War on Terror?

[phadras]

The occupation has been a success albeit an expensive one... The mistake made was not to go house to house and disarm the fucking cowardly Iraqi army that just took off their uniforms and blended in to the general population... Geeez I guess we will never rid ourselves of the Vietnam Syndrome: You know the one where the left abandoned its' balls in SE Asia...

 

[st8_o_mind]

Originally posted by HGROKIT
In your perception, please explain the failure of the occupation. The "occupation" is no where complete and only history will determine its sucess. It has only been a little over a year.

I can't argue with what you wrote. But if you go back to my post, I was contrasting the relative success of the "major combat operations" in which the US military swept away the Iraqi military, versus the post-major combat phase which has been plagued by numerous setbacks.

I don't think I need to itemize the problems in Iraq during the occupation, suffice to say it's a long list. Even the White House has acknowledged failures in Iraq saying recently that they miscalculated the patience the Iraqi's would have for the occupation among other things.

Originally posted by HGROKIT
This is not an ATM machine where you put your card in and "poof" your transaction is complete.

That's right, although it was the Administration that suggested the occupation would be short, require far fewer troops, be inexpensive for US taxpayers and transform the middle east into a bastion of jeffersonian democracy.

Originally posted by HGROKIT 2) "...in order to be effective in the WOT, the US and others need to employ tools other than the military."

St8 - I am not going to waste my time finding exact figures, but on the overall war, how many billions of dollars have been seized/frozen? How much humanitarian and reconstuction aid has been given? Christ, the amount spent by us thus far is frightening.

When you have a salient and plausible point to make - please come back and do so.

Cheers. [/B]

A fair hunk of change has been appropriated for reconstruction in Irah and Afghanistan, not much of that money has been spent yet. The vast majority has gone for military operations.

But sure, there have been cooperative efforts to confront terrorists. There has to be more if we are going to win. Lots more.

The US has spent hundreds of billions of dollars since the end of WWII to strengthen international institutions, the rule of law, cooperative threat reduction agreements and alliances. It is all undermined by the Bush Administration whose foreign policy is perceived by the rest of the world, our partners in the WOT, as unilateral, "pre-emptive," destructive, and self-serving at best.

Sure, we really wouldn't have to care what the man on the street in Saudi Arabia thinks about us if it were not for the fact that they fly airplanes into our skyscrappers. If we are going to win the WOT, what he thinks becomes important.

 

[st8_o_mind]

Originally posted by OCA
Find where I cited Newsmax I dare ya. Not that there is anything wrong with it.

Oops, you're right. It is Jimnyc who is addicted to that site. And there is nothing wrong with their "reporting" so long as you understand they make most of it up. Their last claim, quoted on this site a few days ago, was that there was a proven connection between 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence.

It is simply horse-poop. (Sorry for the strong language). Folks on this site wrote that it is incredible that other news media had not reported the story! What a joke. I guess it did not occure to them that no other media outlet reported the story because Newsmax had just made it up. Geez. For folks that seem to think the media is biased, Newsmax sure gets a pass.

 

[HGROKIT]

Originally posted by st8_o_mind
I can't argue with what you wrote. But if you go back to my post, I was contrasting the relative success of the "major combat operations" in which the US military swept away the Iraqi military, versus the post-major combat phase which has been plagued by numerous setbacks.

I don't think I need to itemize the problems in Iraq during the occupation, suffice to say it's a long list. Even the White House has acknowledged failures in Iraq saying recently that they miscalculated the patience the Iraqi's would have for the occupation among other things.




That's right, although it was the Administration that suggested the occupation would be short, require far fewer troops, be inexpensive for US taxpayers and transform the middle east into a bastion of jeffersonian democracy.



A fair hunk of change has been appropriated for reconstruction in Irah and Afghanistan, not much of that money has been spent yet. The vast majority has gone for military operations.

But sure, there have been cooperative efforts to confront terrorists. There has to be more if we are going to win. Lots more.

The US has spent hundreds of billions of dollars since the end of WWII to strengthen international institutions, the rule of law, cooperative threat reduction agreements and alliances. It is all undermined by the Bush Administration whose foreign policy is perceived by the rest of the world, our partners in the WOT, as unilateral, "pre-emptive," destructive, and self-serving at best.

Sure, we really wouldn't have to care what the man on the street in Saudi Arabia thinks about us if it were not for the fact that they fly airplanes into our skyscrappers. If we are going to win the WOT, what he thinks becomes important.

This could go back and forth ad infinitum...you have your thoughts as do I. However, mine are right and yours are wrong

This is HGROKIT...Good Day!

 

[st8_o_mind]

Originally posted by HGROKIT
This could go back and forth ad infinitum...you have your thoughts as do I. However, mine are right and yours are wrong

This is HGROKIT...Good Day!

That's not saying much. My thoughts are always wrong. Just ask Evil and OCA!

Well, if you didn't have a liberals poking their noses in here once in a while, you all would be reduced to sitting around and agreeing with each other. How fun would that be?

Cheers!

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by st8_o_mind
Oops, you're right. It is Jimnyc who is addicted to that site. And there is nothing wrong with their "reporting" so long as you understand they make most of it up. Their last claim, quoted on this site a few days ago, was that there was a proven connection between 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence.

It is simply horse-poop. (Sorry for the strong language). Folks on this site wrote that it is incredible that other news media had not reported the story! What a joke. I guess it did not occure to them that no other media outlet reported the story because Newsmax had just made it up. Geez. For folks that seem to think the media is biased, Newsmax sure gets a pass.

Addicted? Hardly, you moron.

Furthermore, the 'lie' you claim they made the other day was quoting an article posted in the Wall Street Journal. How can they be the only ones who reported it if they were only quoting what the WSJ wrote?

How about you link us to all the 'lies' that they report and prove your case? You claim they make most of their stories up, so this should be easy for you to provide.

How about reading the articles by John LeBoutillier:

http://www.newsmax.com/pundits/archives/John_LeBoutillier-archive.shtml

They have reporters and writers from both sides of the spectrum, although I admit the sight obviously leans to the right.

And lastly, the only verdict rendered thus far about the Iraq-9/11 connection was in favor of the victims:

"In a woefully underreported decision on May 8, 2003, Manhattan U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer ruled in favor of two 9/11 victim families who had sued Iraq and others claiming they were culpable in the attacks. The court awarded plaintiffs $104 million based on the Baer's findings."

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/5/28/114140.shtml

 

[st8_o_mind]

Originally posted by jimnyc
I admit the sight obviously leans to the right.

[/url]

:rotflmao:

Yeah, you could say that!

 

[st8_o_mind]

Originally posted by Sir Evil
Hey Shit_for_a_mind, you should of quit While you were ahead!
Think I liked to ride you? You aint seen nothing yet, you pissed off the big boss now!

Yikes! Not the big boss!!!

There is a pretty good song called "Big Boss Man," I think by a guy named Jimmy Reed. Worth checking out.

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by st8_o_mind
:rotflmao:

Yeah, you could say that!

Sure, and ignore the link to LeBoutillier's writing on that site, idiot. How about rather than making a further ass of yourself you provide the evidence to backup your claims like I asked.

 

[Said1]

I don't like Robert Fisk, I find his reporting to be pretty crappy.

 

[st8_o_mind]

Originally posted by jimnyc
Sure, and ignore the link to LeBoutillier's writing on that site, idiot. How about rather than making a further ass of yourself you provide the evidence to backup your claims like I asked.

No can do NYC. Not now at least. I'm a bit distracted. I'm working. Short posts and no research is the best I can do at the moment....

.....I'll read the post when I can but it's not likely I'll be able to do that in the next few hours.

I recall one newsmax artlicle....hang on. Work intrudes....more later.

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by st8_o_mind
No can do NYC. Not now at least. I'm a bit distracted. I'm working. Short posts and no research is the best I can do at the moment....

.....I'll read the post when I can but it's not likely I'll be able to do that in the next few hours.

I recall one newsmax artlicle....hang on. Work intrudes....more later.

I just figured since you claim they make up most of their stories that you could have dug a bunch up in short order.

Now remember, you said they 'make most of it up', so don't come back with one article that you object to, I expect quite a few links to articles that are clearly made up.

I'll be waiting...

 

[insein]

200:1 he responds with evidence supporting his claims.
300:1 He admits he was wrong on the Iraq-Al queda Link.
8:5 He comes back and says some semantical gibberish.
6:5 He doesn't respond at all.

Whose taking?

 

[st8_o_mind]

http://www.conwebwatch.com/

The conwebwatch article is fuly linked to its sources. Site above.
Skip down to the section beginning "proof" if you're in a hurry. You asked for proof, you got it. And this was just the first of many hits.


Is NewsMax Corrupt?
Using the standards NewsMax itself applies to the New York Times, absolutely.

By Terry Krepel

For an organization whose journalistic values hover pretty close to those of its Florida tabloid neighbors, NewsMax sure does get all hot and bothered about the journalistic standards of others.

An Aug. 20 article takes the New York Times to task for allegedly distorting comments by Henry Kissinger to make it appear he is against the apparently imminent war against Iraq. It's actually a compilation of three other articles on the subject: columns by Russ "Mugger" Smith in the New York Press and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer and an editorial in the Washington Times. It starts with a quote from Smith that "It's only a slight stretch to state definitively that the New York Times is a corrupt institution" and goes from there in the direction you'd expect.

The Washington Times excerpt touches on its accusing the New York Times of "willful misrepresentation" and "intellectual slovenliness." NewsMax then summarizes: "Noting that the New York Times is the pre-eminent newspaper in America (and probably the world), the Washington Times said that it has 'a singular responsibility to get its stories right.'"

The WashTimes criticism, of course, rings rather hollow in the wake of its own intellectual slovenliness with its willful misrepresentation of the National Education Association's suggested lesson plans for teaching about the events of Sept. 11 (which the Daily Howler and Spinsanity have dissected). Then again, no one's accusing the Washington Times of being the pre-eminent newspaper in America, let alone Washington, so any "responsibility to get its stories right" is apparently not a high priority to folks like Times employees and NewsMax editors. (And, wouldn't you know it, Laura Ingraham parrots the WashTimes line in her Aug. 20 NewsMax commentary.)

The NewsMax article concludes by saying "it's no stretch at all" to call the New York Times corrupt. Which begs the question: If distortion of another's views is all it takes to be a "corrupt institution," what does that make NewsMax?

So corrupt it's the poster boy for a journalistic RICO statute.



Proof? Let's take a quick tour of the ConWebWatch archives:

It distorts reality by running only negative news about its political enemies and avoiding bad news about its political friends.

it spent a lot of time misrepresenting Judicial Watch press releases as NewsMax stories.

NewsMax CEO Christopher Ruddy presented tabloid rumors as fact in stating the Clintons were selling their house in New York. Today, long after the story can be calling nothing but false, it remains on NewsMax, and it has never published a correction or apology. (Even the New York Times issued a clarification of its Kissinger article. When was the last time you saw NewsMax correct anything?)

NewsMax tried to distort reality even more than usual immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks by ham-handedly denouncing anything that could be remotely construed as criticism of President Bush with terms starting with "anti-Americanism" and going all the way to "treason."

NewsMax's use of willful misrepresentation (that phrase is getting a workout here, isn't it?) continues as we speak in its distortion of remarks made by Bill Clinton to plug its latest anti-Clinton book. One recent headline promoting the book on NewsMax's front page declared, "Clinton Blamed America, Christians for 9-11." He, of course, did no such thing; he cited unpleasant events in American history such as slavery and the taking of land from Native Americans as an example of the long history of terror even as he expressed his support to President Bush's antiterror refforts. Even the Wall Street Journal defended Clinton on this, sort of. NewsMax would rather sell books than tell the truth.

NewsMax is so consumed by its biases and distortions that it no longer sees them for they are, if indeed it ever did. An example of this is a Sept. 3 column by Ruddy in which he notes that "A left-wing magazine recently made some snide remarks about NewsMax, noting that we are the heirs to the ideological legacy of Ronald Reagan." (What, Ruddy is suddenly offended by snide remarks?) The commentary to which Ruddy refers appeared in February in the American Prospect, and Ruddy distorts it horribly. That commentary, by Brendan Nyhan, never declared NewsMax "heirs to the ideological legacy of Ronald Reagan"; it cites NewsMax as proof that "the right's cynical exploitation of Ronald Reagan's legacy has always been something of a race to the bottom" and adding that "it's certainly questionable that (Reagan) would endorse NewsMax ... as the key to his legacy."

Then there's the occasional actual legal question involved, as with its recent overenthusiastic promotion of the re-election of New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith. NewsMax toned it down considerably in recent days (not that ConWebWatch is taking credit...), but the "intellectual slovenliness" it employs in the service of its ideology is apparently too inbred to be stopped.

The lead of a Sept. 1 story gushes that "The latest statewide poll in New Hampshire shows U.S. Sen. Bob Smith in a virtual tie against challenger Congressman John Sununu." That's the last we hear of that poll in the story, the rest of which is dedicated to describing Smith's latest ad campaign. The poll statistics nor the poll's conductor are never mentioned.

Wherever it was conducted, it wasn't in a New Hampshire that exists in this particular universe, if another poll is any indication. This one, conducted in conjunction with New Hampshire's top TV station, puts Sununu a whopping 22 points ahead of Smith.

NewsMax is journalistically corrupt, all right -- but in an incompetent, John Gotti Jr. kind of way.

Posted 9/6/2002

 

[st8_o_mind]

Here's another. From same source as last post.

..let's review some of the credibility problems that ConWebWatch has documented over the past three years that go beyond the overall tilted coverage they are known for:

Jayson Blair-style plagiarism at WorldNetDaily, which last December put most of an Associated Press story under a WND byline without attribution.
More plagiarism at NewsMax, which in 2000 ran several Judicial Watch press releases virtually unedited under NewsMax bylines.
False reporting by NewsMax's Christopher Ruddy, who cited anonymous tabloid sources in December 2000 in writing that the Clintons were selling their New York house.
Slanted editing at NewsMax, which has a habit of rewriting stories from its wire service, Unification Church-owned United Press International, to add a pro-conservative, anti-liberal taint.
As much as conservatives have complained about the Times' crusade to end the males-only membership at the Augusta National Country Club -- "attack ads disguised as news," as Pat Buchanan once described it in a WorldNetDaily column -- the ConWeb engages in journalistic crusades as well, like WorldNetDaily's effort to portray James Kopp as unjustly accused in the killing of a New York abortion doctor, including a seven-part series on the subject by Jack Cashill. Problem is, Kopp later admitted to the killing ... and WND couldn't be bothered to devote any original reporting to that.
The MRC (along with the rest of the ConWeb) had to resort to evidence-free personal attacks on David Brock to try and discredit him after the publication of his book "Blinded by the Right." The MRC's Brent Baker claimed at one point that "Everyone who was quoted in it says Brock was wrong," yet no credible claims to that effect have surfaced to this day, even among conservatives. The bitterness extended to nonsensical extremes -- even after demonstrating he told the truth about an appearance on the Fox News Channel, it painted him as a liar anyway.
Slanted reporters whose work somehow meets the journalistic standards of their employers. WND's Jon Dougherty, master of the one-source story and ignoring evidence that doesn't fit his preconceived biases, and CNSNews' Jim Burns, who has trouble telling the whole truth about Otto Reich, are but two examples.
The entire ConWeb, per Republican marching orders, perpetuated stories about Al Gore's "lies" -- "inventing" the Internet, "discovering" Love Canal, being models for "Love Story" -- long after the "lies" had been proven to be lies themselves.
NewsMax, WND, the MRC and CNSNews.com have never acknowledged these journalistic blunders, let alone apologize for them. Even WND columnists Paul Sperry and Kyle Williams, who repeated a lie that former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay stayed overnight at the Clinton White House, couldn't do something as simple as publicly correcting the record after even the Washington Times did so.

What we get instead from the ConWeb just more liberal- and Times-bashing. A May 14 NewsMax article accuses Times columnist Maureen Dowd of distorting a quote from President Bush, but NewsMax itself did that one better a couple years back: it doctored a quote from a newspaper article to make it look like Enron's Lay did stay overnight at Camp David. And what newspaper did NewsMax pull that quote from? The New York Times.

Sounds like Jayson Blair could get a job at NewsMax -- or anywhere else on the ConWeb.

 

[st8_o_mind]

Originally posted by insein
200:1 he responds with evidence supporting his claims.

And the winner is the 200:1 longshot. Good thing you are not (I assume) a bookie. That one would have cost ya.

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by st8_o_mind
And the winner is the 200:1 longshot. Good thing you are not (I assume) a bookie. That one would have cost ya.

Sorry, thus far you lose. I asked for links to the articles where you claim they made stuff up with proof to back it up. I've yet to see a single link to one of their news stories.

You claim they made up the story the other day about the Iraq-9/11 link and that no other paper covered it - when in fact all they did was quote an article from the WSJ. Why have you no longer responded to that false accusation?

 

[OCA]

Sniff sniff i'm shedding a tear tonight just seeing that Three Rivers avatar on here ripping some turd a new asshole.

 

[MtnBiker]

Originally posted by OCA
Sniff sniff i'm shedding a tear tonight just seeing that Three Rivers avatar on here ripping some turd a new asshole.

:teeth:

 

[st8_o_mind]

Originally posted by jimnyc
Sorry, thus far you lose. I asked for links to the articles where you claim they made stuff up with proof to back it up. I've yet to see a single link to one of their news stories.

You claim they made up the story the other day about the Iraq-9/11 link and that no other paper covered it - when in fact all they did was quote an article from the WSJ. Why have you no longer responded to that false accusation?

The documentation provided is fully linked as noted in my post. The links don't appear in the cut and paste but are availailable at the link I provided in keeping with the policies of this board. Conwebwatch has done an admirable job in documenting the distorted, biased and sloppy coverage of Newsmax.