Afghanistan

According to Robert Redford and ABC co-host Diane Sawyer, you're either a liberal activist or you are apathetic. Those are the two options. The famous left-wing actor/director appeared on Tuesday's "Good Morning America" to promote his new anti-war film, "Lions For Lambs." After playing a clip of the movie that shows Redford's character, a college professor, deriding a student for not opposing his government, Sawyer breathlessly asked the star, "You've been touring colleges. Is it true? Are they not awake out there? Are they waking up? What's the difference? What's it going to take?"

Redford, who also directed the film, asserted that "the pendulum is beginning to swing back" and repeated the cliched liberal claim that young people aren't aggressively opposing the war because "the fact that there wasn't a draft...let a lot of people off the hook and they didn't get involved." So, essentially, young people either support a liberal agenda or they simply don't care?

In a segment on Sunday’s "60 Minutes," anchor Scott Pelley described how "The enemy has killed hundreds of civilians this year, but surprisingly, almost the same number of civilians have been killed by American and allied forces." Pelley focused on U.S. air strikes citing a statistic from the liberal group Human Rights Watch: "So far this year, 17 air strikes have killed more than 270 civilians, according to the humanitarian organization Human Rights Watch."

Pelley introduced the segment by exclaiming that:

It's been six years since the liberation of Afghanistan, but the fighting there now is the greatest it's been since the start of the war, and more civilians are dying...With relatively few troops on the ground, the U.S. And NATO rely on air power, and civilian deaths from air strikes have doubled. Now, there's concern that those deaths are undermining Afghan support for the war.

Of course framing the story in this way followed the typical mainstream media template of suggesting that the war in Iraq has diverted resources from where they are needed and that U.S. actions are a cause of anti-Americanism throughout the world.

Army Captain Mark L. Stoneman took issue with the Washington Post placing an article regarding the Medal of Honor ceremony for the late Lt. Michael P. Murphy, a Navy Seal killed in action in Afghanistan, on page A4, when the Post devoted prime real estate on the front page to a profile of Democratic strategist Joe Trippi (emphasis mine).:

I was disappointed in your coverage of the posthumous presentation of the Medal of Honor to Navy Seal Lt. Michael P. Murphy [news story, Oct. 23].

While Ann Scott Tyson did a good job of covering the ceremony itself, it would appear that her editor felt that such an event deserved only a few column inches and some perfunctory context of the actions for which Lt. Murphy was recognized.

This insult was compounded by your decision to bury the story on Page A4. While I understand that the fires in California and the tension between Turkey and Kurdish rebels were the two big stories of the day, you cannot tell me that a feature article about one of presidential candidate John Edwards's campaign strategists is more newsworthy than the presentation of only the third Medal of Honor since Sept. 11, 2001.

Stoneman was referring to a front-page profile of former Howard Dean Internet strategist and current John Edwards adviser Joe Trippi. The story by staffer Chris Cillizza is a feature in a profile series entitled "The Gurus."

The Trippi profile was hardly a time-sensitive front-page story. Capt. Stoneman went on to note a double standard in Post coverage of the military:

CNN’s Jack Cafferty, in his "Cafferty File" segment on Wednesday’s "The Situation Room," asked how the $2.4 trillion, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would be the cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next decade, could be better spent. Apparently, Cafferty, who is a well-known opponent of the Iraq war, also thinks that money being spent in Afghanistan for operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban could also be put to better use.

Cafferty’s "Question of the Hour" came 11 minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour of "The Situation Room." He included that this figure "amounts to about $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country" and that it includes "$700 billion in interest, since these wars are all being fought on borrowed money to begin with. And more than 70% of this money would go to the war in Iraq." Cafferty also included that apparently "as of September 30th, the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost $604 billion. That's more than either Korea or Vietnam, and there's no end in sight to this thing."

The NBC Nightly News on Tuesday night became the first broadcast network evening newscast to highlight the first Medal of Honor award since Vietnam for a member of the Navy, announced last week, to Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a SEAL killed in combat in Afghanistan in June of 2005. “His story is already the stuff of legend,” anchor Brian Williams related before Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski recounted Murphy's heroism: How during a battle with Taliban fighters “Murphy stepped out into the line of fire to make a satellite call for help.” A survivor recalled that Murphy “took two rounds to the back and dropped down on that rock and sat back up, picked the phone back up and started talking again.” Standing by a memorial in Brookhaven, New York, Miklaszewski explained that in addition to the memorial, “they've named a park and post office after him. Monuments not only to what he did as a Navy SEAL, but to who he was as a man.”

Miklaszewski got out of the way and allowed his story to end with two moving tributes from Murphy's parents. Maureen, his mother, revealed: “I miss him. I'm glad that he got the medal because other people will know what a great guy that he was.” Dan, Michael's father, got the last word, a desire for appreciation: “While I'm crying inside and my heart's breaking, my chest is puffed out and I'm saying, my son, this is what he did and I hope the country appreciates it and realizes it.” To that, Williams certainly spoke for many viewers: “Here, here.”

Ah, those diversity-loving liberals. You know, the kind who would stifle free speech with their Orwellian "Fairness Doctrine," who threaten legal action against mom-and-pop T-shirt makers who criticize MoveOn.org. Wesley Clark would now take things one step further, whacking Rush Limbaugh off the Armed Forces Network radio airwaves.

"Today" co-anchor Meredith Vieira interviewed the retired general and former Dem presidential candidate on this morning's show.

I think I’ve heard it all now…a NY Times Op-Ed writer plagarizing himself, and now a Reuters reporter who is his own source. The MSM sure knows how to find quality talent. Hat tip to Jammie Wearing Fool who says:

I think I’ve seen it all now. An story from Reuters reporter Noor Mohammad Sherzai quotes extensively from … Noor Mohammad Sherzai.

And Sherzai claims U.S. troops opened fire on civilians in Afghanistan.

If this story is proven to be bogus, will he claim he misquoted himself?

The Reuters article, titled U.S. fire scatters crowd after Afghan bomb, starts out with “By Noor Mohammad Sherzai”. Later in the article it goes on to say:

Does the media have any understanding at all of how important they are to terrorists and other enemies of the United States with their determined moral equivalency? When it comes to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the answer appears to be a resounding no. Time Magazine's Richard Stengel provides a glowing puff piece on the Iranian leader, entirely abrogating his responsibility as a reporter to provide any context whatsoever. Stengel writes of Ahmadinejad,

The invitation was on creamy stationery with fancy calligraphy: The Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran "requests the pleasure" of my company to dine with H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The dinner is at the Intercontinental Hotel — with names carefully written out at all the place settings around a rectangular table. There are about 50 of us, academics and journalists mostly. There's Brian Williams across the room, and Christiane Amanpour a few seats down. And at a little after 8pm, on a day when he has already addressed the U.N., the evening after his confrontation at Columbia, a bowing and smiling Mahmoud Admadinejad glides into the room.

This is now an annual ritual for the President of Iran. Every year, during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, he plots out a media campaign that — in its shrewdness, relentlessness, and quest for attention — would rival Angelina Jolie on a movie junket. And like any international figure, Mr. Ahmadinejad hones his performance for multiple audiences: in this case, the journalists and academics who can filter his speech and ideas for a wider American audience.

It's not enough that the media is waving the white flag of defeat in Iraq but now they're declaring yet another war lost. NBC's "Today" co-host Meredith Vieira seemed so convinced that the U.S. had lost the war in Afghanistan she was perplexed when Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai didn't share her assessment of failure. On the Monday "Today" show, in a taped interview, a bewildered Vieira responded to Karzai's statement of victory with: "What have you won?"

The following exchange occurred in the 7am half-hour of the September 24, NBC "Today" show:

Andrew at Biased BBC has an excellent take on the British news agency's flawed reporting on the recent release of some South Korean aid workers. For starters, the original headline glossed over the brutal murder of two hostages. Andrew also noted that contrary to BBC's own style guide, the news agency characterized the murdered missionaries as having been "executed," which implies a legal penalty governed by due process of law.

Here's an excerpt:

Islamic radicals continue to spread irrational hate against the Swedish Mohammed dog sketches, this time in Afghanistan where a newspaper there called for the imprisonment of the newspaper editors who printed one of the cartoons:

Afghanistan on Saturday condemned the printing of a sketch of Islam's Prophet Mohammad with the body of a dog in a Swedish newspaper, calling it hostile towards the Muslim world.

The sketch has also drawn condemnation from neighbouring Pakistan, which said it was blasphemous. Muslims believe images of the Prophet are forbidden and consider dogs to be impure.

Not surprising, but the Time magazine contributor and "Swampland" blogger slapped around President Bush for moving to empower the federal government to freeze assets held by the terrorist-sponsoring Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet two weeks ago, Joe Klein slammed President Bush for not confronting U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf about terrorist sympathizers that work covertly against U.S. interests from within the Pakistani military.

Here's Klein's August 15 post, after which I add more commentary:

On August 3, NewsBusters contributor Scott Whitlock noticed the network morning shows largely ignored Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) dovish blanket assertion that he would rule out the use of nuclear weapons in "any circumstances" in dealing with terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the time, Sen. Hillary Clinton called the pronouncement unwise. But according to the Associated Press, it appears Clinton is contradicting a statement she made in April 2006 that aligns with Obama's stance.

On August 2, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) took the opportunity to disagree with Obama's dovish stance. As the Washington Post reported in the August 3 paper:

Willie Geist's genius as an observer of the political and pop-cultural scenes has been his ability to stay largely above the fray. But guest-hosting for Joe Scarborough on today's "Morning Joe," Geist let the curtain down enough to make clear his pessimism about the Iraq war and desire to have the US exit post-haste. At the same time, retired General Barry McCaffrey made no effort to hide his contempt for Barack Obama's foray into foreign policy regarding Pakistan.

Geist interviewed MSNBC commentator McCaffrey at 6:30 A.M. EDT this morning. McCaffrey at one point opined that he could envision the possibility of reconciliation between Iraqi Shias and Sunnis. Geist was not so sanguine.

MSNBC'S WILLIE GEIST: Could we possibly stay there long enough, though, to see a reconciliation between Sunni and Shia? We're talking years, possibly generations for that to change, aren't we?

Later, looking ahead to tonight's Dem debate, Geist's focus was on which candidate could extricate us from Iraq fastest.

GEIST: Which [candidate] gives you the best sense that they will help us end this war, get us out of there?

View video here

I don't know James Carroll, but if I were a friend or family member I might truly be concerned. His Boston Globe column of this morning, American Disconnection, is a disjointed lament about the state of the world and his feeling of disconnectedness, invoking the anomie of his youth. What makes it interesting for present purposes is the way in which Carroll, the prototypical MSM liberal, looks at the world, sees a litany of wrongs, and naturally concludes . . . It's All America's Fault.

Carroll seeks to reassure us, and no doubt himself, that "my adult connections are strong, and ever more interesting . . . My friendships are intact. Boredom is a word of absolutely no relevance in my life, nor has youthful moodiness left a stamp on me." He even claims that "I was part of a large, happy family." This from someone whose alienation from his Air Force general father was so intense he famously wrote a book about it: An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us.

Carroll recites his bona fides of psychic health as a prelude to admitting:

The media love comparing Iraq to the Vietnam War. So why didn't Reuters relate Iraq to this July 31 story about a joint Cambodian-UN tribunal that charged one of Pol Pot's top henchmen with crimes against humanity related to the deaths of 1.7 million people in that country's “Killing Fields?”

They also like to link America's actions to unpleasant world events. So why not even mention how the US pulling out of Vietnam and Congress halting aid to Vietnam and Cambodia, allowed the rise of Pol Pot's brutal and deadly communist Khmer Rouge regime that killed, tortured and displaced millions? Maybe take it a step further and connect it to what might happen if the US follows the wishes of many Democrats and withdraws from Iraq too soon?

The tribunal charged Duch with the deaths of 1.7 million people after confessing to “committing multiple atrocities during this (sic) time as head of the capital's notorious Tuol Sleng or S-21 interrogation center.” (emphasis mine throughout):

Blogger Michelle Malkin has an excellent item today at RealClearPolitics.com about how the media have a lack of interest in stories about Christian missionaries kidnapped, brutalized, and tortured at the hands of Islamist terrorists. Here's an excerpt, after which I share my thoughts on what we could expect to see from the biased media should some of the South Korean missionaries make it back alive and find themselves interviewed on say "Dateline NBC":

The blood of innocent Christian missionaries spills on Afghan sands. The world watches and yawns. The United Nations offers nothing more than a formal expression of "concern." Where is the global uproar over the human rights abuses unfolding before our eyes?

In an email to libertarian blog Q and O, Columbia Journalism Review writer Paul McLeary corrected his remarks that stated milbloggers preferred to leave fighting for their country to others. He said he “really stepped in it” and was “careless in [his] choice of wording.” If only the New York Times would correct their mistakes as publicly and clearly as McLeary did.

Based on his explanation, it appears he said he wasn't calling milbloggers chickenhawks, he was calling bloggers like Hugh Hewitt chickenhawks and “didn't take the time to clearly define what (he) was talking about.”

He also fell back on popular lefty tactics that are designed to eliminate opposing opinions. In addition to the chickenhawk gambit, McLeary insisted that writers should physically set foot in Iraq and Afghanistan, limiting discussion to only those reporters and bloggers who have been to those countries, unless, of course, the writer has an anti-military or anti-war position. Good thing that NewsBusters' Mark Finklestein has been to Iraq!

Here is the portion of McLeary's email that Q and O posted (bold mine):

You can't possibly make this up: the producer of the 9/11 truther film "Loose Change" was arrested Monday for - wait for it! - deserting the Army.

As reported Wednesday by the Daily Star (h/t Hot Air, emphasis added):

Korey Rowe, 24, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, was picked up by deputies at about 10:45 p.m. Monday, Otsego County Sheriff Richard Devlin Jr. said.

Rowe, along with Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, are members of Louder Than Words, a production company that is working on a third edition of the movie "Loose Change," which contends the U.S. government was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In his bio at the film's website, Rowe referenced his military service, but not that he was allegedly never officially discharged (emphasis added):

ABCNews.com's The Blotter has an update on their exclusive story of the recent Taliban "graduation ceremony":

The Taliban military commander [Mansoor Dadullah] who led the "graduation ceremony" for 300 suicide bombers was one of five men released from an Afghanistan prison earlier this year in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist.

[...]

Journalist Daniel Mastrogiacomo was kidnapped along with his interpreter and driver by Taliban fighters in early March.

A hostage trade was negotiated, in part by an Italian-run hospital organization, for his release in exchange for the release of five senior Taliban commanders that were in the custody of the Afghan federal government.