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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! March 21, 2005 Ed Wong? Dead WrongBy GreyhawkThis CENTCOM news release is short, factual, and to the point. 24 TERRORISTS KILLED DURING ATTACK ON COALITION FORCES All in all a bad day for terrorists, as any sane reader will agree. But Edward Wong's New York Times story on the event isn't short, factual, or to the point. It's repulsive in it's entirety, but I wanted to bring the following paragraph here for special attention, to capture it and preserve it in all it's glory:
Among the first loud explosions I heard in Iraq, some few weeks after arriving, were the car bombs that killed scores of children at the opening ceremony for a new sewage treatment plant. At the time I remember thinking I was close enough to hear the booms, but fortunate to be too far away to hear the screams. Thus my revulsion to suddenly "hear" someone like Wong cheering loudly for the creatures who did it. When I say journalistic malpractice or criminal negligence in reporting I'm talking about things like Wong, who also distorted Kevin Sites comments regarding the Marine shooting of a terrorist in Fallujah to make the story sound like outright murder. Prior to the attack on Fallujah Wong's contribution to the cause was a piece describing Ramadi as the real terrorist stronghold. Those who disembowel aid workers and turn victims of Down's Syndrome into 'suicide bombers' have no greater champion than Ed Wong. But there's a new air of desperate urgency in Wong's plaintive wails. The days when the Wongs of the world weren't righted are coming to an end. America's GIs are returning home to tell the truth about our war, to counter the poison spread by Wong and others like him - to expose them as useless relics of a bygone day. The latest example comes to us via Chrenkoff and Polish Immigrant. It's one of the local news stories you're going to see repeated with different names and faces in home town papers all across America.
Seems like it's time for Ed Wong to come home too. What's in your home town paper? I think you'll find these guys live near you too. Look and see, check on line and if you find a story with an actual interview of returned OIF vets leave a link in the comments or send me an e-mail. Let's welcome Ed home. Let's tell him he's wrong. Posted by Greyhawk / March 21, 2005 10:28 PM | Permalink 2 TrackBacks....is being told by the soldiers who fought it, and that is a dramatic change in many ways. For once the American people will get the whole story — t... Read More Baghdad: American soldiers on Monday night killed an Iraqi man and a boy and wounded four others in a car that was driving behind their convoy after a roadside bomb went off nearby, said witnesses, a police official and relatives... Read More 11 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
Bravo Company, our local National Guard unit is coming back to town in about two weeks (they have already arrived stateside.) I will be following how the local fishwrap covers any interviews. That paper has been generally supportive of the folks in the unit while being mostly unsupportive of the whole effort. It should be "interesting."
Sad to say that we have a marketing department - but we do. The guy who briefed us at the conferece in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago - where the Army's "Human Resources Command" - rather orwellian, that - said:
"Marketing is not some weird, west-coast, dot com thing you hear about on the news, it needs to be an important part of your day to day "intel" dump. We are not going to lose a "bullet" fight - not in a very long time - certainly not in your lifetimes, but we are in real danger of losing the "media" fight. This is serious business - and you need to be as engaged with it as you are with weapons qual and FTXs." (field training exercises)
Guess which news outfit is getting the lion's share of our adver... uh, "marketing" dollars...
Hey, that sewage treatment pumpstation you heard, was that in Rasheed?
We rebuilt that thing.
All in all here the news is so distorted that it's hard to believe. Sometimes I just have to chuckle. Are they reporting from the same country? Things can be bad here, but the vast majority of Iraqis support us.
Thanks for pointing all this out! Peace!
Ed Wong is the same reporter that wrote a story in Jan 2004 accusing American troops of shooting up a car and killing Iraqi civilians by mistake after their convoy was hit by an IED. He took the word of people that weren't even there and never contact the unit's commander to get their side.
Check it out on Rantingprofs: THE COVERAGE OF CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN IRAQ
The New York Times finally printed a correction...in the fourteenth paragraph of an article about a helicopter crash.
People should ask Mr. Wong why he bothered to drop the "r" from his name.
The journalist as the terrorist—what a tired, absurd analogy. School openings, irrigation, aid—all of this happens in the safer areas (south, west), surely. But Baghdad is far from safe these days, and this is where Wong is reporting from. This is the perspective you would likely have if you were stuck inside the Green Zone, unable to leave the compound for fear of kidnapping, murder, etc. More and more news agencies are simply pulling out of Baghdad because, after the elections, they didn't see the value in risking their people in an unsafe areas. So maybe you'll get more of your school opening stories as the exiles move out. But it won't be headlines until the fighting is over.
Aw, Blank, you sound disappointed. What, not enought bad news here for you? BTW, reread the post, because your comments don't seem to reflect having read it.
"Blank"
I wasn't making an analogy, nor painting reporters with a broad brush. I was saying quite specifically that Ed Wong is the best friend the terrorists ever had. 24 of his buddies bought the farm in Baghdad and he's pissed and he lets it show in his coverage.
As for reporters, I correspond with several. Jules Crittenden and I discussed the 'targeting of journalists' by military here. (As an expert on Baghdad coverage you know who Jules is) I also defended Kevin Sites on this blog when he released that video of the Marine snuffing a terrorist in Fallujah. I've referred to Joe Galloway as someone I disagree with frequently and respect tremendously. I've praised many others for factual coverage of Iraq. Recently I noted the great job the Philadelphia Inquirer has done with their coverage.
Obviously you haven't passed by this way before - since you put a lot of stock in proximity to Baghdad I'll tell you I just got back from there last month. Not sure where you are but I'll bet it's closer to mom's basement than Saddam's bunkers. This doesn't mean you can't have an opinion, but you injected the issue as important to credibility so I'm establishing mine.
For stories on how troops are usually treated in Baghdad see here http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-624766.php. Don't let the title fool you - Army Times isn't run by the Army.
The blogosphere is a dangerous place for uninformed folks to make silly claims - experts are everywhere. You're welcome to comment here but read the actual post slowly and carefuly without skipping words first.
By the way, which news agencies are pulling out of Baghdad? "More and more" implies a lot, and I'd love to do a post on the exodus.
Following your trail of links, you seem to have a legitimate beef with Wong. Mea culpa.
But your finger-wagging about making silly claims is hypocritical. Honestly, calling Wong a friend of the terrorists is absurd. Are you really assured that Wong wishes to see American troops die? You're apparently sure enough to slander him on a well-read Web site. As for Jules—-let's just say that its tough to stay objective when you rely on your story for your protection. A good reporter, no doubt. But his definition of objectivity is as obtuse as Robert Fisk's.
Oh, and remnants of the agencies still remain in Baghdad. Hard to find a photog there, and my source tells me that news agencies no longer want to risk the lives of their reporters for the story.
To close, I would like to clarify that I am bringing this up because I think the press has been the punching bag of the left and the right for far too long. You seem to have done a remarkable job keeping tabs on journalists, and taking to task those with whom you disagree, and that should be duly noted. But the rabid partisans have no trouble ridiculing one of the most important civic duties we have Next to military service, of course.). The Fourth Estate is an important vehicle. I'd rather not see the media devolve into an extension of the partisan's talking points.
Anyway, I look forward to reading more of your site in the future.
Dang blank - now I have to apologize for the tone of my first response. End of a long day, etc...
But yes - Wong's a cheerleader for terrorists. I'll bet he even wears a skirt and a fuzzy sweater to their pep rallies ;).
Think about this - what does Wong know about the attack and how does he know it? My bet is he has only that original press release and that paragraph above is garbage tacked on to it.
The Times in general has been positioning itself slightly more into the pro-war camp lately, I think they're looking ahead to one of the New York Senators running for a higher office a few years down the road. They've had some of the best coverage of the situation in Iraq over the past year.
And watchdogs - I'm all for that. It's my ass on the line after all. But this was a story of a rather large (by recent comparisons) coalition victory, and Wong spun it as anything but.
I apologize to Blank also. Thank you for the clarification.
Love the above exchanges. Thanks GH.