit to make, when the Bush administration is using Communist-built secret detention centers to interrogate prisoners using Communist-developed torture techniques.

[R C Dean]

It’s just not a load of bull to hypothsize that it might help Al Q. & the ex-baathists.

I just love the way people who go around saying “it shouldn’t be out of bounds to talk about how bad the war in Iraq is” manage to pair that with the sentiment that “it should be out of bounds to talk about how the media can mold public sentiment and affect the outcome of the war.”

If, as we are led to believe, the modern flavor of advocacy journalism is Important because It Can Make a Difference, why should we not inquire as to what kind of difference it is making, and if that difference is good or bad?

[thoreau]

Snake-

Some jokes aren’t funny.

[Wintermute]

I decide for myself what’s fair criticism.

I’m old enough to remember the same arguments during Vietnam. I don’t think Glenn Reynolds is. I lived through the bitterness of my cohorts coming home, mission unaccomplished, some complaining both about the management of the war and about what was said and done to help get it stopped.

There are enough similarities between these two conflicts to learn lessons from the older one. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

[Jon H]

RC Dean:”If, as we are led to believe, the modern flavor of advocacy journalism is Important because It Can Make a Difference, why should we not inquire as to what kind of difference it is making, and if that difference is good or bad?”

So where do you stop?

[Call me snake]

fyodor: I would never in a million years have questioned that you thought the insurgents were fuckheads,

I think the relevant question is: What effect does the media’s overwhelming anti-Iraq bias have on public opinion?

And, given the eventual outcome of Vietnam/Somalia/Lebanon, is there a (completely) unintended positive benefit to the insurgents of the negative media coverage?

[R C Dean]

As I understand it, Welch, you believe Reynolds is accusing the media of an active conspiracy to help the enemy in Iraq.

I read Reynolds just about every day, and I believe this is a gross mischaracterization of his views. What I take from his writing is that he believes that much of the press is being driven by an anti-Bush (not anti-American) agenda, and is informed by decades-old anti-war and anti-military views. I don’t think that either Reynolds or myself believes that these people are consciously or overtly anti-American, or hoping that America comes to grief in Iraq.

Rather, they are hypnotized by other partisan/political goals, and consequently tell a very partial story about what is going on in Iraq. The partial story that they are telling about Iraq dwells on costs and short-term negatives.

It is reasonable to suppose that such reporting is more likely to undermine US support for our side in the the war and encourage terrorist support for their side in the war, and thus makes it more likely that we will lose and they will win. If it doesn’t have this effect, just what effect do you suppose it has?

[R C Dean]

So where do you stop?

As a media critic, I never stop.

If I was an advocacy journalist, like any advocate I would try not to effectively advocate for things that I think are bad.

[Slainte']

Since C&W music has been thrown into this discussion, let me add that the CMA awards tonight will have a tribute to former Rodeo champ and Cowboy Rock & Roller Chris LeDoux, who passed away in March.

[Jon H]

RC Dean writes: “The partial story that they are telling about Iraq dwells on costs and short-term negatives.”

The thing is, those short-term negatives have turned into three years of negatives with no end in sight.

And those costs are entirely relevant, because the Bush administration sold this war as a quick cheapy that would pay for itself.

It’s not the media’s fault Bush was stung by a bee and decided the appropriate response was to stick his cock in a wasp nest, and now can’t get it out.

Nor is it an error for the media to cover the fiasco.

[Jon h]

RC writes: “If I was an advocacy journalist, like any advocate I would try not to effectively advocate for things that I think are bad.”

But what we have here are hawks saying “hey, this reporting makes us look bad, stop it” as if the solution to the problems is not to fix the problems, but to pretend they aren’t there.

So they’re making up crap about journalists “helping the enemy”, which is not proven, only asserted.

Meanwhile, you have that selfsame media have been reporting on the Jordan bombings, which reporting has done Zarqawi no favors at all.

[R C Dean]

The thing is, those short-term negatives have turned into three years of negatives with no end in sight.

This is called assuming what you set out to prove.

One can hardly take three uninterrupted years of largely one-sided reporting as proof that there was only one side of the story.

[Matt Welch]

As I understand it, Welch, you believe Reynolds is accusing the media of an active conspiracy to help the enemy in Iraq.

He hasn’t, to my knowledge, said that directly. He has given multiple positive links to those who have, and warned many times about the bad things that might happen if Americans believed that.

[Matt Welch]

Adam — Good points!

[R C Dean]

And those costs are entirely relevant, because the Bush administration sold this war as a quick cheapy that would pay for itself.

Costs are only relevant in the context of benefits.

And it is a flat-out mischaracterization to say that the Bushies sold this war as quick and cheap. They are on record as saying this will take a long time and cost a lot.

Nor is it an error for the media to cover the fiasco.

Again, assuming what you set out to prove. If the media emphasizes the negative, that can sure make it look like a fiasco, but that doesn’t mean it really is a fiasco.

I keep pointing out that at this point we seem to be closer to our strategic objectives, and the Islamists seem to be further from theirs. This is a fiasco how, exactly?

[Jon H]

“One can hardly take three uninterrupted years of largely one-sided reporting as proof that there was only one side of the story.”

Is there an alternate story out there in which the occupation was competently planned, and we pulled out, victorious, universally heralded as humanitarian conquerors, in 2003?

The hawks have been saying all along how FANTASTIC everything is going, but reality hasn’t exactly played along.

Why? Because the media’s reporting warped space-time and forced the factual narrative down a bad path?

No. It’s because all the school-painting in the world can’t win a war so incompetently conceived, planned, and run.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

No question about it, Green is sharp.

Does everybody at the Post and the NYT and Vanity Fair wake up at 6:00 am and say gee, what can we do today to screw over America?

No, they don’t. but like the Hollywood crowd there is an overwhelming singularity of vision among journalists, most of whom identify themselves in poll after poll as liberal and Democrat. Much of what passes for news, particularly in mainstream outlets, is absolutely biased and it is baised in the direction of the vision that these journalists hold.

[JDM]

Eh, the media in general is actively looking to spin the war to make it look as negative as possible, as are all opponents of the war. In a few more years Iraq will have a reasonably representative, non-hostile, government firmly in control of its own territory, the middle east will be less hostile in general, further along the path to modernity, and the media in general will still be spinning the war as a great and obvious negative.

[Happy Jack]

What effect does the media’s overwhelming anti-Iraq bias have on public opinion?

The military’s War College has looked at this. Studies on Viet Nam have concluded there’s little credible evidence to establish a causal relationship.

You can read it here (pdf)

[Jon H]

RC writes: “I keep pointing out that at this point we seem to be closer to our strategic objectives, and the Islamists seem to be further from theirs. ”

What are those islamist objectives? Do you mean the objectives of the Islamists in Iraq, which didn’t even freaking exist until we invaded?

Or the objective of forming a new Caliphate? We’ve made it much easier for them to take Baghdad, the historical capitol of the Caliphate.

And Iraq is vastly preferable as a center of operations than Afghanistan, allowing them to drive over and blow up hotels in, say, Jordan.

[Ken Shultz]

I think the relevant question is: What effect does the media’s overwhelming anti-Iraq bias have on public opinion?

I think the relevant question is: What effect did false advertising and continued failures have on public opinion?

…If journalists were ad execs, would we all drink Pepsi?

And, given the eventual outcome of Vietnam/Somalia/Lebanon, is there a (completely) unintended positive benefit to the insurgents of the negative media coverage?

I don’t understand why this is pertinent. When we toppled Saddam, was there a (completely) unintended benefit to the mullahs of Iran?

[Jon H]

JDM writes: “Eh, the media in general is actively looking to spin the war to make it look as negative as possible, as are all opponents of the war.”

I think you’ll find that the war is spinning itself to look as negative as possible.

[Matt Welch]

Matt, it’s not fair to conflate Vodkapundit’s reasoned critique and caution and Instapundit’s…um, stuff that’s not like that.

Good point. I tried to flag the difference between the two, but I did conflate them at the end. I still think there’s much in Green’s post to disagree with.

Anyway, I’m really confused. Is it fair or not to criticize a Democrat’s lack of patriotism?

I’m of the dowatchalike persuasion, and may the best argument win. I just don’t think that calling even a sizeable minority of Democrats (or Republicans, or journalists) unpatriotic is a particularly good or convincing argument, and in fact often comes with attempts to move the goalposts on what is acceptable discourse.

I personally think having the commander in chief use Veteran’s Day as an opportunity to call out the patriotism of the political opposition is a little on the gauche side, and smacks of desperation, but whatever.

[Jon H]

“When we toppled Saddam, was there a (completely) unintended benefit to the mullahs of Iran?”

I’m inclined to suspect Chalabi definitely intended such a benefit.

[Slainte']

Jon h —
“…the Bush administration sold this war as a quick cheapy that would pay for itself”

Huh? C’mon, that’s just BS. I’m not defending him, but I remember Bush saying a few times that the war might take years. (“pay for itself”? WTF?)

“It’s not the media’s fault Bush was stung by a bee…”

MY GOD, I hope you’re not comparing the attacks on 9/11 to bee stings.

[saw-whet]

Wintermute – Very true. But there is a difference worth considering. Not only were most (?) soldiers drafted, but after a while even the Marines were drafting men. (I almosts used the term ‘poor saps’, but sap had a different, war-related meaning back then.) Oh yeah, and a lot of the guys were poor. Black, White, no diff when you’re poor.

I got lucky. I found a way to stay State-side at an Air Force Base in New Hampshire. I hope you found a way to hang in the dorm and hopefully smoke good weed. We smoked a lot of it in the barracks.

Now, what was the topic again?

[Dave W.]

I remember in 2002 (Nov or Dec), a colleague called to tell me that Cheney was giving speeches to the “business community” that said we would definitely be going to wat against Iraq. I said I was not happy about that. He asked why. I said that it would be a big waste of life and resources like Viet Nam. I was correct.

[greg wirth]

Mr Reynolds, how about this? We lose the “War on Terror” when we assume the previous role of Saddam Hussein and torture detainees. On that topic, nary a word is devoted to the torture that is taking place in our name. If you read NRO online today this passage should make you cringe:

“None of it is necessary. Torture is already against the law. It is, moreover, the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental pain ? which is to say, much of the prisoner abuse that has prompted the current controversy has not been torture at all. Unpleasant? Yes. Sometimes sadistic and inexplicable? Undoubtedly. But not torture. And where it has been either torture or unjustifiable cruelty, it is being investigated, prosecuted, and severely punished.”

[Jon H]

“Huh? C’mon, that’s just BS. I’m not defending him, but I remember Bush saying a few times that the war might take years. (“pay for itself”? WTF?)”

That was Wolfowitz, who was part of the administration, one of the main architects of the war, and one of the people sent out to promote it.

And the administration did penalize those who let slip that, yes, it would be expensive.

“MY GOD, I hope you’re not comparing the attacks on 9/11 to bee stings. ”

Oh, fuck no. The point was that bees and wasps are, you know, DIFFERENT THINGS.

[saw-whet]

Hey Ruthless- Did Marine Corps captains smoke pot. I was enlisted scum, myself.

[Jason Ligon]

I think most people on both sides would agree that the Al Jazeera coverage of the situation up to this point has been grossly unfair in many respects and truly distorted the local view until fairly recently. If we can agree on that, we are saying that there is some point of imbalance where journalism bears some responsibility for making things worse.

With that as a framework, I don’t think one can reasonably argue that the US media is anywhere near the level of distortion that AJ was projecting early in the conflict. We can probably identify negativity as a theme in national news stories, but for negativity to be imbalance, there has to be some good news from the region that we are not getting. Here is where I see a perfectly valid criticism of the current administration. How can the media talk about positive strategic objectives that are being achieved when you won’t give them any strategic objectives other than “stay the course”?

If you are the press secretary or whoever spins this sort of thing for the media, you have to provide a long term objective that is being demonstrably worked toward. You can then call attention to little goals along the way.

Unless you don’t have a plan. In which case easy news is what gets reported, and bodies are easy news.

[James Feldman]

Happy Jack – Fascinating read. Thanks for the link.

[anonymous coward]

Isn’t this all a bit overhyped? A few large corporations are producing a product that certain people don’t like. But thanks to the Internet and cable television, we have a free market for that particular kind of product, so if you really want to you can sit around reading about how swell things are at NRO all day. What a great system!

The response to this seems to be, “well, I don’t watch that biased claptrap on CBS, but what about the children? Won’t someone think of the children?!” And by “children” I mean “American electorate.” Who are, by definition, big boys and girls. Ludicrous.

Here’s the thing that really gets me: sure, maybe the electorate is made up almost entirely of easily-manipulated idiots. Don’t tell me the pro-war side doesn’t try to use the same manipulation as the anti-war crowd. What else does one call the jingoism, the flag-waving, the relentlessly stupid emotional arguments (e.g., “if we don’t keep letting our boys die, we’ll dishonor all the ones who are already dead!”). The anger that we see here isn’t a matter of principle; they’re just pissed off that the big evil media manipulates people better.

[fyodor]

Short term negatives are the obvious things to report on because they are the news.

Reporting on the supposed long term positives would fall within the realm of analysis.

The biggest assuming of one’s conclusions going on is going into the assumption that the reporting of bad things necessarily and undoubtedly reflects a vivid anti-war bias.

If this is so obvious, based on reporters’ personal views, then that should have been considered in the calculus of going to war in the first place.

And anyway, what are the alternatives? After all, if reporters’ personal opinions are proof of their bias, then there’s clearly nothing they can do about it, right?

[Henry Bowman]

I don’t see what all the fuss is over. So Stephen Green thinks it isn’t fair — so what? He didn’t say anything really wacky, such as “…it should be against the law…”. Reynolds et alia are correct inasmuch as the large majority of the press is vehemently anti-Bush. Acknowledging this doesn’t mean that you agree or disagree with them; it simply seems self-evident.

I think that a major problem with the modern press [media] is that it has discovered how much real political influence it has, especially TV. Bringing down Nixon and, for practical purposes, aiding the enemies of the U.S. during the Vietnam war was a power trip for many journalists, and they would love a repeat performance. In other words, much of the media would like the U.S. to lose the Iraq war not becuase they think such a loss would be good, but simply because it would be an exercise of their own power.

Anyway, I still don’t see any real movement towards throttling the media (unlike, for example, Abe Lincoln’s use of the military to smash the presses of newspapers who didn’t support him), so let Stephen Green complain — nothing substantive will come of it.

[fyodor]

BTW, the last I read, while the vast majority of reporters were Democrats, a small majority of editors were Republicans. But we all know the press is always biased in favor of the other guy.

[fyodor]

In other words, much of the media would like the U.S. to lose the Iraq war not becuase they think such a loss would be good, but simply because it would be an exercise of their own power.

Interesting theory. But why stop there? Couldn’t it as easily be pointed out (heh) that the Bush Administration invaded Iraq to assert its power?

Okay, so what do I really think? I think the human mind is a complex conglomeration of rationality and neurosis, and twisted psychological theories such as these may very well have a lot to them. But ultimately they are speculation and better grist for the poet and artist and satirist than for the political debator, who should limit his analysis to what is actually said and done.

[Ken Shultz]

Unless you don’t have a plan. In which case easy news is what gets reported, and bodies are easy news.

I’ve read dispatches from the Green Zone via the NYRB, etc., and it sounded to me like journalists were as frustrated as anyone about not being able to go out and report. My understanding is that it’s been this way for a long time; unless you’re embedded, going out and doing interviews is betting your life, and the odds are stacked against you.

What we tend to get from Iraq, then, is the news from the Green Zone and news from the view of reporters embedded with patrols. …That must account for some of the bias, if by bias we mean reporting mostly about attacks and bombings. I haven’t heard that the situation has improved over the last six months; my understanding is that we’re still getting most of our reporting from the Green Zone.

[yippikyyeah]

it’s been my experience that those who think folks that are generally skeptical of the war reporting are retards also think Fox News is the bastard that parrots the Bush White House talking points. I’m inclined to think that no one thinks objectively anymore.

[fyodor]

I’m inclined to think that no one thinks objectively anymore.

Anymore? Did they ever? 🙂

FWIW, I don’t think that people who think differently from me are retards, per se. 🙂

It’s certainly possible that there’s subtle bias in MSM reporting, but I don’t think there’s any wholesale selling out of America. I think it’s human, all-too-human nature to think the cards are stacked against your own side in favor of the other. How many sports fans ever think the refs blew the game for their own team? And the supposedly “hard” evidence (that reporters are overwhelmingly Democratic and that they report on bad things) is paper thin.

[Vanya]

When Reynolds, Vodkapundit, Snake etc. complain about the US press being biased, what press are they talking about? What is the objective basis for saying the US press is biased against the war in Iraq? I thought Fox News was beating CNN in the ratings, is Fox biased against the war in Iraq? Circulation numbers for the NYT, the Boston Globe and the LA Times are all rolling steadily downhill so how are these papers creating a drumbeat of anti-war sentiment? How many people listen to Rush Limbaugh every day? A hell of a lot more than read the Washington Post. The “liberal media” is a defanged paper tiger in the US today. If the American people are turning against the war it’s simply because they don’t understand it. The war hawks did a great job for 10 years convincing your average American that Saddam was evil personified. Then we captured Saddam, but for some reason nothing changed and Americans are still getting killed. I’m sure 80% of Americans don’t pay enough attention to really tell you if Iraq is going well or not but they know a few things – Americans are still getting killed, Iraq is still unsafe, and Bush is telling us terrorists still want to kill us. So what Americans do know is that 3 years later for some reason we still haven’t won the war, and when you wave the flag and make as many promises as Bush did, delayed gratification will not work as a political strategy.

[Jon H]

fyodor writes: “FWIW, I don’t think that people who think differently from me are retards, per se. :-)”

That’s why I supported McCain in 2000, over Bush, to the extent that my first-ever political contributions were to McCain.

I might have disagreed with McCain on some things, but I felt that at least he had considered those positions and taken them rationally.

[Phil]

. . . but Mr. Marius made the America deserved to lose Vietnam comment. So McCarthy slurs are good . . .

You know, goddamnit, WE didn’t win OR lose in Vietnam. All we did was pick up our fucking ball and go home. The South Vietnamese lost, and nothing we were ever going to do was going to change that.

[Phil]

Shorter Stephen Green: “You’re not cheerleading hard enough!”

[Wow... Just, Like, Wow, Man]

theOneState wrote, above: Green is a (very good) writer…”

He is?

“Four years into the Terror War, ‘What’s the most important element for victory?’ is a question long overdue. It’s also a question our national leadership, nearly all of our intellectuals, and none of our mainstream media have yet to answer.”

That’s the lead paragraph of the Green post in question, which means it is simply the first in a series of paragraphs displaying Green’s poor facility with language.

I concluded some time ago that certain people have a definition of “good writing” that is, let’s say, unique. For these people, it seems, a “good writer” is simply someone who writes about interesting things — not someone who writes about things interestingly.

[Wow... Just, Like, Wow, Man]

(Oh yeah, while I’m here, I’d like to ask if anyone knows why the text on Hit & Run appears so tiny in a Firefox browser. I’m fairly new to Firefox, but not to Hit & Run. So if this already has been hashed out here a bazillion times and I just don’t remember, it’s probably because I didn’t care before now, and thus breezed right past such discussions.

(Whatever the case, I can say that this is the only site I’ve encountered whose appearance in Firefox is so dramatically different from that in Internet Explorer.)

[joe]

I like the way PBS, when it runs its honor roll of American troops killed in Iraq every single night, plays a sound track of Jim Lehrer laughing and shouting “Die, imperialist stooges! Hail Saddam!”

[Richard Aubrey]

If you don’t like Reynolds and Green, try Cori Dauber (rantingprofs).
She does detailed analyses of various reports.
Sometimes it’s the framing. Sometimes it’s the placement (“this is page 16 material????”)or headline choice.
She occasionally gets into falsehoods, but those don’t take as much space and aren’t as much fun as analyzing the reports which aren’t bogus.

It seems to me that the dems, libs, lefties, and journos are claiming it’s unfair that Bush is pointing out their lies.
I expect it must suck.

[joe]

Can one of the war pigs please set me straight on something:

When you say one day that publicizing the atrocities that Zarqawi and his bands commit against innocent civilians is the best way to win the war of ideas…

And then say the next day that publicizing the atrocities that Zarqawi and his bands commit against civilians is a betrayal of our troops and will contribute to our defeat…

does it give you a headache?

[Terry]

Gaius Marius wrote:
“but what should also be said is that america should have lost in vietnam, and that it was right and proper for us to have our asses kicked out in the end. the only tragedy in that is that it hadn’t happened sooner and with less loss and destruction.”
Cheering the loss of an American war, the useless expenditure of thousands of lives . . .and yet if I say that I think Gaius’ is lacking patriotism, some people would say that wasn’t fair.

[pbjosh]

I have a thought:

The MSM might not have a strong burning desire for Bush to die a horrible political death.

It is easy to feel that way when I talk to friends in Iraq, and just random people I have met who are serving there, or parts of their family are, and you hear the same line from ALL of them. Even those opposed to the action they are fighting in (and some people I know over there are) say it.

“The Media is wrong. They are not getting it right.”

Take a step back, without pointing fingers at one party or the other, or malicious actions of the media itself.

The Big Media isn’t getting it right. None of them. Not even Fox.

Or else I wouldn’t keep hearing this. It is almost to the point where I would doubt the person had a relative or was there themselves if they said otherwise.

Why they are failing to accurately report on our actions is not for me to fathom. I can’t read minds. Neither can you.

That they are, is the real arguement. Or maybe, simply the question we need to ask them.

Josh

[RIchard Aubrey]

WTF? Oh, well.

To continue:

Time to haul out Orwell. Effectively, the pacifist favors the fascist. He went on to say he was not talking about the motivation, but about the effect.
It seems that journos, when reproached about the effects, claim their motives are above reproach.
Usually, that’s an honest argument coming from a six-year-old. From anybody older than that, it’s misdirection away from the fact that the effect is intended.

But let’s give the journos credit for not being swifter than a six-year-old. Is it still possible that their reporting has inadvertent consequences? Even theoretically? If so, what’s the problem with talking about it?

The theme in these comments seems to be that it’s okay to screw the pooch in reporting because that will help us lose the war. But it’s not okay for anybody to notice it.

Well, Reynolds and Green are correct in one thing. Even journalism can wear out its welcome and put the Noble First into jeopardy.

Remember the Paul Newman/Sally Field movie, Absence of Malice? Audiences cheered when the newspaper got hosed. Walter Cronkite thought that was mean of the audiences, but he didn’t address the venality of the paper. Apparently that doesn’t compute on a journo’s monitor.

One need not support an outcome to predict it.
I predict there is a limited patience with the US population for journos to screw them and the rest of the country over and stand back behind the First Amendment making faces and going neenerneener.
I do not support it, nor does Green, clearly.
But I fear it could happen.

[Ken Shultz]

It seems to me that the dems, libs, lefties, and journos are claiming it’s unfair that Bush is pointing out their lies.

You make it sound like they’re not all one and the same thing. If only the American people knew the real truth, then they’d think the whole Iraq thing was a smashig success. There just aren’t enough news outlets–radio, television, print or on the web–giving them the straight beef.

Maybe the answer’s a function of education. Tell me, do they have a journalism program at Bob Jones University? …What about at Oral Roberts U?

[Alligator]

“By treating complaints about dishonest and politically motivated reporting as the equivalent of complaints about simply reporting bad news, Welch is attacking a straw man.”

Oh man, Reynolds just whooped your ass…

[francisco]

I like Glenn and Stephen…..you guys claim to be libertarian but honestly sound like a bunch of whiny pussies most of the time.

[JRM]

Wow…, Just, Like, Wow, Man:

From the drop-down menu pick View, Text Size, Increase. Or +

But whatever you do, have a cocktail or take a pill before reading the comments.

[JRM]

The second suggestion was supposed to be CTRL + (control key together with plus)

[Wow... Just, Like, Wow, Man]

JRM, thanks for the response. But I already know how to increase the text size under Firefox’s “View” options. What I asked if why Hit & Run appears so much smaller in Firefox than in IE, while noting that this is the only site on which I’ve encountered such a dramatic difference.

[Ken Shultz]

Cheering the loss of an American war, the useless expenditure of thousands of lives . . .and yet if I say that I think Gaius’ is lacking patriotism, some people would say that wasn’t fair.

G. Marius is perfectly capable of defending himself. However, I’d say it’s hard to construe the wish that we’d lost fewer American lives as somehow unpatriotic.

[Matt Welch]

Oh man, Reynolds just whooped your ass…

By claiming I said something I didn’t? O-k-a-y….

[Jimmy Robinson]

It’s been clear for some time that Glenn is having a meltdown – what else could explain a tantrum posting such as “If only the press corps could muster as much outrage about, say, Walter Duranty as about Judith Miller?”? Yes, today’s journalists aren’t morally serious because they are concerned what’s happening now as opposed to 70 years ago.

[SteveMG]

Matt:
Sorry but your characterization of Reynolds position (I’m less sure about Green since I haven’t followed all of his posts) is a caricature. And a bad one at that.

One of the major problems, as I see it, of the press coverage emanates from something Ted Koppel (and various other reporters) have argued. Viz., “We report on the planes that crash, not the planes that land.”

The problem with applying that standard, of course, is that it assumes that the consumer knows that most planes don’t crash. To continue with the metaphor, most Americans have flown in planes or have seen planes fly or have read or heard from people who have flown in planes.

They bring into the issue of planes crashing, the knowledge and background that most planes don’t crash.

However, if you apply this admittedly simple analogy to Iraq, the problem that arises is that the vast majority of news consumers know nothing about Iraq. They don’t know whether most Iraqi “planes” crash or not. Because they’ve never been in Iraq and know no one who has visited Iraq.

The press cannot report on planes that crash in Iraq without also reporting on the planes that safely land. To only report on the crashes provides a jaundiced view on Iraqi conditions.

[Phil]

Wow, Richard just busted out “Objectively Pro-Fascist” without irony. So . . . what would you call a group that engages state power to enrich corporate cronies, and also wages aggressive wars overseas, then sets up secret prisons in which to torture people using Soviet-learned techniques? (Hint: Fascist. In which case, what does that make you? Hint: Pro-fascist.)

[David R. Block]

Is this a libertarian site, or has Daily Kos changed their URL?

[TDM]

I agree Francisco. I used to really like Reason. Is the NY Times attachment to reality any different from say, Mary Mapes? I don’t think so.

[Matt Welch]

Sorry but your characterization of Reynolds position … is a caricature. And a bad one at that.

Specifically….?

[joe]

Hey look at that!

Never before heard from posters come out of nowhere and declare the Reason has gone downhill, because they question to the right wing media’s preferred narrative.

That has never happened before ever in the entire history of Hit and Run.

I heard Mona’s going to cancel her subscription.

[6Gun]

…you guys claim to be libertarian but honestly sound like a bunch of whiny pussies most of the time.

Balanced precociously between self-inflating over-analysis and fantastic, vomitous Jon H-like assertions. I suppose every form of expression has an audience.

(And to think the battle for the mind and the country really is between authoritarian and genuine libertarian ideals…)

[Ken Shultz]

But first, I think my prediction that press irresponsibility and bias would have repercussions for press freedom has been borne out.

Alright! Here comes the pain!

The Times, still thinking (as in so many things) that it’s 1978, initially expected a huge pro-First Amendment backlash on behalf of Judy Miller, and was surprised when it got no more from its repeated editorials than Howell Raines and Martha Burk got in the way of protesters at Augusta National. Why? People don’t think of the press as a secular priesthood of truth any more, even if some segments of the press still do.

http://instapundit.com/archives/026866.php

Well if the expected backlash in the wake of Judy Miller never came, then I guess it really is the end!

[Hakluyt]

Since I think active vocal, written, etc. efforts to undermine a war effort are fine, I guess I don’t have a problem with the press doing what it is accused of doing, so the point is moot to me.

[ss]

Yikes. This “reason” site is like kryptonite to reason. Is that irony or tragedy?

[Hakluyt]

ss,

If you don’t like it, you are always welcome to leave and never return.

[Tom]

Welcome to the Reasonoid circle-jerk. Keep pumping each other, boys!!!

[Hakluyt]

6Gun,

Instead of throwing out vague statements, tell us what “real libertarian ideals” are? Also, tell us how we are violating those ideals. Put your money where your mouth is in other words.

[Hakluyt]

I suspect most of these never heard of before posters are from VodkaPundit, etc. Can’t be dissing their God.

[ss]

Hakluyt

That goes without saying doesn’t it? But you got another snark posted on a comment board, so that must feel pretty good.

[Mark]

Agreed, read Dauber at RantingProfs. It will open your eyes to how the media reports on the military.

[6Gun]

So, are we deleting posts from Instapundit readers now too?

[Hakluyt]

ss,

Nice non-answer.

[Hakluyt]

6Gun,

I doubt it. You have to understand that the server here, well, sucks.

[Richard Aubrey]

Ending about a week ago, Pressthink had a thread going which got distracted to a particular NYT story. It was supposed to be about a recruiter in Harlem. The reporter said that soldiers, including special forces soldiers, are being sent to combat direct from boot camp.
This is big. It takes us back to the worst days of Infantry replacements in the Bulge. It’s awful.
It’s also false.
After a bit, the story on line was re-written to say “training camps”, which doesn’t sound as bad, but is also false. This is the rowback technique.
After a good bit of yelling, the NYT did a correction which still wasn’t right.
The really fun thing about this was that the reporter was talking to a recruiter who was the bestest person in the whole wide world to give her chapter and verse on the subject.
But she still got it wrong.
How many of these do I have to read before I am allowed to wonder if these people are really as stupid as all that? Perhaps they’re lying on purpose on account of nobody’s that dumb? Are they? Even journalists? Can’t be that stupid?
There has to be some number that even you guys would allow.

Here’s a thing which, fortunately, didn’t happen.

CBS learned from its fake TANG documents scheme that you should never leave the other side time to reply. So, when conniving with the NYT about the false story of the missing explosives at the al Kaka ammo dump, they arranged to hold the story for a week so that it would come out too close to the election to be addressed.
Something went wrong and the story suffered premature expostulation. It was shot down.
Timing, as my father says, is everything. So far, this is real world.

Now. Suppose that both of those stories had survived through the election. Gore is elected. Only afterwards do the stories get the treatment and are shown to be deliberate lies.
We are watching the 6:30 News, watching Rather and his colleagues trying to read the news through fixed, ear-to-ear grins and saying stuff like, tough shit, when called on it.

Do you think the First Amendment would be under more strain than it is today?
Or would things be the same among the population?

Explain why it would have no effect.

[michael]

One comment holds painfully true; if America leaves Iraq in disgrace then the blame is going to fall on the MSM (as well as academia). Anyone alive in the late 70s/early 80s knows where the fingers pointed.

The result may be an America even more a Red State nation than before.

[Hakluyt]

Richard Aubrey,

I believe Bush’s opponent in 2004 was Kerry.

[Richard Aubrey]

Phil. You only said one thing worth replying to, and that by misdirection.
I used Orwell, as he is generally used in this context, to point out the existence of inadvertent consequences and that motivation is not an issue.

The rest of your stuff is juvenile.

[6Gun]

Right you are, Hakluyt (well, not exactly right.)

As to those L ideals, I’d tend to think that not spouting idiotic, easily-refuted charges like some moonbat Marxist would be a start. Not you; your friends.

I realize that online Libertarianism sees itself the enlightened third way and has that image to keep up, and I’d be all aboard myself, but when it turns to misrepresenting facts to polish that image, I get off the bus.

I was serious about wanting so much for libertarianism to work too. One bright day, when the focus is less on pot or eminent domain and more on the changed nature of a nuclear world, perhaps the anti-authoritarians will align with a solid, realistic defense of the original Republic and its principles, they, in their original form, being worth the sacrifice.

[Richard Aubrey]

Hak. Right.
An example of the nearly-instant corrections process exclusive to the blogosphere.

[Hakluyt]

Anyway, welcome newcomers to our part of the blogosphere. I hope you find your stay comfortable and worhtwhile.

6Gun,

There’s much of what the founders believed that I wouldn’t give you a nickel for.

______________

Why is it that everyone instantly calls me Hak?

[Hakluyt]

Usually when we get invaded by another blog (and I don’t mean to make you think your presence here is a negative one) its from some fundamentalist Christian blog bitching about a story one of our fair writers has done on evolution. Nice change of pace I suppose.

[SixSigma]

I believe the question of whether media, specifically newsrooms across America, can move public opinion a decent one.

On the question of whether the media is correct in its negative assesment of Iraq or not – I fail to see how anyone here could possibly believe the media has it right.

Let’s use a few non-controversial thoughts –
Are any of these reflective of reality?

The way the media reports on crime?
The way the media reports on drugs?
The way the media puts “news looking” reports on the air from corporate/government interests without ever mentioning it?
Jayson Blair?

Why trust them now?

[Phil]

Richard, juvenile “stab-in-the-back” analysis, well, invites juvenalia, so I’m afraid that’s all I’m able to muster in response. At some point, the Administration’s supporters are going to have to ask themselves whether it’s really all the fault of The Perfidious Liberal Media that the White House has a reputation for dishonesty, disingenuity and lack of integrity. And why fewer and fewer people are willing to carry their water.

By the way, did anyone follow the link from “Profrants” to Captain’s Quarters? He’s calling for Jay Rockefeller to be tried for treason. Just like I’ve predicted all along.

[Hakluyt]

SixSigma,

Well, that gets us involved in some thorny philosophical questions actually. Indeed, the lack of clarity, etc. found in the media (or in any other source reporting on events that we don’t directly see) may be unavoidable. It then becomes a question of memes – and which memes are more reliable.

[The Groping Savage]

This may be the first time that I’ve heard two people using the word temerity in the same conversation.

But in all seriousness Matt, your post seems to be saying ….. nothing. Are you trying to put forth a position here or just pointing out a perceived hypocrisy?

[Hakluyt]

Phil,

On what grounds specifically?

[sbw]

What is the proper response to depravity?

What is the proper response to NO response to depravity?

It’s like New York City under Dinkins versus New York city under Giuliani. Or the United Nations under Kofi Annan versus … well, has the U.N. ever worked? No. (Let’s give credit to Eleanor Roosevelt and the Declaration of Human Rights, which happened because of grand ommissions from the United Nations Charter and through her sheer resolve.)

How do liberals respond to depravity? Can they recognize it? Or do they ignore it in favor of navel watching such as this?

[Vanya]

I’m waiting for Reynolds and all the other Bush adminstration cheerleaders to put their money where their mouths are. Start reporting some good news! Where is it? If the MSM has got it so wrong, how hard can it be to report the real story? There are thousands and thousands of US troops on the ground. Why can’t the real story get out? If they really support our troops, why don’t Reynolds, Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Hitchens etc. spend more time reporting the good news and less time attacking their fellow Americans? If there is real good news I think most Americans would be glad to hear it. Funny that the Adminstration is so passive on this front. What has become painfully obvious, and what should really piss off our soldiers, is that the Bush administration lost faith in the Iraq effort many many months ago. Victory may be in our grasp but Bush/Rove have already decided Americans are not willing to pay the price.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

I’m waiting for Reynolds and all the other Bush adminstration cheerleaders to put their money where their mouths are. Start reporting some good news! Where is it? If the MSM has got it so wrong, how hard can it be to report the real story?

This is what I wonder about Fox news. Clearly part of the MSM, but even people who rail against the MSM don’t really class Fox as part of the liberal media establishment. And yet I watch Fox news every day, and they never have any good news out of Iraq.

[Matt Welch]

Richard — You’ll get no argument from me that the mainstream press tilts left and Democratic, makes crude errors on a daily basis, and often covers military issues with a lack of basic knowledge. I have never suggested otherwise. I don’t think The Media behaves monolithically when it comes to war and foreign policy; I don’t think non-advocacy journalists consciously direct coverage to meet policy goals, and I think that even the subconscious advocacy of non-advocacy journalists isn’t in any case very effective.

I don’t think journalists have the power to win or lose elections, let alone wars (to give you a mild example of the former — basically every newspaper in California endorsed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Prop. 77 redistricting plan, and it was utterly punked at the polls). In fact, I find it paradoxical that often the same people who complain in one breath that the media is about to Lose the War, will celebrate in the next that the MSM is losing all its power. Those ideas aren’t mutually exclusive, but there’s at least some dissonance.

Contra Glenn’s assertion, I think the media (like the government) should be criticized every day; it’s lies, errors, biases and whatever else pointed out and when deserving, corrected. I remain tickled that the Internet allows for people like Glenn (and you, and me) to correct those errors, and build entire counter-narratives to the media’s received wisdom. Hooray for that!

[moneyrunner]

Orwell had something interesing to say during WW2 about pacifism. Think of it as neutrality in a life an death struggle, similar to what we are in today. And the media believes in neutrality? I’m not convinced, but let’s assume it is not biased against the war, but simply neutral.

‘Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me?.’ The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that ‘according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be ‘objectively pro-British?.’ But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious ‘freedom’ station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

I am not interested in pacifism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If Mr Savage and others imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.”

[p. regan]

Unfortunately I think Glen Renolds is closer to the mark then others posting. We rely on the press to keep us informed of the facts about the war, but the facts seem to be few and far between after we get through all of the editorializing. One example is yesterday morning NPR reports 2 Americans die in operations in western Iraq, and a certain number of insurgents ( can?t say Al Qaede of course) are claimed to be captured or killed. That is it. What does this tell us about the tactics and strategy of the operation? All we really get is two more of our boys are dead. Isn’t it sad that I have to go to military bloggers to learn that the start of the operation was first placing blocking positions east of the Syrian border to first push back the enemy, then instead of pushing west up the river, we jumped in from behind cutting off their escape routes into Syria. I guess that could be awkward for the MSM to report that Syria is a refuge for these people and help escalate the war, but back to the point. Now we are moving east toward our other forces with the enemy trapped in between and are capturing or killing the enemy as we go. And as we move up the river we leave Iraqi forces behind to hold the towns. There it wasn’t that hard to describe now was it, and I don’t even have an office in Iraq and didn?t go to J school either. It only took a couple of sentences to do too. My guess is if these things were reported people might just say, ?hey, that sounds pretty smart. Maybe these guys know what they are doing.? Instead we get 2 more Americans die in Iraq, without ever knowing how, or why, or what real impact they are making.

[Matt Welch]

moneyrunner, Richard — Also during the war, Orwell had something interesting to say about his famous essay on pacifism. Namely, he called it a “propaganda trick.”

http://home19.inet.tele.dk/w-mute/AIP48.htm

An excerpt:

We are told that it is only people’s objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort, are ‘objectively’ aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true, the ‘objectively’ line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore ‘Trotskyism is Fascism’. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.

This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it.

[aaron]

I do not recommend reading the post or comments sober.

[gaius marius]

Marius: I think you disagree. Does Zarqawi dislike, or like, the current state of American journalism re: Iraq?

i suspect he likes it — but not because it’s lying to the american people, mr snake, but because it’s telling a lot of horrifying truths that we should, in a free society, hope to hear.

And yet I watch Fox news every day, and they never have any good news out of Iraq.

and frankly, mr snake, mr cavanaugh has an incisive point — if it weren’t the awful truth, the hacktastic counterweight msm on the right (eg, fox) would be declaiming the great news out of iraq today to enrage their viewership into decrying those damn liberals just one more time.

but they aren’t and can’t — because iraq is such a completely frightening hellhole of our own making.

[Jesse Walker]

Three things anyone who wants to do media criticism should always remember:

1. “Media bias” is usually a euphemism for “insufficient bias in the direction I’d prefer.”

2. Never attribute to prejudice what can be explained by inexperience. Most reporters today have never been in the military and are unfamiliar with military procedures; as a result, they are easily misled by sources with axes to grind, both pro-war and anti-war.

3. Anyone who thinks the most important news from Iraq involves soldiers helping build schools or infrastructure is deluded. Iraqis can build their own infrastructure. The more important question is the effect the soldiers are having on the folks who want to blow up infrastructure.

[bendover]

2. Never attribute to prejudice what can be explained by inexperience. Most reporters today have never been in the military and are unfamiliar with military procedures; as a result, they are easily misled by sources with axes to grind, both pro-war and anti-war.

Why then, Jesse, was p. regan at 9:40 able to enlighten me more in a half dozen sentences than a professional media organization like NPR?

[moneyrunner]

The problem with your argument is that in the war those who opposed the allied effort did objectively aid the axis effort. Motivations were immaterial.

If I push an old lady under a bus, it is not material whether I hated her or was merely careless. For legal reasons, I may be charged with manslaughter instead of murder, but the effect on the old lady is the same.

Having read the reports out of Iraq by the MSM and by the soldiers themselves I am struck by the incredible difference in perspective. Question: who has a better view of the battle: the person on the battlefield or the reporter in a hotel in the Green Zone?

I’m sure that the MSM would maintain that the reporter has the broader perspective. I doubt it. I especially doubt it when the person losing the blood, sweat and limbs is vastly more positive on the battle than the reporter in the green zone. Usually the “dogface” is the more cynical and more apt to curse the brass hats. In this case it’s the perfumed prices of the media who are throwing brickbats.

You are free to protect the MSM in this fight, but their failures make them very, very vulnerable to accusations of being objectively on the other side.

[Jesse Walker]

Why then, Jesse, was p. regan at 9:40 able to enlighten me more in a half dozen sentences than a professional media organization like NPR?

P. Regan reads milbloggers, who do have military experience, and are thus a valuable corrective to the mainstream media, even for an antiwar guy like myself who thinks Iraq is a clusterfuck.

Of course, just as people in the press don’t always understand how the military works, people who do know how the military works don’t always understand how the press works. When pro-war sites speculate about the media’s agenda, I sometimes see stuff that no one with any knowledge of how a newspaper functions could say. Glenn Reynolds in particular is responsible for some incredible howlers.

[gaius marius]

Costs are only relevant in the context of benefits.

what are the benefits, mr dean? mr jdm says

In a few more years Iraq will have a reasonably representative, non-hostile, government firmly in control of its own territory, the middle east will be less hostile in general, further along the path to modernity, and the media in general will still be spinning the war as a great and obvious negative.

but no christian evangelist makes greater leaps of faith than these beliefs. there is almost literally no evidence for any of this actually happening — and i am looking, sincerely. short of the repetion of mantra from nearly factless sites like reynolds’ or nro, i see nothing to make me believe that ANY of these things are even underway.

isn’t it just possible that hundreds of investigative reporters are not acting out of conscious or unconscious bias — that they may actually be revealing something like truth, however unpalatable — and that politically partisan parties are the ones issuing spin like mad to protect their decidedly much greater investment in a successful outcome?

[Hakluyt]

moneyrunner,

…the person on the battlefield or the reporter in a hotel in the Green Zone?

It could be the reporter. Amongst military historians its well known that reports from the battlefield are inherently local, inaccurate, etc. Its called the “fog of war.” This is why American troops reported in the early days of D-Day seeing wave after wave of PzKpfw VI Tiger I heavy tanks – yet what Tiger’s the Germans had close to the landing beaches weren’t remotely near their position and were actively engaged against the Canadians.

[Hakluyt]

moneyrunner,

To be more blunt, frontline soldiers are notoriously inaccurate in their claims as to the strategic and even the tactical situation.

[Vanya]

Frankly I didn’t find P.Regan’s comments all that enlightening. I think most of us are aware that the US enjoys tactical superiority, has better soldiers and can easily win any pitched battle against inferior Al Qaeda/Ba’athist insurgents. Just like NPR, P.Regan is seeing the trees instead of the forest, he’s just looking at a different set of trees. The only truth is that we probably won’t know for at least 20 years whether Iraq was a smashing sucess or a total disaster, and it will probably end up as a very qualified but disputable success given enough time. Bush and Rumsfeld are losing the propaganda war because they promised a quick and easy victory, and that is what your average American thought he was going to get.

[gaius marius]

If the media emphasizes the negative, that can sure make it look like a fiasco, but that doesn’t mean it really is a fiasco.

couldn’t it just possible be, mr dean, that when 95% of the information coming out of iraq is horrifying — including the stuff on fox and the chicago tribune and other famously conservative outlets — that things in iraq are actually horrifying?

and that when the 5% of stuff that is positive somehow only manages to find outlet in nakedly partisan outlets like national review — that stuff may in fact be counterfactual, or at least a highly optimistic reading?

this seems to me a vastly more plausible interpretation than a media conspiracy. if anything, after watching cnn’s embedded hacks fellate the military for months, i’d have speculated that the opposite was more likely — that a media fearful of being denied access to the highest circles of government information by an unusually loyal administration had decided to play along in return for keeping the spigot open.

[Mr. Snitch!]

“By treating complaints about dishonest and politically motivated reporting as the equivalent of complaints about simply reporting bad news, Welch is attacking a straw man.” Read the whole thing. I did neither, of course; never have, and never will.”

“It’s “not fair” to print the headline “Battle Deaths Continue to Mount.”

You would. You just did. You will again, and you’re too blinded with self-interest to do anything else.

[Hakluyt]

Oh, and let me send a word out for the Canadian fighting man in WWII. You fellows were worth your weight in gold.

[rivlax]

This point is settled except for the blind ones who refuse to see. The media ARE anti-American. The media DO want us to lose this war. The media DO want our institutions to crumble and do anything they can to facilitate that. Why they do it is beyond me, but they do it nonetheless. How Welch can be so obtuse is beyond me. I disagree with Reynolds on many things, but on this he’s dead on.

[Hakluyt]

rivlas,

Perhaps you should change your nick to: Defensor Fidei. 🙂

[moneyrunner]

Deleting posts? Is that how Libertarians have discussions?

[Hakluyt]

What exactly does “winning” in Iraq look like? Which war are you talking about? etc.

[joe]

“I’m waiting for Reynolds and all the other Bush adminstration cheerleaders to put their money where their mouths are. Start reporting some good news!”

Yeah, what ever happened to the “Truth Tour,” anyway?

The one in which the brave truth tellers announced that they weren’t going to leave the Green Zone, and were going to gather their information entirely from the US military?

Even THEY couldn’t manage to report some good news?

[bendover]

Of course, just as people in the press don’t always understand how the military works, …

Jesse, you’re honestly telling me that the press, who I assume actually have people over in Iran, cannot ask the right questions from the right people in order to come up with a basic description of the strategy used in this particular operation. They can’t read, or don’t know about, the numerous military bloggers posting on the internet? They are unable to “mine” these guys as a source of information?

[joe]

moneyrunner,

I have never know the editors to delete posts.

Rather, they have server that consists of a hamster running on a wheel, powering a Commodore 64. Your post will appear next Tuesday.

[joe]

bendover, you’ve obviously never tried to explain to a journalist how the subdivision law works.

[Hakluyt]

bendover,

I don’t recall having invaded Iran.

[JDM]

“When pro-war sites speculate about the media’s agenda, I sometimes see stuff that no one with any knowledge of how a newspaper functions could say.”

Like what? Who would’ve believed that CBS would print forgeries so blatant that they could entire discredited in hours by amateurs? Or that the NYT would continue to report stories by a reporter that never managed to actual be at the locations he was reporting from? Or that the entire main stream media would spend a week making up ridiculous stories about what was happening in New Orleans?

Why is it that every time I see a story about something I have detailed professional knowledge about, it’s a load of crap? Not just a simplification, but an outright misrepresentation of the facts?

Are we sure those newspapers are all operating the way you think they are, Jesse? Intelligence gathering organizations (private and public) have been pretty well embarrased time and again in the last few years…

[Matt Welch]

The problem with your argument is that in the war those who opposed the allied effort did objectively aid the axis effort. Motivations were immaterial.

That wasn’t my argument, it was George Orwell’s.

[moneyrunner]

Hakluyt, thanks for inadvertantly proving my point. It’s usually the grunts who believe that the battle is going badly because they are the ones doing the fighing and dying.

When the grunts think it’s going well and the back seat drivers are in a panic, it’s not he back seaters who have the superior perspective.

Have you been a MSM shill long? Does it pay?

[gaius marius]

Much of what passes for news, particularly in mainstream outlets, is absolutely biased and it is baised in the direction of the vision that these journalists hold.

agreed, mr commonsewer — but that alone cannot and does not explain the flood of terrible information coming out of iraq. there is an extent to which bias affects reporting, and this is an extent that every media outlet contains, conservative or liberal. an astute reader can do a lot to spot such bias.

but it isn’t as if the media has decided to create the iraq insurgency to improve circulation and grind axes. it’s there, and it’s massive and ugly and indeed growing — a linear regression of us military casualties per day since may 2003 clearly shows an increasing fatality rate for our armies. meanwhile, purple finger photo ops aside — photos the msm was altogether willing to take and run with, i might add — iraqi politics remain so unpromising that con artists like ahmed chalabi remain american-backed prospects for leadership in iraq for a lack of better pro-american candidates.

how are we supposed to interpret events there positively? on a wing and a prayer of what should happen if neocon ideology is “correctly” implemented?

[moneyrunner]

Hakluyt, thanks for inadvertantly proving my point. It’s usually the grunts who believe that the battle is going badly because they are the ones doing the fighing and dying.

When the grunts think it’s going well and the back seat drivers are in a panic, it’s not he back seaters who have the superior perspective.

Have you been a MSM shill long? Does it pay?

[gaius marius]

Why they do it is beyond me

if you can’t assign a mechanism, mr rivlax, you’re probably just pissing in the wind. why they would do it is totally beyond me too — which is why i continue to be very suspicious of any claim for a media conspiracy, left or right.

[Hakluyt]

moneyrunner,

It’s usually the grunts who believe that the battle is going badly because they are the ones doing the fighing and dying.

No, that really isn’t any sort of iron law. It depends on unit experience, on the nature of the war, etc. There isn’t really a “usually” there. I’ve read enough unit histories, etc. to find your attempt to create a general pattern fairly laughable.

Have you been a MSM shill long?

I’m not an MSM shill. I am not defending the MSM. Quit trying to troll me. Thanks.

[gaius marius]

When the grunts think it’s going well and the back seat drivers are in a panic, it’s not he back seaters who have the superior perspective.

and yet clearly, the frontliners in vietnam knew they could beat the enemy, inflict massive relative damage on them — and we were nonetheless decisively losing that war long before we fled the country. there’s mcuh more to the picture than the experience of the grunts. their views are just that, and not necessarily representative of any total picture.

[Jesse Walker]

JDM asks: Like what?

Well, like Reynolds’ loopy theory that the New York Times ran a story about torture in Afghanistan to cover Newsweek’s butt for its Koran-toilet error, presumably out of some MSM solidarity.

This was a several-thousand-word article that several reporters worked on, that appeared only a few days after the Newsweek hubbub began. In a newspaper whose chief competitor owns Newsweek. At a time when most mainstream media outlets were, in fact, jumping all over Newsweek for its mistake.

I’m all for informed press criticism, but this was just ridiculous.

[moneyrunner]

So we are to conclude that media writers and editors are stupid ignoramuses based on their defense by Hakluyt. They are fast, inaccurate, sloppy and don’t understand the subjects they write about. And we have a whole thread defending them.

OK.

Good night.

P.S. sorry about the double post and my error in assuming my comments had been deleted. Please post this correction on page c-39. I can then feel the professional thrill of being a journalist.

[mau mau]

Please don’t judge libertarians by the Reason crowd. Reason attracts the worst kind of libertarian hanger-on. But its community does demonstrate one of the basic ‘crises’ of libertarian political organization.

simply put..

You have libertarians who’ve thought long and hard about how to organize political institutions according to an ethic of voluntary spontaneous social organization – and then you have people who are upset that they can’t legally sleep with underage girls.

[Hakluyt]

moneyrunner,

So we are to conclude that media writers and editors are stupid ignoramuses based on their defense by Hakluyt.

If you can call that a “defense,” so be it. Sounds you are purposefully trying to create a controversy where none exists.

And we have a whole thread defending them.

We have a whole thread discussing them.

bendover,

I just wish that NPR (often viewed as the American equivilant of the BBC) would somehow be able to dig someone up, who in a matter as important as war, would be able to read us more then a “scorecard” of deaths.

Dude, a very, very small audience listens to NPR. Now, the BBC is a globe-stretching media giant.

[Hakluyt]

mau mau,

You’r going to have work on your trolling skills, that one was just too transparent.

[Jason Ligon]

p regen and vanya are both right. In theory, the administration should have a set of strategic goals. There should be, and probably are, updates that might explain how a tactical advance along the lines of that described by p regen support those strategic objectives.

Reporters, even those biased in an administration friendly way, don’t understand military objectives, tactical advance, or strategic goals by themselves. That is why even Fox News can’t report anything that seems like good news – they don’t get it. One thing we do know about the media, they like to romanticize military operations even while criticizing them. I don’t believe that there is any bias here other than bodies making an easy story. You have to hand them something more material than that. Why isn’t the administration giving them the tools story about achieved objectives they can print?

The two answers that come to mind are:

1) The tactical advances are in fact only part of an overall strategy of just holding on. That won’t sell as good news.

2) The administration doesn’t get it themselves.

[bendover]

bendover, you’ve obviously never tried to explain to a journalist how the subdivision law works.

Actually Joe I once tried to explain Section 263a uniform capitalization costs to a reporter without much success

[gaius marius]

Cheering the loss of an American war, the useless expenditure of thousands of lives . . .and yet if I say that I think Gaius’ is lacking patriotism, some people would say that wasn’t fair.

mr terry, i’m not cheering anything. i’m saying that we were horribly wrong to get into vietnam, and our being expelled was the morally correct rectification of that error. the cost of being expelled — indeed, the waste of not thousands but millions of human lives — is not only our policymakers’ to bear but ours. if there is a god and a heaven and a hell, we will be made to answer for it. where am i cheering in that?

but am i “unpatriotic”?

i find some people are so bent on the holiness of the valiant and faultless nation that they construe any criticism of it when it is wrong as a sort of evil. i hope you aren’t such a person, for such people are the lowest among the low in my estimation — people who have abdicated a love of god and their fellow man for the perverse deification of an administrative mechanism known as “national government”. no good can come of that, and virtually none has. i view patriotism as a sort of sin, a disease of an unsound mind.

so i am not unpatriotic, mr terry, so much as ambivalent toward the idea of praying to a bureaucracy. i think the correct term is “apatriotic”.

[Jason Ligon]

Yeah. Whoo howdy. This Reason crowd is full of morons. How do you people live with yourselves?

[bendover]

Hakluyt, agreed the BBC is much larger. I was going for more of a “tone” type of comparison.

[Brian]

This part of Glenn’s update kind of stopped me:

As for my linkage to a blog post on how the military sees the press’s role in the war, well, a more diplomatic, but not that different, take can be found in this article from Parameters, the journal of the Army War College, where the media are referred to as “simplistic,” “pejorative,” and biased, and generally regarded as an obstacle to getting the job done right.

Er, OK. Put aside the fact that enlisted men can be thrown in jail for criticizing the president (which would tend to skew the opinions we get from the armed forces). Assume that the vast number of military men and women feel this way about the press. Hell, assume they felt the same way during Vietnam.

Does that make the reporting on the Pentagon Papers wrong? Certainly the press was a bur in the side of the military during Vietnam, but the Pentagon Papers not only showed the leaders of this country were lying about the reasons we were there and seriously doubtful that the war could be won. Maybe the generals in charge of the war hated the press, but they were lying about the war and losing the lives of a lot of good men and women as a result. Their feelings about reporters become remarkably irrelevant in that case.

The Army can hate the press as much as it likes. But if a war is going wrong, it becomes obvious, and their feelings don’t change that. And the people who support the troops — physically, emotionally and financially — need to know.

[moe]

don’t bother commenting, they’re filtering the comments.

[trostky]

I recall reading the genuinely stirring report from rightie web-darling Michael Yon about the reconquest of Mosul. Good stuff. But good news?

I read this weekend that Condi Rice went to Mosul — but only to the miltary base, because the city itself remained far too dangerous.

I hear from that side that the soldiers remain in excellent spirits and eager to kick the asses of the types of people who set off car bombs at police stations. Brave guys to a man. They also point out, though, that they haven’t enough brave men to actually maintain control in any city without letting other cities go to heck, or to seal the Syrian border, etc. I.e., they’ll never be able to finish the job that they remain eager to do.

Forget the Sunni-Shiite divide, I read a dispatch today about the U.S. and Iraqi armies raiding an Iraqi Interior Ministry torture dungeon. I’m delighted to read that the Army isn’t letting our Iraqi “allies” torture supposed insurgents, but what are the good-guy friends up to? And do we now have to fight them too?

Even the good news sucks. Price of empire, I guess.

[gaius marius]

But if we lose this Terror War, our media will be seen as largely to blame. They’ll suffer blame for their ignorance and for their petulance. They’ll suffer blame for seeing al Jazeera as comrades closer than the privates and NCOs and officers fighting to protect the First Amendment. They’ll suffer blame for putting their hatred of a Republican President before their love of country. Whether that assessment is fair or not, it is how the public will see things.

regardless of all else, i’d say the obvious tenacity of the liberal msm conspiracy mythology on this thread is a pathetic confirmation of stephen green’s warning.

[Jon H]

Security, moe’s comment slipped through.

Someone must pay. Go release the poisonous slow lorises into Welch’s cell, would you?

[Hakluyt]

Jon H,

Ha ha ha. 🙂

[Jon H]

But if we lose this Terror War, our media will be seen as largely to blame.

Really? The right wing will let Clinton off the hook for something?

Let me suggest a new story: It’s the fault of the MSM, which is controlled by Bill Clinton. Even Rupert Murdoch is under his control. Clinton turned the MSM against the godly war on Iraq, in order to avenge himself on the GOP.

[Matt Welch]

don’t bother commenting, they’re filtering the comments.

Moe, and other infrequent visitors — the server can be slow at times, even FUBAR … and it automatically rejects posts that contain more than url in the body text. As far as I’m aware, at least.

[Jon H]

Nice try, Welch, but it won’t get you off the hook.

You’ve got a date with one angry Slow Loris…

[Hakluyt]

Jon H.,

Better throw him to the screaming eels instead. 🙂

[Russ]

I have served in Iraq. I have friends over there now. None, and I do mean NONE, of us recognizes the country the media describe. The biggest frustration since returning is that the news is so far out of whack from reality that I would think it a joke if the stakes weren’t so serious.

We have no problem with the bad being reported; we expect it. However, the way it is reported, with no true balance, gives the American people the wrong impression.

I shudder to think of what coverage in WWII would’ve been like if reported by today’s news media:
“Germans trounce Americans in the Ardennes forest. No end in sight as Germans advance.”

“2000 Americans die for insignificant piece of beach called Iwo Jima.”

“Airborne misdrops at Anzio doom Italian campaign.”

“Mismanagement leads to loss of American aircraft carrier at Midway.”

…and on and on and on…

[Kahn]

The Big Media isn’t getting it right. None of them. Not even Fox.

Josh has the most interesting post here, and nobody even blinked.

I suspect what Josh implies may be closer to the truth than all the rest of the babble, like

We’ve made it much easier for them to take Baghdad, the historical capitol of the Caliphate.

Jon, tell us again which planet you’re from?

____________________________

Bush and the MSM are both obviously inepts.

Bush, because he never really made a clear case for war and still hasn’t, to me and many others. He acts like an arrogant CEO that doesn’t have to explain shit to anybody. And it’s obvious that nobody on Bush’s arrogant team thought about the morning after plan.

The MSM, because they spend so much time reporting costs and body counts (and otherwise, apparently hoping to make it look as bad as possible) that I don’t believe them capable of objectivity, even if they wanted to and tried real hard.

If something good actually happened over there, these dolts wouldn’t be able to see it right in front of their eyes. The only thing I’m sure of is, they aren’t going to let me miss one little bad thing that happens, nosiree.

Anybody that hands the microphone to that idiot mayor of NO after Katrina — instead of flaying his incompetent ass alive — is not capable of being objective. And the “anybody” here is our dearly beloved MSM.

The mayor of NO richly deserved to be painted in the most negative colors possible. Yet he too often wasn’t by the MSM.

I’m not sure how anybody could try and defend the MSM as “objective”. They aren’t.

So when it’s done, everybody has left us in the dark. MSM included.

Is that a good thing?

I consider Bush and the MSM to be roughly, equally responsible.

[Stephen_M]

About 18 months ago I read Welch for several weeks and concluded “Snide over Substance”. This whine is not maturing at all well.

[Hakluyt]

Russ,

I shudder to think of what coverage in WWII would’ve been like if reported by today’s news media….

Much of the press coverage of WWII had numerous negative tilts to it (and properly so – there were numerous clusterfucks by the U.S. military during the war). Of course, the media was also officially censored by the U.S. government at the time too. Are you arguing for government censorship of the press?

[Hakluyt]

Russ,

Oh, and there were numerous clusterfucks hidden from the American public because it was politically convenient to hide such embarrressments.

[Ken Shultz]

You go out for a couple of hours and look what the cat drags in! …It’s like in the ol’ days with the torture apologists. …Except some of this shit is actually funny!

“One comment holds painfully true; if America leaves Iraq in disgrace then the blame is going to fall on the MSM (as well as academia).”

Ha!

Nevermind the people who took us there. …or by MSM do you mean Fox News? …is “academia” a veiled reference to neocons?

Ha!

[JDM]

“Its more the case that they were printing, etc. stories made up by others.”

More often, perhaps, but they also were busy making things up.

It’s just what they do.

http://newsbusters.org/media/2005-10-14-NBCToday.wmv

(Not from New Orleans, but funny, nonetheless.)

Jesse,

Well Ol’ Glenn is getting carried away when he goes into conspiracy theories, but I think the righty bloggers make a pretty good case that the press in general has a deep institutional bias toward DNC Theology. It’s mostly selection bias, in my mind.

[Hakluyt]

Ken Shultz,

I can’t wait for them to start discussing “market failure” and how we need government regulation of what the media reports to deal with that “failure.” 🙂

[JDM]

In addition to the difficulties of getting a story right, whatever the bias of the reporter…

[Ken Shultz]

“Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist.”

You’d think it was a strawman, wouldn’t you? …I mean, if you hadn’t read it for yourself. ; )

[Californio]

Sigh. Well, I am not in Iraq – so I cannot speak to how accurate the media is informing us back here. However, If it is anything like how our local media [i.e. the L.A. Times] covered the California recall election, prepare for victory to break out any moment. Locally, our beknighted media kept telling the electorate about how Arnold was doomed to lose. Think the media does not have an ax to grind? Sure. whatever.

[misc]

This thread perfectly illustrates why I loathe the news, why I have cancelled my subscription to the regional newspaper, but not the small local daily, why I watch no news on TV, and why the majority of young students don’t believe the First Amendment is important. The media has ever been a whore of interests, special and conflicting. I’m just no loner paying. The media as a group, and individually, makes me, to put it mildly, nauseous.

[Mark H.]

Leftie slaps rightie with brickbat. Rightie smacks down leftie with a garden rake. Sucker-punch to the ribs begets whack on head with rolling pin. “You’re a dirty tyrant kisser!!” “You’re a shill for the secret Rove brigade!!” “Unh, unh!!!” “Are too!!”

Happy Jack has the only worthwhile post on this thread, and that includes Matt Welch. He links to actual research relevant to the original post, from a source one may not reasonably suspect of bias in favor of the outcome.

If you follow his link, pay attention to the wrap-up on the 11th page (page no. 132). Something for everyone there.

Thank you, HJ.

[pdquig]

The MSM Iraq news corpse has been buried in the Green Zone since May 2003. I don’t blame them for being too scared to venture out and do some real reporting. I do blame them for thinking what they are doing is adding any context. They can’t get it right because they’re incestuous shut-ins. You can do better in your den reading Michael Yon or Iraq the Model, etc., than they can do there.

And with the 24hr news cycle, they cannot afford to keep their pie holes shut.

[Kahn]

6Gun,

One bright day, when the focus is less on pot or eminent domain and more on the changed nature of a nuclear world, perhaps the anti-authoritarians will align with a solid, realistic defense of the original Republic and its principles

Don’t look for that to ever happen around here. They aren’t interested in being relevant around here. The bias here is simple: somebody has to oppose everything, everyone, every time.

If you try proposing a constructive idea, the best you’ll get in response is “I’m opposed to that!”.

[Ken Shultz]

I find the suggestion that the media is *gasp* biased to be…um…sleep inducing. …but the people who get all bothered by the idea of media bias are interesting. True believers seem to be overrepresented in the group–they seem to get so upset ’cause they think everyone would be a true believer too if only the media would report the facts the way they really are.

…They’re like creationists, convinced that if geologists haven’t found definitive evidence of the flood, then they just aren’t looking.

They rarely put what I believe to be their base contention into words. …and I’m talkin’ about both the left and the right here. The base contention being not just that the media is biased, but that the media is secretly biased. …with the standard caveat–oh what a tangled web…blah blah, woof woof.

[Joe]

If you fail to realize that the press is losing freedoms even at this hour, when DoJ investigations are being called against CIA leaks to the press and journalists are being jailed for contempt when they refuse to out a source, then you need to wake up. And sadly I have to agree that the press asked for it with it’s completely irresponsible reporting on the Joe Wilson story.

That brings up a wonderful example of MSM perfidy. To report about Joe Wilson as if he hadn’t obviously and repeatedly lied is inexcusable. And now that the president is pointing out how blatantly lame the new Dem talking point, that the president lied us into war, is, you hear all of this whining about patriotism and soon mcarthyism. Just wait, it will come.

The patriotism complaint is a straw man. Whether or not the anti-war people are patriotic you are:

1. Wrong about prewar intelligence. The president didn’t sell any of it to anyone, it was a broad consensus, and the intel the president got was more alarmist than the intel the Senate got. The Silverman-Robb report is excruciatingly clear, and even you anti-war people are probably capable of reading.

2. You are lying about what the president said before the war. He repeatedly said Hussein was not an imminent threat and that we couldn’t wait until it was imminent. He repeatedly said it would be expensive. He repeatedly said it would take a long time.

3. Democrats are taking a blatantly weak and unsupportable position, and it has been repeated without context or question by the media. They got the same, if less alarmist intelligence and they came to the same conclusion as the President, Clinton, Albright, Chirac, Rockefeller, et. al. Now they are trying to rewrite history for political gain in a manner that undermines the war and if successful, public support for it. If your means and goals undermine the country, and it is based on an obvious lie, you be the judge.

4. There have been two extremely successful elections. An increasingly large number of Iraqi troops are nearing combat readiness and are taking up the fight against a ruthless enemy. I don’t hear a whole lot of whining about electricity or water or sewer, and as of a year ago healthcare facilities were above pre-war and improving. 3 years to rebuild a country? How long did it take to rebuild Japan and Germany? It took us 11 years to finish our own constitution in the US and we weren’t fighting anyone on a major scale. Get a grip and come back to reality before you say there is no progress.

5. I have seen repeated here this canard that we “created” these terrorists. There were attacks all over the world by these formerly nice people pre-9/11. Before we invaded Iraq Bali was bombed. Since then there have been how many attacks on American interests outside Iraq? The difference is now they are trying to fight us in their backyard instead of exporting it. If you haven’t noticed over the las few years the primary victims of Islamist Muslim violence has shifted from non-muslims to muslims. And they are turning against it. It might not be possitive from the muslim point of view, but it had to happen and it is time they took responsibility for what they have been giving to the world. The anti-alquaeda protests in Jordan were a watershed. Another step has been taken in this war of ideology.

[Ken Shultz]

Don’t look for that to ever happen around here. They aren’t interested in being relevant around here. The bias here is simple: somebody has to oppose everything, everyone, every time.

I think Reason and Hit & Run have been remarkably relevant. They’ve been relevant before most Bushbots realized it, but take your comments here today for instance. Are you posting comments here because Welch’s post was irrelevant?

Oh, and you’re ignoring the, at least, two Reason staffers who were, and I believe still are, pro-Iraq War. They make many of the same points other pro-Iraq War commenters make–they just do it better than the rest of you.

[tcobb]

No–the media isn’t biased. They’re just retards. The Rathergate forgeries were demonstrated to be such within a matter of hours after they were posted on the internet. There was no bad faith on the part of CBS–they’re just mental defectives. And its just not right to harbor grudges against mental defectives. Its mean-spirited. Its just like the Democrats who had access to the same information Bush had prior to the invasion of Iraq and who voted to allow the invasion of Iraq. They were duped. The evil Bush took advantage of RETARDS. Has he no shame?

And that is exactly why we should listen to these Democrats now–because they have proven track record of being stupid. Who could ask for anything more?

[Ken Shultz]

I’m sure the comments directed at Democrats will make fascinating reading for all the regular Democrat commenters here. …I mean, commenter.

That’s right. Of all the regular commenters here, I know of one–count ’em–one Democrat. I’m sure he’ll be flattered at all the attention, so keep it up.

…You’ve almost persuaded him, I’m sure.

[bb]

I’ve never used the term “unpatriotic” to describe negative news coverage but emphasising the negative while ignoring the positive is certainly not “patriotic”. Maybe people that want to talk patriotism in this topic could use “anti-patriotic” instead so that the media won’t get their panties in a wad.

Vietnam has nothing to do with Iraq except it was a recent war. The Iraq war is more different from Vietnam than Vietnam was to WW2. In fact, if I am doing my math right, Vietnam was closer in time to WW2 than Iraq.

Call me blindly patriotic but I really want this war to be concluded and everytime somebody specifically targets a high profile location (better media coverage) for the next car bomb or saws off another contractor’s head or kills another set of children, not because any of those tactics have any strategic value, they have none, but because they have immense propaganda value, I know that they do it for the media. And I know that it encourages Zarqawie (sp?) and his people to hang in there for another day.

I know all that, but I am not calling for an end to press freedom. I am not calling the media unpatriotic. But everybody knows the impact it has. And sometimes it sucks.

[AST]

You forget that Glenn is a blogger. He doesn’t pretend to be delivering all the news that’s fit to print or claim omniscience the way the NYTimes or CBS does.

Still, he is hardly a Bush apologist. He’s more like a disillusioned liberal, not ready to get religion and trust conservatives, but pretty sure that the New Deal wasn’t the answer. This post reads like a prelude to a purge.

This “Bush lied us into war” nonsense is not a very good example if you’re trying to convince us all that they aren’t all that bad, because it’s flat out nonsense. People who think the only reason for deposing Saddam was WMD haven’t been paying attention or thinking. The best argument on that score was Halabja, QED. Why when we’ve seen photos of what he did to the Kurds, is anyone claiming that he wasn’t a threat? He was shooting missiles at our planes on a weekly basis or more often. The best reason for taking him out, in my opinion, was that he was unpredictable, as the results of the Duelfer report showed. He started a war with Iran. Then took on Kuwait when anybody else would have known we wouldn’t stand for it. Then he bought off our “allies” and set us up at the UN even as he was skimming billions from the Oil for Food program.

Bush has never said anything but that this would be a long hard slog, yet the liberal media and their allies in the Democrat Party wouldn have us believe that no troops should have been lost, that we should have defeated a guerrilla army in the same amount of time it took to defeat the Iraqi Army at the start.

Sorry you’ve chosen a profession infested by knee-jerk leftists, Matt, but to get huffy about it makes as much sense as lawyers getting upset because nobody likes them.

[Ken Shultz]

Why when we’ve seen photos of what he did to the Kurds, is anyone claiming that he wasn’t a threat?

The American people didn’t support the Iraq War to war to protect the Kurds from what Saddam did to Halabja in 1988. …Are you taking coalition protection into consideration at all?

…Does anyone else remember the poll showing a remarkable portion of the American people believing that Saddam Hussein was complicit in the 9/11 attacks a whole year or so after we invaded?

He was shooting missiles at our planes on a weekly basis or more often.

Seems a high price to pay just to put an end to that.

The best reason for taking him out, in my opinion, was that he was unpredictable, as the results of the Duelfer report showed.

When you say “unpredictable”, you mean that the Duelfer Report showed he didn’t have what we thought he had, do I have that right? …And that’s the best reason for taking him out?

He started a war with Iran.

Regardless of what moneyrunner might say, I won’t call you objectively pro-Iran.

Then he bought off our “allies” and set us up at the UN even as he was skimming billions from the Oil for Food program.

And for this we went to war?

[Jim]

So exactly how was the MSM monolithically sabotaging Bush when Judy Miller wrote her infamous articles? Or when reporters who knew the truth about Scooter Libby and the whole Plame Leak fiasco kept their mouths closed during the entire 2004 campaign (we learn today that Bob Woodward knew two years ago and was just now released by a “confidentiality agreement” from his leaking source). Or when the Swift Boaters were reaming Kerry a new one and the MSM simply kept it as a he/said he/said type of story. This notion that the press is out to sabotage America and force the loss of the war in Iraq is simply ludicrious, and nothing more than pushback from a gang of incompetents that somehow managed to gain control of our country.

[Matt Welch]

Sorry you’ve chosen a profession infested by knee-jerk leftists, Matt, but to get huffy about it makes as much sense as lawyers getting upset because nobody likes them.

I’m a media critic, AST.

[tcobb]

Has anybody else here had their posts mysteriously erased? Ah–no problem–the Terminally Wise know best. Its not like they have an agenda of some kind–after all that might compromise their moral purity. Read this while you can–I suspect it will soon vanish.

[tcobb]

I’ve has an Emily LaTella moment. Never mind about the last post. I am a retard. With any luck I can I can get myself elected to Congress on the Democratic ticket next year. Your financial contributions would be appreciated.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

it’s there, and it’s massive and ugly and indeed growing — a linear regression of us military casualties per day since may 2003 clearly shows an increasing fatality rate for our armies.

Close, but not quite. The casualty count you linked to indicates that we’re doing (slightly) better now than during the seven month period from the end of June ’04 to the beginning of January ’05. During that 216-day period there were 579 deaths, for an average of 2.92 per day. In the 290 days since then, there have been 635 deaths, an average of 2.29 per day. That’s close enough that a few bad days could reverse the trend (if there is a trend), so I wouldn’t claim it as definite proof that things are getting better. But it’s even less accurate to claim it’s proof things are getting worse.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to deleting all of 6Gun and moneyrunner and moe’s comments. (Remind me again, what is the instapundit’s policy on user comments?)

[Tom Grey - Liberty Dad]

There is a Moral Hazard to a Free Press that is balanced. The alternative to balanced can be called “Public Relations” or propaganda, for one side or the other. [I support Balanced, even though it does not minimize US deaths.]

There are two sides fighting in Iraq, one of which will be victorious:
Bush & democracy OR terrorists & Islamofascism.

PR propaganda works. The minimum number of US casualties would be if the Democracy Country Press was pro-war, anti-terrorist only the evil terrorists. When all the ME persons interviewed on TV have horror stories of life under Saddam, or under the Taliban. When every body whose head has been hacked off is shown for a week or so on front pages — as the true picture of what we’re fighting against. Unbalanced (but not false).

The maximum number of US casualties would be if the reverse.

Anti-Bush implicitly supports the terrorists (just as anti-Vietnam War supported the N. Viet commies); it also supported Kerry in the election.

Do a scale of the press view:
PR for Bush; balanced; PR for terrorists (=anti-Bush)
Measure it in your own terms of how many US soldiers would die (by Nov 2005) with such press:
600 — 1200 — 2400
or perhaps, Matt, you think more like:
1900 — 2100 — 2300, because you think propaganda/ press doesn’t matter much on the battlefield?

It matters. The effect is in lives lost.

The objection that “anti-Bush” does not support terrorists is unproven and logically false. Saying Bush was wrong to boot Saddam is support for Saddam.

It’s like being against the Vietnam War without wanting the N. Viet commies to win — not really possible. What IS possible is to be against the way the war was being waged, while accepting the goal of fighting commies.

Phil said something very true, followed by a big lie:
“You know, goddamnit, WE didn’t win OR lose in Vietnam. All we did was pick up our fucking ball and go home.” — this is correct. We FAILED to do nation-building in S. Vietnam. But WE didn’t “lose”.

” The South Vietnamese lost,” — right. When you lose a war you’re subject to losing your gov’t, having your people murdered. The S. Vietnamese suffered some 4-700 000 murders by the victorious N. Viet commies. This plus the neighbor Cambodia Killing Fields was the result of following the anti-war policy.

” and nothing we were ever going to do was going to change that.” FALSE! We could have kept bases in S. Vietnam, just as we STILL have bases in Germany, S. Korea, and Japan. We could have funded the S. Viet army more, and given them more training in US weapons. There was a funding vote in 74/ 75(?), most Dems voted no.

The Dems voted for SE Asian genocide — but deny the results of their policy.

Our biggest failure in Vietnam? Unwillingness to attack, occupy, and liberate N. Vietnam — because we didn’t want to offend/provoke the Chinese commies.
Given the unwillingness to “win through offense”, the next big mistake– TOO MANY TROOPS. Because with the “Americans doing everything”, there was no need for the S. Vietnamese to do much.

Bush is doing much better in Iraq, though maybe we do have a few too many troops now; security failure is IRAQI failure, not US. Our military job is to help an elected Iraqi gov’t “establish justice, provide the common defense, and promote the general welfare.”

Imperfectly — but where has it been done better since WW II? If Bush helps create a democratic Iraq with less than 2500 soldiers killed, he’ll have done a FANTASTIC job. Not perfect, but where is the standard to say he’s doing badly? In fantasyland where wars are won and societies become democratic in some 90 minutes of intense action. la la la.

(On Firefox, Ctrl – + should increase font size)

[Twba]

…then you have people who are upset that they can’t legally sleep with underage girls.

I prefer an experienced woman who gets freaky. Is your mother doing anything later?

Have you been a MSM shill long? Does it pay?

Hakluyt obviously gets piecework from a mysterious source.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

OK, now I’ve deleted tcobb’s comments too. Anybody else I should censor?

[Shem]

Tom Grey-This plus the neighbor Cambodia Killing Fields was the result of following the anti-war policy.

Howzat? Cambodia’s collapse was largely due to American bombing destabilizing the King and allowing Pol Pot to gain a foothold. Don’t see much antiwar sentiment in bombing the hell out of countries that were perfectly willing to cooperate, do you?

Bush is doing much better in Iraq, though maybe we do have a few too many troops now;

Wow. Too many troops? You sure have a lot of faith in the Iraqis, especially given the fact that they’ve been caught red-handed torturing each other. Putting the inmates in charge of the asylum to “empower” them might get us out quicker, but it’s sure not going to avert a civil war.

If Bush helps create a democratic Iraq with less than 2500 soldiers killed

If we continue at 2 deaths a day, we’ll have hit 2500 by about the middle of next year. Can you see us getting out by then? And do you actually forsee success if we do find our way out, given the inhumanities that the factions are apparently visiting on each other even with us in-country?

[Tom Grey - Liberty Dad]

Also, we already have almost lost the free press to:
1) state the truth that blacks score less on IQ tests,
2) that women are less likely to have top 800 math scores on the SAT — and less likely to be top physicists.

In the UK, piggy banks are being discouraged because pigs offend Muslims.

Free Speech & press are under attack. Most folk are willing to give up freedom to get more security. If Free Press leads to less security, it will be opposed.

[Twba]

The world would be a better place if muslims would just learn to love bacon.

[Twba]

…it’s sure not going to avert a civil war.

The civil war started before Saddam was captured.

[jhn1]

For those who insist that the BusHitler promised a quick war, see the 2002 State of the Union Address.

Our war on terror is well begun, but it is only begun. This campaign may not be finished on our watch — yet it must be and it will be waged on our watch.

(see my link above, and almost halfway down the page)
Note the appropriate use of the military term campaign, not mission or battle or war. He didn’t even promise to finish Afganistan before the end of his term. (For clarification and comparison with earlier wars, Germany and Japan were not permitted to surrender until the fifties, one not until 1954; that was after pasting them so hard that massive civilian casualties and needed infrastructure was demolished by the bombing campaigns.)

[Shem]

For clarification and comparison with earlier wars, Germany and Japan were not permitted to surrender until the fifties, one not until 1954; that was after pasting them so hard that massive civilian casualties and needed infrastructure was demolished by the bombing campaigns.

Really? Because I could have sworn my grandfather told me all about being on the USS Missouri on 29 August 1945 when the Japanese signed an unconditional surrender in Tokyo Harbor. Guess he was crazy. But then, so was everyone who celebrated VE day on May 8th 1945. Wow. Glad I’m glad I have you around to set me straight. Since you’re being so kind, tell me, what color is the sky on planet Blatant Fabrication?

[The Real Bill]

a linear regression of us military casualties per day since may 2003 clearly shows an increasing fatality rate for our armies

Bull. Did you actually perform the regression analysis?

[The Real Bill]

By the way, I didn’t do the analysis myself. (I can’t find my TI.) More importantly, a linear analysis of the data is not really meaningful; it’s too simplistic. Linear analyses are only meaningful if the data actually lies fairly close to the line, which in this case it doesn’t.

[The Real Bill]

…lies fairly close… s/b …lie fairly close…

[Sean Healy]

Matt Welch should stop pretending to be naive. I’m a journalist at a national newspaper and everyone knows that the part of the story that is most damaging to someone in power goes right to the top. Given the choice between reporting equally newsworthy events from Iraq, one of which makes Bush look bad and one which makes him look good, the reporter will almost always choose the former, to look good to his colleagues if for no other reason. (Because, you see, reporting news that’s favorable to the prez makes you a ‘shill’, right?)

[Sean Healy]

Matt Welch should stop pretending to be naive. I’m a journalist at a national newspaper and everyone knows that the part of the story that is most damaging to someone in power goes right to the top. Given the choice between reporting equally newsworthy events from Iraq, one of which makes Bush look bad and one which makes him look good, the reporter will almost always choose the former, to look good to his colleagues if for no other reason. (Because, you see, reporting news that’s favorable to the prez makes you a ‘shill’, right?)

[moneyrunner]

Hello again. Still at it?

[Swen Swenson]

“Not really news, or is it?”
Matt, I think you’re missing an important point here: Without credibility the greatest newspapers and biggest broadcast media in the land are competing with the Weekly World News. Thing is, it doesn’t take all journalists, the majority of journalists, or even a significant number of journalists to damage that credibility, it only takes a few Rathers and Mapes and Blairs to get caught manufacturing the news and a few more Krugmans and Dowds to keep riding those stories long after they’re debunked.

That Green and Reynolds can make such charges and have a significant number of people nod in agreement ought to scare hell out of you and journalists everywhere. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t to be found in bashing the messengers, which tends to raise the response that ‘the lady doth protest too much methinks.’

[Bruce]

Yeah, whiny pussies, I’ll go with that. And about as libertarian as Hillary. God, I can remember when Welch was worth reading.

[Jason Ligon]

Okay, so I see some 245 comments, the majority of which are sympathetic to Reynolds. What I don’t see is what the good news is the press should be reporting. I would like to see something like a list of strategically significant objectives that have been achieved.

We have a debate about the rate of US casualties. It seems to me that absent a strategic context, there is not much story in the number of casualties. That was, in fact, one of the messages put out by the administration – that we don’t need to report some arbitrary number of bodies as a milestone. I agree with that. For heaven’s sake, though, you need to indicate what we HAVE accomplished before griping that the media is systematically biased against reporting accomplishments.

[tyree]

I believe it was General Giap who credited the American news media with turning the tide of the Vietnam War. The Tet Offensive was a military disaster for the communists and they were thinking seriously about asking for terms, when the American media gave them hope they could win. By reporting the battle as an American disaster without getting the facts the media help turn the politcal tide against the war in Vietnam, and millions were murdered in the area after we left and refused to honnor our pledges to support South Vietnam. This is one of the reasons the Vietnamese immigrants in Southern California voted 90% against the “war hero” Kerry. They remember his anti-war activism when he returned home and understand it’s effects on the politics of the day.

[tyree]

Jason Ligon…
Read some of the milblogs (military blogs) written by our men and women who are (or were) actually there. One Army Captain recently told an American reporter who couldn’t believe the soldiers moral was high that the troops would have miserable moral if they got all their news from the American media. Did you know reenlistment rates are up 250% in some combat units?
http://www.indepundit.com/

[quasibill]

Wow. Over 200 comments and I feel dumber for having read most of them. Did NRO or Freep link here?

While I tangle with Jason Ligon over this war and its justifications, I at least learn something from our exchanges. Most of the drivel in this thread, especially the stuff talking about libertarianism without even trying to reference first principles, is just neo-con talking points.

Hopefully this is not a trend, as this is normally a good place to have intelligent debate.

[metapundit]

Oooooh. Godwin’s Law fullfilled in the very first comment! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that done before…

[Solitudinarian]

Sean Hearly should stop pretending to be naive. I’m a journalist at an outrageously boring British newspaper and everyone knows that the part of the story that is actually news of interest to the reader (you know – the guys who buy the goddamned paper) goes right to the top.

Jackass.

[Solitudinarian]

Oops, that should be “Sean Healy” – I guess I need to get my facts straight and stop undermining the war effort.

[Vanya]

Jason, there is good news. But I think the problem the Bushies and their apologists are having is that the good news out of Iraq is not good news most Americans give a shit about. From what I can tell the good news is as follows:
1. The Kurdish areas are more free than at any time in human history and real economic growth is taking place
2. Real elections have been held which, while far from perfect, are among the most democratic in the Arab world
3. Pluralism seems to be slowly taking root in the Shi’ite communities
4. Increasing numbers of Sunni appear to be coming around to accepting the existing government

There is a real prospect that in 5-10 years Iraq will be a functioning, if highly corrupt, semi-democratic market economy state. In today’s Middle East that’s pretty good.

So this is all good news if you’re an Iraqi, or a bleeding heart liberal American. But if you’re an American worried about another 9/11, why do you care? The war on Iraq has made it clear in retrospect that Saddam’s Iraq presented no real threat to the US, we haven’t captured Zarqawi or Bin Laden, Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the central training ground for Middle Eastern terrorists and the presence of US troops has rallied increasing numbers of young muslims to flock to the banner of Jihadism. Nothing has been done to stem the Saudis from spreading Wahabi thought, in fact, higher oil prices are strengthening their regime. Americans are dieing to provide security for Iraqis who seem unwilling or unable to police themselves. And thanks to our intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq we have inadvertently strengthened Iran by removing its two hostile neighbors.
Iraq is certainly a better place today than under Saddam, but the price of this achievement has been to make the rest of the world more dangerous for the US. How does Bush sell this story to traditional conservatives? I think he’s not even trying anymore.

[Howard]

reynolds and his brownshirted ilk
gaius marius

Thread time of death, 3:10 PM, Nov 16. Gaius loses.

[M.A.]

What, exactly, is the basis for saying that the Mainstream Media is anti-Bush or anti-war? At the time of the buildup to war, most of these evil liberal news outlets were unquestioningly reporting the claims about mushroom clouds and Saddam being a threat (the Democrats were too, of course, but that’s the point: the Democrats back in 2002-3 were hardly anti-Bush or anti-war).

Given the increasing number of stories about “liberal media” journalists and their coziness with the Bush administration, what exactly is the basis for saying they don’t like Bush? Judith Miller was an unofficial arm of the Bush administration; Bob Woodward took tips from his administration friends; Plamegate is basically all about the number of “liberal” journalists who routinely got stuff leaked to them by pals like Cheney, Libby and Rove.

That many of these journalists vote Democratic, I don’t doubt. But if they were anti-Bush or anti-war, they would have, you know, not helped to get the war started in the first place.

[Tom Perkins]

The mainstream media seems to discount the good accomplished by our presence in Iraq by about a factor of 20, and it seems to magnify the bad by about three. When they are forced to correct negatively biased reporting, the correction seems to end up on page 39 between used car ads and the obituaries.

I do not think I am getting either representaive raw facts from the mainstream media, neither do I think I am getting unbiased commentary from the mainstream media–it is not representative of reality.

I believe at least half of the mainstream media personalities would accept an American defeat in Iraq–even in the war against Islamism generally–as our due. I do and should despise them for it.

As to 5th columnism in the press causing danger to the 1st Amendment, I think the bipartisan passed, Bush signed, and SC approved McCain Feingold law will be the greater danger, and I see no consituency in the organs of power here which have an interest in repealing it.

I think an end to “campaign finance reform” efforts is where the 1st amendment is best defended…standing on the right of the mainstream media to propagandize for this nation’s enemies is a losing proposition, even if they have the right.

Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp

[James Feldman]

Holy hell batman… what happened here overnight?

Anti-Bush implicitly supports the terrorists? The media will be to blame if we lose the war?

Perhaps it boggles the mind, but I couldn’t care less about what is deemed acceptable for the bounds of debate. And I certainly don’t care to be patriotic. Patriotism simply means that I want my team to win even if they don’t deserve it. I love the United States, which means that I wish greatly for it to succeed by being right.

I find it hilarious that there is suddenly a major movement among conservatives toward results-based reasoning. What a preposterously anti-democratic philosophy for all these supposed originalists to assume.

[Tom Perkins]

“I love the United States, which means that I wish greatly for it to succeed by being right.”

Funny, that IS patriotism. Concommitant with that is hoping that lessons about what is right aren’t more painful rather than less. In this case, of course, the wrong thing to have done was to have waited as long as we did to put an end to Saddam and the immoral and fairly useless sanctions against his people. Now that we are headed in the right direction vis a vis Iraq, the painful lessons, if they are learned, will be learned by the left (and the leftist mainstream media) which is seeking, and sometimes gladly at that, to profit politically from the costs and hardships of doing the right thing.

Invading Iraq and deposing its governing elites, and affording the Iraqi people a chance to raise a consensual government is an almost unique opportunity both to do the right thing and ourselves benefit from doing it by changing the focus of the Arab world from “what is done to us” to “what do we do to ourselves”.

The votes taken by the Iraqi people in the last several months are like an antibiotic which will sterilize the field where Wahhabism has festered for the last hundred years or so. Success in Iraq gets us halfway towards winning the battle of memes which the War on Terror most essentially is, and yes the media is making it more likely that fight will be lost by misleading the American public about what is happening in Iraq, what it likley means, and what is at stake.

Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp

[Mike H.]

Hehehe…

[rob]

“Okay, so I see some 245 comments, the majority of which are sympathetic to Reynolds. What I don’t see is what the good news is the press should be reporting. I would like to see something like a list of strategically significant objectives that have been achieved.” – Jason Ligon

Here’s an example.

You could also read some of the stuff that Reynolds cites as examples of the stuff that goes untold. Like this one:
http://www.defendamerica.mil/downloads/FactSheet-US_Coalition_Forces.pdf

I haven’t heard about any of the stuff mentioned in those links. In a war like this, it’s the little steps made every day that add up to achieving the “strategically significant objectives.” It isn’t the most sensationalistic thing to report, but the things that shape our lives and our futures rarely are the things that the media focuses on – nothing new about that.

[gaius marius]

Did you actually perform the regression analysis?

yes i did, in fact. would you like the equation? — y = 0.0426x – 51.145

Close, but not quite.

run the linear regression on casualties per day, mr cavanaugh. the slope is positive over the sample from may 2003 on. your different analysis is correct, skewed by some very high monthly totals corresponding to one-off events — but i would point out the rising minimums in a chart of monthly casualties, which are a disturbing sign of growing intensity. where in 2003 an good month was something like 1.1 deaths/day, we now rarely see less than 2.0.

[Jesse Walker]

Here’s an example.

One of the headlines there: “US Military Hospital Treats 1,000th Patient.” So that’s an important milestone, but the 2,000th dead soldier is not. Got it!

[gaius marius]

bagram airmen spread cheer, share smiles

mr rob, you are kidding, right? you are obviously joking.

[theOneState]

Wow,

I concluded some time ago that certain people have a definition of “good writing” that is, let’s say, unique. For these people, it seems, a “good writer” is simply someone who writes about interesting things — not someone who writes about things interestingly.

That first sentence tripped me up, too, but you’re wrong to apply your little pet theory about “certain people” to me. Thanks for the attempted insult, though. I was really almost touched.

[Viking Moose]

“Linear analyses are only meaningful if the data actually lies fairly close to the line, which in this case it doesn’t.”

huh?

[Dan H.]

Okay, let’s step back from the name calling and accusations for a second, and ask some fundamental questions:

1. Is the reporting on Iraq accurate? By this I mean, if you were to try to understand the Iraq conflict by reading the news reports in the mainstream media, is the picture painted the same as one an omniscient, dispassionate observer of the war would see?

2. If not, do you believe the picture the media is painting is more negative, or more positive than reality?

If we can’t agree on those two basic questions, there’s no point continuing the debate. If you think the picture of the war painted in the media is accurate, then there’s really nothing to debate unless you believe that the media should intentionally hide bad news for the ‘greater good of the war effort’. That’s an entirely different debate.

Moving on…

3. Do you believe that the insurgency is really fighting a war of wills? In other words, they know they cannot defeat the U.S. militarily, so they are essentially fighting a PR battle to break the American will to fight. Do you agree with this?

4. If so, isn’t it fair to say that painting an unrealistic, overly negative view of the war works in the insurgency’s favor? Is this not helping them achieve their goals?

Those are the basic questions. We don’t have to debate whether reporters are unpatriotic, biased, or merely following the, “if it bleeds, it leads” dictum. It doesn’t matter.

I personally believe that a negative bias exists, and that this bias helps the insurgency and hurts the possibility for a positive outcome in Iraq. I also happen to believe that it’s not because reports are anti-American. I believe it’s because they are biased. From their perspective, they’re telling it like they see it. It’s just that their perspective is not particularly balanced. If you step into the situation already believing that the war is wrong, that it’s doomed to failure, and that it’s a quagmire, then you are going to accept evidence that supports your position as being more important than evidence that refutes it.

And if you believe that the war is wrong and doomed to failure, then you may see negative reporting that helps sap the American will to continue the war to be patriotic, to help end a conflict that you see as damaging to your country and which cannot be won anyway.

Believing that doesn’t make you unpatriotic. It may make you defeatist, weak, and misguided, but not unpatriotic.

[Ken Shultz]

Give rob a break.

…He’s still grappling with Administration culpability for the results of their interrogation policy.

[oz]

What a post! First the press is told that they are an arm of the gov’t in the WoT. Then warnings are given that if the WoT is lost, the press will be blamed and will lose its “freedom”. And then we will lose our freedom.
Hmmmmm. What shrill tripe.
The press has a responsibility to report the truth.
If the press is roped in to be an arm of the gov’t than right then and there we and it have lost.

[rob]

gaius marius, the story you ridicule IS good news – particularly for the people of that village. “More than 1,200 pounds of winter clothes, blankets, school supplies and toys were distributed to the local village, according to Master Sgt. Edgar Langdon, Bagram?s Adopt-A-Village coordinator.”

The fact that this doesn’t remotely resemble a good news story to you probably says more about you than about what’s being done by those airmen.

For the record, though, I was actually pointing to the “Progress Being Made” section at the bottom of the page. Here, allow me to spoon-feed it to you:

Fifty-eight teachers, supervisors, and administrators attend training to improve teaching methods.

The Model Schools training program shows continued success in preparing secondary school teachers.

Iraq Transition Initiative (ITI) grant provides for the rehabilitation of a local road, employing 60 local residents.

ITI helps expand a non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on promoting gender equality and combating the physical abuse of women.

A community center in northern Iraq, established to assist returning refugees, receives help in facilitating a training series.

Construction continues on the library and student center for a university in the Wassit governorate.

Universities discuss Centers for Excellence (CFE) to increase cross cultural understanding.

Reconstruction of primary school in Qadissiyah completed.

Work continues on Al-Sadder Stadium.

Internet center in Wassit benefits Persons with Disabilities (PWD).

[rob]

Ken Schultz,
Get over it. You’ve never been able to show that – despite repeatedly and pointlessly sucking up bandwidth with the same tired tripe.

Or, to take a page from your discussion style: “Go piss up a rope.”

[Matt Welch]

Matt Welch should stop pretending to be naive. I’m a journalist at a national newspaper and everyone knows that the part of the story that is most damaging to someone in power goes right to the top. Given the choice between reporting equally newsworthy events from Iraq, one of which makes Bush look bad and one which makes him look good, the reporter will almost always choose the former, to look good to his colleagues if for no other reason. (Because, you see, reporting news that’s favorable to the prez makes you a ‘shill’, right?)

What does disagreeing with the contention that the media is monolithically “on the other side” have anything to do with what you’re talking about?

[Ken Shultz]

What’s not to understand Matt?

…He’s a journalist at a national newspaper!

[Viking Moose]

Here’s an example of some spin:

When I read the first line, my interpretation of what was meant by the direct object in the title was very different from what was actually the case.

This is an example, from my perspective, of a definite, emotionally-charged slanted report against US involvement in the iraq war.

[url] http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1642832,00.html [/url]

The title of the article is, “The US used chemical weapons in Iraq – and then lied about it”

For me, “chemical” weapons entailed some sort of cyanide gas or the like. Not “Now we know napalm and phosphorus bombs have been dropped on Iraqis, why have the hawks failed to speak out?”

Technically, yes, those are chem weapons. But are they part of the ABC weapons, as commonly discussed?

Let’s check the article:

“White phosphorus is not listed in the schedules of the Chemical Weapons Convention.”

I see.

But then again, when the reason to go to war was given as WMDs, I had, using the same standards of expectation, expected stockpiles of warheads or some sort of ready-to-transport weaponized system. Until any are found, I’m skeptical of the reasons given for war there.

For other examples of Guardian-style bias (my terminology, reflecting my own biases), see:

Derstandard.at
Politikken.dk
diezeit.de
profil.at
spiegel.de
dr.dk
berlingske.dk
j-p.dk
diepresse.at
aftonbladet.se
nrk.no
sueddeutsche.de

i’m sure there are more.

[Ken Shultz]

You’ve never been able to show that – despite repeatedly and pointlessly sucking up bandwidth with the same tired tripe.

Out of curiosity, the Administration promised to veto legislation that would prohibit the “cruel, inhumane or degrading” treatment of prisoners. An earlier version–I think it’s still in–would prohibit the use of any interrogation methods not authorized by the Army field manual. …How do you feel about that?

…Would you support an Administration veto?

[rob]

Jesse,
I’d say that both are milestones. What’s the disconnect? One milestone marks 1,000 people being treated thanks to the U.S., the other marks 2,000 killed by those fighting us and the Iraqis who want a shot at determining their own gov’t.

[Helian]

but don’t you dare say such a thing about the guy who actually commands the world’s most powerful military.

[Helian]

>>”Italics mine, to emphasize a common theme that Reynolds has long helped to promote — that American journalists are monolithically serving the needs of, and perhaps even openly rooting for, American’s enemies.”

Really? Monolithically? Openly rooting? The links you cite don’t establish anything of the kind. This tactic of inventing straw men to knock down is typical of your debating style, and Glenn is right to call you on it.

“It’s a load of bull,…”

The media’s negativism on the war has been documented over and over again, quantitatively and qualitatively. This kind of hand waving is typical of the response of their apologists. Don’t bother actually addressing the arguments of your opponents. Just wave your arms and call them a “load of bull.” Very convincing!

“So, if I’m getting the general vibe of the pro-Pushback crowd right, it’s “fair” to declare? but it’s “not fair” to print the headline “Battle Deaths Continue to Mount? but don’t you dare say such a thing about the guy who actually commands the world’s most powerful military.”

Why the familiar rush to the moral high ground, Matt, why the ostentatious virtuous indignation? Don’t you think it’s “fair” to suggest that the people who are obsessing about the manipulation and “Bush lied” memes may have an agenda? Don’t you think it’s “fair” to suggest that bias exists in the MSM? Don’t you think it’s “fair” to take note of media’s obsession with stories in the “Battle Deaths Continue to Mount” category to the exclusion of any good or positive news out of Iraq? Instead of hiding behind your lame strawman arguments, why not debate the real substance of what Glenn and the other people you link are saying? What they are saying is that the MSM’s reporting on the war is relentlessly and overwhelmingly negative, and that obsession with the “manipulation” meme has become so overblown that it distracts from the real issue, which is how we can win the best future for the people of Iraq. If you can debate either of those issues without the self-righteous piety and indignant hand waving we are familiar with from the left, but are a little taken aback to see coming out of the Cato Institute, have at it. I’m waiting to be convinced. I don’t expect much, though, because, like your cohorts on the left who are trying to peddle the same snake oil, you don’t really have a leg to stand on.

[JAG]

“When you say one day that publicizing the atrocities that Zarqawi and his bands commit against innocent civilians is the best way to win the war of ideas

And then say the next day that publicizing the atrocities that Zarqawi and his bands commit against civilians is a betrayal of our troops and will contribute to our defeat…

does it give you a headache?”

Dear Joe,

I don’t think any of us “War Pigs” mind the publicity of Zarqawi killing ever more innocent people or even soldiers. What gives “War Pigs” a headache is the utter lack of perspective, the information on the progress, the elections, the constitution and the fact that, yes, while over 2000 soldiers have died, historically, that’s RELATIVELY, good knews.

Question: if a “War Pig” suggested, prior to the invasion, that within three years elections would be held, Saddam would be on trial and a new constitution would be ratified at the cost of 2000 lives what do you think YOUR response would have been.

I know what mine would have been; that this was a laughably optimistic judgement.

We are likely far beyond half way through with this process. No one, even we “War Pigs” want war with anyone. But sometimes evil has to be confronted. You, obviously, either don’t see life this way or don’t see Saddam and his threat as sufficiently evil. Funny thing was, you can Goggle Clinton, Saddam and evil and get quite a few comments by him and his cohorts that outline just how bad they thought he was…..virtually verbatim with the descriptions Bush has used.

The MSM could give perspective but either they don’t want to, it doesn’t “sell” or they don’t care. One way or another, the perspective is slanted.

[The Real Bill]

huh?

Viking Moose at November 16, 2005 12:35

The data do not describe a linear phenomenon; therefore, a linear analysis is not terribly illuminating. Any set of data can be analyzed such that a straight line results, but if the correlation is weak, the analysis is, well, weak. Nonetheless, the slope is positive when the analysis is performed (according to gm), which is not a good sign.

[Matt Welch]

Really? Monolithically? Openly rooting? The links you cite don’t establish anything of the kind. This tactic of inventing straw men to knock down is typical of your debating style, and Glenn is right to call you on it.

The links I cite include the following phrases:

1) “The media [is] a single-edged sword against [the] US now.”

2) “today’s press works to put the worst possible face on the war.”

3) “The American establishment, led by the media and politicians, is in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq.”

Note the lack of qualifiers — it wasn’t “some of today’s press,” or “the anti-war media,” it was “the media” and “today’s press.” That is what I mean by “monolitihically.” This is not a “straw man,” this is a literal reading of the quoted and linked material.

Or try this:
http://instapundit.com/archives/020521.php

Where Glenn links to and endorses a Charles Johnson post entitled “The Media Is the Enemy,” and tacks on a trademark “indeed” to Johnson’s suggestion that Seymour Hersh be tried for treason and sedition.

Glenn “called me” on something I did not come close to saying.

Don’t bother actually addressing the arguments of your opponents. Just wave your arms and call them a “load of bull.” Very convincing!

I addressed those arguments in my May 2004 column on this issue that I linked to; I chose to focus on other things in this blog post.

Don’t you think it’s “fair” to suggest that the people who are obsessing about the manipulation and “Bush lied” memes may have an agenda? Don’t you think it’s “fair” to suggest that bias exists in the MSM?

I think all of that is fair. I have never suggested otherwise, in this post or anything else I have ever written.

Instead of hiding behind your lame strawman arguments, why not debate the real substance of what Glenn and the other people you link are saying?

So, criticizing the actual words of Glenn and his favorites is a “lame strawman argument”?

What they are saying is that the MSM’s reporting on the war is relentlessly and overwhelmingly negative, and that obsession with the “manipulation” meme has become so overblown that it distracts from the real issue, which is how we can win the best future for the people of Iraq. If you can debate either of those issues without the self-righteous piety and indignant hand waving we are familiar with from the left, but are a little taken aback to see coming out of the Cato Institute, have at it. I’m waiting to be convinced. I don’t expect much, though, because, like your cohorts on the left who are trying to peddle the same snake oil, you don’t really have a leg to stand on.

Reason is published by the Reason Foundation, not the Cato Institute.

As for the “real issue” of “how we can win the best future for the people of Iraq,” I’ll save that discussion for the comments of a blog post that are actually about that topic.

[rob]

Ken,
I think that vetoing such legislation is a bad idea – an even worse idea than passing it in the first place.

Do I think that interrogation may have been “cruel, inhumane or degrading” at some point? Perhaps.

But I also tend to think that your approach to the treatment of prisoners is Pollyanna-ish. We treat most prisoners and detainees, even given the problems at Abu Ghraib, better than any other nation has. Even tho our soldiers know that capture equals horrendous treatment at the hands of enemies we treat relatively well.

Face it, despite your shrieks of outrage, even POWs are afforded a status under Geneva that doesn’t prevent some rough treatment.

Illegal combatants are extended the more stringent protections regarding their treatment by the UCMJ, even when Geneva doesn’t apply – in this conflict that was true prior to Bush’s Memo, and doubly so after it.

But I still think that that you’re just bitter that you haven’t been able to pin the bored stupidity and the breakdown of NCO and junior level officer leadership at Abu Ghraib on the entire chain of command.

[Shem]

Vanya, I disagree with some of your points;

1. The Kurdish areas are more free than at any time in human history and real economic growth is taking place

Not if you’re a Sunni.

2. Real elections have been held which, while far from perfect, are among the most democratic in the Arab world

No argument there, I suppose, although I don’t find questionable elections carried out under the oversight of American soldiers to be all that much of a success. At least not until we find out if they take.

3. Pluralism seems to be slowly taking root in the Shi’ite communities

If indeed pluralism is taking root, then it’s moving at a glacial pace. Statements of tolerance are on the rise, true, but they’re also easy to make. And, I must say their effect is kind of damaged when Americans find basements full of tortured Sunni dissidents. Besides, why shouldn’t the Shi’a play nice? They hold a majority of the population. All they have to do is wait out the Americans and they can do whatever the hell they want with the country.

4. Increasing numbers of Sunni appear to be coming around to accepting the existing government

First, the only evidence that I’ve seen for that is the fact that the constitution passed just barely in one of the Sunni provinces needed to carry the day. But, even leaving aside the accusations of Kurds and Shi’a crossing the border to influence the race and accepting that they’re tuning in, does that really tell us that good things are happening? For all we know, the Sunni are only voting because they’re worried about the idea that the Shi’a will use the government to carry out retribution against them, not the best basis for a long-term government.

But the biggest issue I had was with this;

But I think the problem the Bushies and their apologists are having is that the good news out of Iraq is not good news most Americans give a shit about

Oh, come now. These are the people who made outright propaganda tapes about Social Security reform and the prescription drug plan and distributed them to news agencies disguised as actual reports produced by journalists. Are you really telling me that people who are that capable of working the system are suddenly incapable of getting their agenda out there in a compelling fashion?

I genuinely hope that Iraq manages to turn itself around. But I’m not going to put my faith in a pack of liars just so that I can feel at ease.

[Ken Shultz]

Don’t you think it’s “fair” to suggest that the people who are obsessing about the manipulation and “Bush lied” memes may have an agenda? Don’t you think it’s “fair” to suggest that bias exists in the MSM?

As I commented above, the underlying charge seems to be that the media has a hidden bias. …The commenters seem horrified and flustered at the prospect that media bias surprises no one. …or hardly anyone.

Add to that the assumption that the main stream media is to blame for losing the war–just like in Vietnam–’cause the American people just wouldn’t withdraw support from their precious holy war, and you get this whole, blubbering combustible mess.

[Vanya]

Shem,

I don’t disagree with your less optimistic view. My point is that even if you paint the rosiest picture possible, which I tried to do, you can’t create a story that is very compelling to the average American. Fighting foreign wars to create secular democracies in far-off countries is an idealistic left-of-center idea which is not really an easy sell to the conservative base. Bush cannot point to a single accomplishment over the last two years that has actually made America safer today, and Americans don’t often like to take the long-view.

I am also surprised that such expert media manipulators have had so much difficulty selling “the good news out of Iraq.” The cynic in me thinks that Rove prefers that the MSM report bad news – keeping the right-wing focused on the traitorous US media rather than what’s actually happening in Iraq.

[Helian]

>>The links I cite include the following phrases:
1) “The media [is] a single-edged sword against [the] US now.”
2) “today’s press works to put the worst possible face on the war.”
3) “The American establishment, led by the media and politicians, is in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq.”>Or try this: http://instapundit.com/archives/020521.php
Where Glenn links to and endorses a Charles Johnson post entitled “The Media Is the Enemy,” and tacks on a trademark “indeed” to Johnson’s suggestion that Seymour Hersh be tried for treason and sedition.>So, criticizing the actual words of Glenn and his favorites is a “lame strawman argument”?<<br />
I’m game. Where, in Glenn’s “actual words,” did he ever claim “that American journalists are monolithically serving the needs of, and perhaps even openly rooting for, American’s enemies?” I don’t buy for a minute your implicit assumption that negativism and defeatism are the equivalent of deliberate treason, or that Glenn and any of the other sources you link ever intended such an accusation.

[Little Nikita Krushchev]

For the record, though, I was actually pointing to the “Progress Being Made” section at the bottom of the page. Here, allow me to spoon-feed it to you:

Fifty-eight teachers, supervisors, and administrators attend training to improve teaching methods.

The Model Schools training program shows continued success in preparing secondary school teachers.

Iraq Transition Initiative (ITI) grant provides for the rehabilitation of a local road, employing 60 local residents.

ITI helps expand a non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on promoting gender equality and combating the physical abuse of women.

…

rob, where did you find this copy of my 1958 five-year plan?

[Ken Shultz]

I should add that the contempt for the American public underlying the arguments regarding the bias of the media and its supposed effect on the American public is soooooooooo much like the elitist, latte swilling caricature these people love to hate.

[Matt Welch]

Where, in Glenn’s “actual words,” did he ever claim “that American journalists are monolithically serving the needs of, and perhaps even openly rooting for, American’s enemies?”

Where, in my actual words, did I ever said he did? What I said was that it is a “a common theme that Reynolds has long helped to promote.” If you want to rebut that, go ahead and try.

I don’t buy for a minute your implicit assumption that negativism and defeatism are the equivalent of deliberate treason,

I’ve never tried to sell that assumption, explicitly or implicitly.

or that Glenn and any of the other sources you link ever intended such an accusation.

Let’s take not the intent but the actual words of one of the sources I linked — Charles Johnson. He wrote a post entitled “The Media Are the Enemy” (I mistakenly had it as “Is” before). Now, Charles writes about “the enemy” every day on his blog, and he’s talking about the people who would like to blow us up and create an 8th century Islamic dictatorship. And last I remember, “treason” is defined as giving direct “aid to the enemy.” If you *are* the enemy, and yet you are still an American citizen, you are guilty of treason, no?

Not only did Charles *not* qualify “the media” with anything like “some of” or “the anti-war sector of,” or “the Arab-world’s”; not only did he use the same word to describe them as he does to describe people who are trying to kill Americans every day, he also lamented that “our government apparently lacks the will to prosecute leaks like [the one detailed in a recent Seymour Hersh story] as some form of treason or sedition.”

To which Reynolds gave a hearty “indeed.”

Keep searching, I’m sure you’ll find some straw in there some day!

[rob]

“rob, where did you find this copy of my 1958 five-year plan?” – LNK

Dude, that post has to be the longest run-up to a lame joke in the history of HNR. Congrats on your milestone!

[Swen Swenson]

Hmm.. I thought one of the previous commenters was being more than a bit paranoid when he complained about having his comment deleted — until I returned this afternoon to find my comment deleted. Then, in the process of posting this comment, I discovered that you’ve got a bunch of comments that are only appearing in the comment preview view, not on the main comment thread. Looks like ya’ll got some technical diffugalties.

[Swen Swenson]

Sheesh! And now, an hour or so later, the missing comments are back. Lord, I love trying to debug intermittent faults. Good luck with that.

[Viking Moose]

Real Bill:

what sort of stats work do you do? did you do a test for nonlinearity?

the R^2 was something like 15%, and the DW was 1.87 or so on what i did. But since it looks like he regressed the avg deaths on time, i used proc autoreg… but that was to try to replicate his answer (which i didn’t get to do, see below). Since there’s heteroskedasticity, i started using ARCH (GARCH), but life got in the way 🙂

cheers,
VM

[Helian]

>>Let’s take not the intent but the actual words of one of the sources I linked — Charles Johnson.>Where, in my actual words, did I ever said he did? What I said was that it is a “a common theme that Reynolds has long helped to promote.” If you want to rebut that, go ahead and try.

[Mark]

They sure love the media when the media is being purchased by the White House. They sure love the media when the media is buying into what has turned out to be untruths, aluminum tubes anybody? They sure love the media when the media reports in lurid detail the particulars surrounding a blow job. They sure love the media when the media rides heard on Clinton for 8 years. They sure hate the media when they tell the truth about GWB and his administration.