- Sep 19, 2011
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Senator Kerry (D) "American soldiers going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children."
BUT how appropriate for this administration when Obama accused our troops of "air-raiding villages and killing civilians"!
I mean folks you supporters accused GWB of lying about WMDs.. Those were JUST words! Words just like Kerry and Obama... nothing harmful happened.
A Harvard study found here THE "EMBOLDENMENT EFFECT" asked:
"Are insurgents in Iraq emboldened by voices in the news media expressing dissent or calling for troop withdrawals from Iraq?
The short answer is YES!!! according to Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy
research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university's Kennedy School of Government.
STUDY ABSTRACT
Are insurgents affected by information on US casualty sensitivity? Using data on attacks and variation in access to international news across Iraqi provinces, we identify an “emboldenment” effect by comparing the rate of insurgent attacks in areas with higher and lower access to information about U.S news after public statements critical of the war. We find in periods after a spike in war-critical statements, insurgent attacks increases by 5-10 percent.
The results suggest that insurgent groups respond rationally to expected probability of US withdrawal.
On a related note, the New York Times reports that the media aren't paying as much attention to Iraq as they used to:
Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic.
Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
If the Harvard study is right, we may be looking at a virtuous circle: Less violence means less media coverage, which in turn means less violence, says the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps one day we'll wake up to discover that America won the war in Iraq months earlier, but no one noticed because the reporters were all busy with other things.
BUT how appropriate for this administration when Obama accused our troops of "air-raiding villages and killing civilians"!
I mean folks you supporters accused GWB of lying about WMDs.. Those were JUST words! Words just like Kerry and Obama... nothing harmful happened.
A Harvard study found here THE "EMBOLDENMENT EFFECT" asked:
"Are insurgents in Iraq emboldened by voices in the news media expressing dissent or calling for troop withdrawals from Iraq?
The short answer is YES!!! according to Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy
research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university's Kennedy School of Government.
STUDY ABSTRACT
Are insurgents affected by information on US casualty sensitivity? Using data on attacks and variation in access to international news across Iraqi provinces, we identify an “emboldenment” effect by comparing the rate of insurgent attacks in areas with higher and lower access to information about U.S news after public statements critical of the war. We find in periods after a spike in war-critical statements, insurgent attacks increases by 5-10 percent.
The results suggest that insurgent groups respond rationally to expected probability of US withdrawal.
On a related note, the New York Times reports that the media aren't paying as much attention to Iraq as they used to:
Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic.
Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
If the Harvard study is right, we may be looking at a virtuous circle: Less violence means less media coverage, which in turn means less violence, says the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps one day we'll wake up to discover that America won the war in Iraq months earlier, but no one noticed because the reporters were all busy with other things.
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