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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! July 12, 2006 Speaking of Iraq...By GreyhawkWhen you give a speech, your opening remarks set the tone. You must make your key points early (and often) or risk them being lost on all but the most intent listeners. The same is true for writing - or reporting. Your opening paragraphs establish your story. This may in fact be even more important in writing than in speaking - readers can easily move on to something else without the stigma of appearing rude in public, and if you haven't made your point early you've lost them. For example, here are the opening paragraphs from US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad's remarks at Center for Strategic and International Studies: I will give my bottom line up front. I believe Americans, while remaining tactically patient about Iraq, should be strategically optimistic. Most important, a major change - a tectonic shift - has taken place in the political orientation of the Sunni Arab community. A year ago, Sunni Arabs were outside of the political process and hostile to the United States. They boycotted the January 2005 election and were underrepresented in the transitional national assembly. Today, Sunni Arabs are full participants in the political process, with their representation in the national assembly now proportional to their share of the population. Also, they have largely come to see the United States as an honest broker in helping Iraq's communities come together around a process and a plan to stabilize the country. And here are the opening paragraphs from the Washington Post's coverage of the speech: America's top envoy in Baghdad yesterday denied that Iraq is now embroiled in a civil war but acknowledged growing concern that sectarian clashes could derail the new government if violence is not brought under control. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad also said the new security crackdown in Baghdad has been a disappointment and is being reviewed to make "adjustments."Those lead paragraphs were so fundamentally at odds in meaning I honestly thought at first they must have been reporting on a different speech. In fact, those Post quotes must have come from ad-libbed remarks, questions and answers following the actual speech, or the reporter's faulty memory of the event, in which the only reference to civil war is in this context: "A precipitous Coalition departure could unleash a sectarian civil war...". It is a shame that the Post reporter couldn't find anything in the Ambassador's prepared remarks worthy of a newspaper headline. The full text of the speech, along with some interesting discussion in the comments at Belmont Club are well worth your while to read. The Post story is a complete waste of time. That's unfortunate, because they could have just as easily provided the actual text of the speech too - if they really wanted anyone to know what was said. Or they could take a cue from Glenn Reynolds, who in a characteristically brief and concise link to Belmont says "A LOOK AT what's going on in Iraq." It's really that simple. Posted by Greyhawk / July 12, 2006 5:56 PM | Permalink 2 TrackBacksWretchard at The Belmont Club posts a transcript of a speech delivered by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) July 11, 2006. Read More Europeans may soon tire of treading the moral middle, condemning both sides in the current Israeli action in Lebanon, and come down firmly on the side of appeasement... Are Hezbollah, Hamas, and radical Shiite attacks in Iraq part of an orchestrated... Read More 17 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 |
The equivalent of the "when asked he denied having beat his wife" type pre-emptive accusation. Selling the sizzle not the steak. Sophmoric journalism and reasoning worthing of Ringling Bros not a national news medium.
The Wapo has developed quite the ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Perhaps it comes from hanging around guys like Khalid Meshal - leader of Hamas - who just had an op-ed yesterday printed in WaPo.
I hope they didn't pay him for it, because they could be sued for supporting a terrorist organization.
Reporters take it as a point of pride not to lede with what government officials are actually trying to tell you. Sometimes this is reasonable, depending on what's going on at the time--say a public official just indicted for a crime who's making some bland announcement about something else entirely. But in this case, it's another example showing how the Post's cynicism means we can't rely on it tell us what the heck is going on over there.
Following up on Mr. Fotos' comment above: I think it's more than that. I recently read a book by Michael Crichton ("Airframe") and, while it is admittedly a work of fiction, it made an insightful comment about the press that I will attempt to paraphrase here. To wit, the press is not interested in finding out what actually happened, instead they are convinced that villainy has occurred and seek any evidence to confirm that erroneous conclusion. In addition, they are so focused on the "Now" that they have no interest or even understanding of context, whether historical of otherwise. This is what leads to the drek presented as news we see in the papers and on the TV.
Your Belmont Club link takes me to The WaPo.
Ecch.
Regarding the media's coverage of Iraq...it's funny how they keep missing stories like this...
Polish Intelligence picked up an al Qaeda terrorist in Iraq who turned out to be a member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party as well. I have some more details here http://regimeofterror.com/archives/2006/07/salas_khabbas/
Here is my response to Robin Wright:
=======================================
I read the transcript
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/07/khalilzad-on-iraq.html
And I read your coverage:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/11/AR2006071101276.html
This is why I stopped trusting WP for any significant world news long ago. The excessive (and improper) use of quotations, and the inability to convey most of Ambassador Khalilzad's points is indicative of
the writer's minimal skills and comprehension of a complex situation. At least WP has good entertainment and style columns so they can remain competitive with TV Guide and Seventeen Magazine.
I'm not any fan of the Washington Post, whose usual pattern is to rubber stamp the White House's propaganda whenever it can. But from time to time a glimpse of truth gets through their filter, and this was one of those times.
The unreported content was obligatory boilerplate crapola of the sort that anyone who has ever spent any time in Washington can recognize in their sleep. The newspaper reported what was new. Pity that the idiots of the so-called milblogosphere can't see that.
But then there's a lot you can't see, starting with the fact of American defeat staring us in the face.
p.s.: I'm back.
PS,
You're still stupid, though.
Subsunk
"But then there's a lot you can't see, starting with the fact of American defeat staring us in the face."
Posted by WW at July 14, 2006 04:27 AM
Yup, every time I look in the mirror, I'm saying the same thing. "Man I got to get de feet looked at soon. My dogs is killin' me."
To paraphrase Sir Winston, "Willy announced to all his liberal friends that in three years America would have its neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken. Some neck."
If that is what defeat looks like, I'll take it every day of the year. Because Total Victory is gonna leave some kind of nasty mark on 100% of the Muslim world. And I'll take that too.
Subsunk
Is this what victory looks like to you? Or this? Let me tell you something, you retired nutscratchin' brain-dead drunk, when you can't even control the capital of a country after occupying it for three years, you've lost.
Oh, and by the way, it would seem that the Army Chief of Staff hasn't quite swallowed the same Kool-Aid as you. He says we're "not losing." Methinks that's what we call, "damning with faint praise."
Somehow, it's more fun when you can't actually link to anything Willy tries to post. It is like watching a mime being attacked by bees and thinking he's acting out his play. I love it when dementia takes over and stupidity shows its true face.
Look at me. I'm Willy! Tell me how smart I am! Validate my existence!
Snicker.
Subsunk
In all de journalism schools, they taught dem students how not to be so simplistic minded, on pain of death, you know.
It's like 1 v 1 deathmatch for WW. I mean it in this sense. If one guy has a broken arm and a broken leg, he can still win. America has 50 arms and 30 legs. Some kind of mutant vat freak, I'd say. You can't beat America by quoting "normal" considerations. America has never been normal. There's always another level of power under America's genkai, or over it for that matter.
There's always some new trick America pulls when America is facing defeat. Because Americans and their military do not become weaker as death approaches, we become stronger, we live more to its fullest, and our determination is empowered by facing death and defeat to an extent that staring into the abyss will make the abyss look away.
Al Qaeda's deathmatch with the US and Iraqis, will be ended eventually. The only question is, what will the journalists at WapO do then?
There's always some new trick America pulls when America is facing defeat. Because Americans and their military do not become weaker as death approaches, we become stronger, we live more to its fullest, and our determination is empowered by facing death and defeat to an extent that staring into the abyss will make the abyss look away.
Good God, I haven't encountered anything so ridiculous since reading what the Japanese told a kamikaze pilots before sending them off on their missions. Please tell me that you meant this as satire.
Donya jez love it?
More complaining and name-calling OTHER commentors than about what is really happening.
The Education of reality doesn't reside in one domain.
Let's not forget HOW we got into War, WHO lied to get us there, THE FAMILY histories of those involved, that RELIGION is the basis for ALL these deaths in the past and now (Look up Sect and Sectarian), the MEDIA ALWAYS lies now...
Of COURSE an Iraq-US spokeperson will paint a rosy picture. Can you believe him? Do you believe the government that put him there? Nuff said.
(Didn't anyone ever wonder why the US was the ONLY country NOT to PUBLICLY air the Bush 9/11 schoolhouse video to it's citizens? EVER? "How could 50 million Americans be so stupid?" That's how!)
Who is making MORE money off the wars than Saudi Arabia? If the Arabs are at fault for the high prices- Why aren't they making the BIG money?
Why aren't the borders of the US, Afghanistan, and Iraq secured?
Why was Afghanistan allowed to start growing and become the LEADING supplyer of opium in the world UNDER US PROTECTION? In only 3 years!
The real scary stuff is-
Why Americans don't get investigations into voter fraud by EITHER party OR the media!
Why Al Gore took over the REPUBLICAN Senate as VP to turn down ALL 24 of the requests for investigations into the 2000 Florida vote!
Why the Skull and Bones, a European Secret Society, chaired BOTH presidential nominees when BOTH were clearly inadequate!
Why Diebold, maker of millions of ATM machines can't make a secure voting machine that spits out a receipt! Why our Government gave them the contract anyway!
Why the FBI Anthrax investigation was pulled when they were closing in on the culprit STILL WORKING at a 'secret' US Bio-Lab that the anthrax came from.
Why Bin Laden was said (by Bush SR.) to have had nothing to do with the stockmarket options when I have a friend that told me 3 days after 911 that HE PERSONALLY SAW THEM in the hands of another runner and breifly discussed them on the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange.
Why Bush pulled both subs waiting to take Bin Laden out, pulled CIA tracking of known terrorists, went on vacation when the CIA was warning of an impending attack, re-assigned Bin Laden trackers over a year ago, quit looking for him less than a year after 9/11, refused to start an investigation into 911, refused to be sworn in or testify alone.
Why did every anti-hijacking plan, operation and back-up plans with at least 5 different government agencies ALL fail at exactly the same time? Which had never happened before but had been tested and used regularly without fail?
Why did the "liberal" media BURN Dan Rather when the 'information' in the FAKED memos was TOTALLY true according to the secretary that they used to prove the ACTUAL papers were NOT the same ONES she typed?
Why didn't they interview an Air National Guardsman and ask him how you get out of active duty early? Ask him WHY a Shi_-Hot Senator's Son Pilot never made Captain in 5 1/2 years. Only ONE reason.
All coincidences? Not in American politics. Nothing is "Just a coincidence." Look at the BIG PICTURE.
Why can you NOT buy electric cars in the US? Why were Electric Rav 4's, that were only leased to cities and corporations, shredded at the end of their leases?
Why is America's government and oil companies MORE determined to keep using the oil that is funding the terrorists than to change to cleaner and "Big-Picture" cheaper technology? CBNC re-broadcast of their news inteview of 3 OIL CEO's.
Why can we leave 3 perfectly working solar charged dune buggies on the moon, run with vacume tube technology, and not figure out how to do it on Earth 30 years later?
Why my mid-sized '90 Bonneville got 24 miles per gallon and my 2005 Kia only gets 20?
Funny stuff? Why did "Independence Day" decide to Nuke Houston of all cities?
Could it be because it's the HQ's for ALL the multi-billion dollar frauds, thieves, and bankruptcies in the last decade? Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, K-Mart, ..... .... ........ Halliburton ....
A friend of mine from Texas called Houston the Empire of Evil. So I looked it up.
Now- The real important stuff- Since you are reading this, I hope you can see why the Republicans fought Gore and Clinton tooth and nail to keep the internet OUT of the public's hands! Yep- Gore found the extra funding that Clinton said he'd need to pull off "public-izing" the internet. Look it up. (My word- Hey W can do it.) Gore didn't "invent it" (media hype) but was sure involved in it's funding and evolution to the pblic domain.
Funny how our "Liberal Media" castrates Liberals ... eh?
A mind is a terrible thing to waste-
So why do some churches frown on eduation?
Treat women as servants and maids?
Refuse to condemn the Catholics for pedophiles?
Or is that just in the US?
Wow,
Someone crazier and stupider than Willy. Whoda' thunk?
Careful Han! The Millenium Falcon is calling. The Emperor is using The Force to mind control Bush again! Save us.
See Willy, there's hope for you yet. You could join Han's conspiracy club and get loads of new material.
Subsunk