No Wonder Libs Are Upset - The Surge Is Working

[red states rule]

BBC Cancels TV Movie On Iraq War Hero As 'Too Positive,' Would 'Alienate' War Opponents
Posted by Lynn Davidson on April 11, 2007 - 21:08.

The UK’s Telegraph reported that the BBC cancelled a 90-minute drama about the youngest surviving winner of the UK’s highest award for valor because “it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.” The BBC blocked the project that would have honored the incredible bravery and resilience of Private Johnson Beharry, a man who didn’t hesitate to risk his own life two separate times for his fellow soldiers. His Victoria Cross citation reads like a blockbuster Hollywood action script, but instead, it’s the real deal. Sounds uplifting and encouraging, and it could even be a real morale booster, right? Well, for the Beeb, that’s the problem (emphasis mine throughout):


For the BBC, however, his story is "too positive" about the conflict.

The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain's youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

The BBC's retreat from the project, which had the working title Victoria Cross, has sparked accusations of cowardice and will reignite the debate about the broadcaster's alleged lack of patriotism.


A project insider exposed what many people have suspected about the BBC, which notoriously refuses to use the term terrorist to avoid making “value judgments”:

"The BBC has behaved in a cowardly fashion by pulling the plug on the project altogether," said a source close to the project. "It began to have second thoughts last year as the war in Iraq deteriorated. It felt it couldn't show anything with a degree of positivity about the conflict.

"It needed to tell stories about Iraq which reflected the fact that some members of the audience didn't approve of what was going on. Obviously a story about Johnson Beharry could never do that. You couldn't have a scene where he suddenly turned around and denounced the war because he just wouldn't do that.

"The film is now on hold and it will only make it to the screen if another broadcaster picks it up."

The BBC wouldn’t even show a positive story about a soldier because it interfered with the political message they wanted to send. They are clearly defining what they value, and it shows they are willing to give up good entertainment simply because it goes against their world view. The article then touched on the growing belief that the BBC only cares about negative stories about Iraq:

The BBC's decision to pull out will only confirm the fears of critics that television drama is only interested in telling bad news stories about the war.

The Ministry of Defence recently expressed concern about Channel 4's The Mark of Cain which showed British troops brutalising Iraqi detainees. That programme was temporarily pulled from the schedules after Iran detained 15 British troops


So, positive stories about Iraq are out and negative stories are in. Sounds like the US. There is social power in the entertainment side of the TV business, and the industry and the activists know it. The power of imagination and good writing can subtly influence in ways that lectures and screaming cannot.

If there is any doubt that Pte. Beharry’s story should be told, read his citation in a BBC article that describes his amazing heroism (back when the BBC wasn’t worried about the “wrong” message that a positive story about Iraq could send), or read a less detailed summary in this Telegraph article.

http://newsbusters.org/node/11982

 

[maineman]

funny...I don't see anything in your latest cut and paste that talks at all about your assertion that America has seen a 60% decrease in casualties. Are you ever going to retract that?

 

[red states rule]

Any good news must be ignored at all costs

It does not fit the liberal medias agenda

 

[maineman]

Any good news must be ignored at all costs

It does not fit the liberal medias agenda

I love good news.

I am just asking you to retract your inaccurate statement about American casualties decreasing by 60%

are you going to continue to stand by that clearly inaccurate assertion?

 

[red states rule]

I love good news.

I am just asking you to retract your inaccurate statement about American casualties decreasing by 60%

are you going to continue to stand by that clearly inaccurate assertion?

maybe you do, but the liberal media does not

they show that everyday

 

[maineman]

maybe you do, but the liberal media does not

they show that everyday

this is a conversation between you and me...not you and the liberal media.

I am telling you that I rejoice at any and all good news that comes out of Iraq.

I am asking you to explain or retract your assertion that American casualties have decreased by 60%.

 

[red states rule]

this is a conversation between you and me...not you and the liberal media.

I am telling you that I rejoice at any and all good news that comes out of Iraq.

I am asking you to explain or retract your assertion that American casualties have decreased by 60%.

NYT Hypes 'Huge' Death-to-America Protest In Iraq; Military Offered Lower Estimate
Posted by Tim Graham on April 11, 2007 - 08:59.
Tuesday’s New York Times played up the big Monday rally against America in Najaf. The online headline hyped: “Huge Protest In Iraq Demands America Withdraw.” The front page of Tuesday’s Times was milder: “Protest In Iraq, Called By Cleric, Demands U.S. Go,” and that “Thousands Support Sadr.”

Reporter Edward Wong began: “Tens of thousands of protesters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric, took to the streets of the holy city of Najaf on Monday in an extraordinarily disciplined rally to demand an end to the American military presence in Iraq, burning American flags and chanting ‘Death to America!’”

Redstate.com reported the U.S. military estimated a crowd of 5,000 to 7,000, but media accounts routinely stated “tens of thousands” rallied, which would imply at least two tens, or 20,000 protesters. Wong mentioned the various estimates in paragraph 20, but disagreed with the military estimate:

Estimates of the crowd’s size varied wildly. A police commander in Najaf, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Mayahi, said there were at least half a million people. Colonel Garver said that military reports had estimates of 5,000 to 7,000. Residents and other Iraqi officials said there were tens of thousands, and television images of the rally seemed to support their estimates.

Did Wong check out the aerial photo before laying out such a wild range of estimates? While a subheadline mentioned the protest took place “4 Years After Baghdad’s Fall” and a front-page caption also mentioned it was merely the fourth anniversary of “Baghdad’s fall,” the name of the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein did not emerge until paragraph 19, when his name was invoked against America:


An Interior Ministry employee in a flowing tan robe, Haider Abdul Rahim Mustafa, 23, said that he had come from Basra “to demand the withdrawal of the occupier.”

“The occupier supported Saddam and helped him to become stronger, then removed him because his cards were burned,” he said, using an Arabic expression to note that Saddam Hussein was no longer useful to the United States. “The fall of Saddam means nothing to us as long as the alternative is the American occupation.”

P.S. on the “Huge” headline: When tens of thousands of Americans showed up in Washington in January – the Washington Post reader’s advocate downplayed the crowd as “fewer than 50,000" – the Times dispatch (not on the front page, of course) by Sarah Abruzzese was simply headlined “Thousands of Abortion Opponents Rally on Mall.” No “huge” rally there, despite the fact it was probably larger than the "huge" radical Shi'ite protest against America. Pro-lifers were also not “extraordinarily disciplined.”

http://newsbusters.org/node/11966

 

[maineman]

where in that particular cut and paste does it address your assertion that we have seen a 60% decrease in American casualties?

 

[maineman]

try having a discussion with me.

 

[red states rule]

I am showing another example of the biased reporting from the liberal media

 

[maineman]

I am showing another example of the biased reporting from the liberal media

that is not what we were discussing....we were discussing the fact that I disagree with your assertion that America has seen a 60% decrease in casualties since the start of the surge.

Are you ever going to address that?

are you ever going to even TRY to have a discussion with ME about anything?

 

[maineman]

Here is a very well articulated and reasoned article from Joe Biden about the surge:

I suggest you read it and give me your comments, RSR.....

after you retract the idiocy about the 60% decrease in US casualties, that is.....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy.../04/11/AR2007041102119.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

 

[maineman]

that editorial ends as follows:


If the president's plan won't work, what will? History suggests only four other ways to keep together a country riven by sectarian strife:

We allow or help one side to win, which would require years of horrific bloodletting.

We perpetuate the occupation, which is impossible politically and practically.

We promote the return of a dictator, who is not on the horizon but whose emergence would be the cruelest of ironies.

Or we help Iraq make the transition to a decentralized, federal system, as called for in its constitution, where each major group has local control over the fabric of its daily life, including security, education, religion and marriage.

Making federalism work for all Iraqis is a strategy that can still succeed and allow our troops to leave responsibly. It's a strategy I have been promoting for a year.

I cannot guarantee that my plan for Iraq (detailed at http://www.planforiraq.com) will work. But I can guarantee that the course we're on -- the course that a man I admire, John McCain, urges us to continue -- is a road to nowhere.


that is not "cut and run" that is not "surrender at all costs" that is a voice of reason and wisdom.... he should not be denigrated or shouted down or blythely dismissed.

 

[red states rule]

that editorial ends as follows:


If the president's plan won't work, what will? History suggests only four other ways to keep together a country riven by sectarian strife:

We allow or help one side to win, which would require years of horrific bloodletting.

We perpetuate the occupation, which is impossible politically and practically.

We promote the return of a dictator, who is not on the horizon but whose emergence would be the cruelest of ironies.

Or we help Iraq make the transition to a decentralized, federal system, as called for in its constitution, where each major group has local control over the fabric of its daily life, including security, education, religion and marriage.

Making federalism work for all Iraqis is a strategy that can still succeed and allow our troops to leave responsibly. It's a strategy I have been promoting for a year.

I cannot guarantee that my plan for Iraq (detailed at http://www.planforiraq.com) will work. But I can guarantee that the course we're on -- the course that a man I admire, John McCain, urges us to continue -- is a road to nowhere.


that is not "cut and run" that is not "surrender at all costs" that is a voice of reason and wisdom.... he should not be denigrated or shouted down or blythely dismissed.

Surge Results are Visible
By Charles Krauthammer

By the day, the debate at home about Iraq becomes increasingly disconnected from the realities of the actual war on the ground. The Democrats in Congress are so consumed with negotiating among their factions the most clever linguistic device to legislatively ensure the failure of the administration's current military strategy -- while not appearing to do so -- that they speak almost not at all about the first visible results of that strategy.

And preliminary results are visible. The landscape is shifting in the two fronts of the current troop surge: Anbar province and Baghdad.

The news from Anbar is the most promising. Only last fall, the Marines' leading intelligence officer there concluded that the U.S. had essentially lost the fight to al-Qaeda. Yet, just this week, the marine commandant, Gen. James Conway, returned from a four-day visit to the province and reported that we "have turned the corner.''


Why? Because, as Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, the Australian counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, has written, 14 of the 18 tribal leaders in Anbar have turned against al-Qaeda. As a result, thousands of Sunni recruits are turning up at police stations where none could be seen before. For the first time, former insurgent strongholds such as Ramadi have a Sunni police force fighting essentially on our side.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a major critic of the Bush war policy, now reports that in Anbar, al-Qaeda is facing "a real and growing groundswell of Sunni tribal opposition.'' And that "this is a crucial struggle and it is going our way -- for now.''

The situation in Baghdad is more mixed. Thursday's bridge and Green Zone attacks show the insurgents' ability to bomb sensitive sites. On the other hand, pacification is proceeding. "Nowhere is safe for Westerners to linger,'' reported ABC's Terry McCarthy on April 3, "but over the past week we visited five different neighborhoods where the locals told us life is slowly coming back to normal.'' He reported from Jadriyah, Karrada, Zayouna, Zawra Park and the notorious Haifa Street, previously known as "sniper alley.'' He found that "children have come out to play again. Shoppers are back in markets,'' and concluded that "nobody knows if this small safe zone will expand or get swallowed up again by violence. For the time being though, people here are happy to enjoy a life that looks almost normal.''

Fouad Ajami, just returned from his seventh trip to Iraq, is similarly guardedly optimistic and explains the change this way: Fundamentally, the Sunnis have lost the battle of Baghdad. They initiated it with their indiscriminate terror campaign that they assumed would cow the Shiites, whom they view with contempt as congenitally quiescent, lower-class former subjects. They learned otherwise after the Samarra bombing (February 2006) kindled Shiite fury -- a savage militia campaign of kidnapping, indiscriminate murder and ethnic cleansing that has made Baghdad a largely Shiite city.

Petraeus is trying now to complete the defeat of the Sunni insurgents in Baghdad -- without the barbarism of the Shiite militias, whom his forces are simultaneously pursuing and suppressing.

How at this point -- with only about half of the additional surge troops yet deployed -- can Democrats be trying to force the U.S. to give up? The Democrats say they are carrying out their electoral mandate from the November election. But winning a single-vote Senate majority as a result of razor-thin victories in Montana and Virginia is hardly a landslide.

Second, if the electorate was sending an unconflicted message about withdrawal, how did the most uncompromising supporter of the war, Sen. Joe Lieberman, win handily in one of the most liberal states in the country?

And third, where was the mandate for withdrawal? Almost no Democratic candidates campaigned on that. They campaigned for changing the course the administration was on last November.

Which the president has done. He changed the civilian leadership at the Department of Defense, replaced the head of Central Command and, most critically, replaced the Iraq commander with Petraeus -- unanimously approved by the Democratic Senate -- to implement a new counterinsurgency strategy.

John McCain has had no illusions about the difficulty of this war. Nor does he now. In his bold and courageous speech at the Virginia Military Institute defending the war effort, he described the improvements on the ground while acknowledging the enormous difficulties ahead. Insisting that success in Iraq is both possible and necessary, McCain made clear that he is willing to stake his presidential ambitions, indeed his entire political career, on a war policy that is unpopular but that he believes must be pursued for the sake of the country. How many other presidential candidates -- beginning with, say, Hillary Clinton -- do you think are acting in the same spirit?

[email protected]
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/surge_results_are_visible.html

 

[red states rule]

Here is a very well articulated and reasoned article from Joe Biden about the surge:

I suggest you read it and give me your comments, RSR.....

after you retract the idiocy about the 60% decrease in US casualties, that is.....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy.../04/11/AR2007041102119.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Here's one that is better..............


Learning from George McGovern and Earl Browder
By Andrew Walden


Do we sit on the sidelines and watch a population slaughtered, or do we marshal military force and put an end to it?" -- Senator George McGovern, August 21, 1978
The "it" McGovern wanted US troops to put an end to was the killing of millions of Cambodians in the late 1970s by the communist Pol Pot dictatorship. Three and a half years after congressional Democrats made that slaughter possible by cutting off all US aid to anti-communist forces with their so-called December, 1974 "Foreign Assistance Act", their leader McGovern had made a complete reversal and was suddenly calling for a new US war in Southeast Asia.


Why is this little-remembered footnote in history relevant today? Congressional Democrats' March vote for phased withdrawal from Iraq is a replay of McGovern's treacherous thirty-five year old script with McGovern consulting from the sidelines. Last November, the sixty-two members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) sat down with McGovern to work out a strategy for withdrawal from Iraq. Those discussions led to the mis-named "Iraq Accountability Act", now heading for a veto from President Bush after passing the House and the Senate in March.


With Congressional Democrats, and a few Republicans, dancing to McGovern's tune, it might behoove them to break out of their December, 1974 mind frame and take a look to August of 1978-forty-four months down McGovern's Southeast Asia timeline.


Passage of the December, 1974 "Foreign Assistance Act", had lead quickly to the collapse of anti-communist forces in Cambodia on April 17, 1975, and in South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. This marked the end of the US war, but the killing was just beginning. The communist forces controlling Vietnam are credited with the killing of 1.8 million people (not counting war casualties) as they warred to take power from 1945 to 1987. In Cambodia anybody appearing ‘educated' was killed and the cities were emptied. Thousands starved or were beaten to death in slave labor camps. Pol Pot's death toll is estimated at 2 to 3 million killed between 1975 and 1978.


Needless to say, McGovern's August, 1978 turnabout raised many eyebrows. The Wall Street Journal wrote August 23 of that year:

"There is a truly mind-boggling quality to a statement like this. Nearly 20 years ago, American liberals came to power in this country exhorting us to take a more vigorous and expansive view of our role as leader of the free world. They came complete with a theory of counterinsurgency, ‘winning the hearts and minds of the people.' When the then-existing government of South Vietnam failed to fully adopt this prescription, they blithely arranged its overthrow. Upon discovering the price of the commitment thereby sealed, they set about toppling the American President, who inherited the aftermath of the coup. Not content when American troops were finally withdrawn, they set about slashing, on the grounds that the South Vietnamese government was ‘immoral,' the aid funds it needed to maintain any pro-Western presence in Indochina. Now, having finished the task of destroying that presence, they are shocked and dismayed by the news of the grim and brutal world that resulted."
It would be pleasing to write about an anti-American war Senator who finally saw the light. But McGovern was not actually flip-flopping. He was consistently representing the interests of what he described in an August 25, 1978 speech on the Senate floor as, "Ho Chi Minh's popularly-based revolution for independence in Vietnam."


Pol Pot's genocidal brutality was well-known. The New York Times had denounced the new Cambodian dictatorship as early as July, 1975. McGovern's call for US-led international military intervention against Pol Pot did not come at the beginning or even in the middle of the genocide, it only came as his comrades in Hanoi prepared to capture Phnom Penh and replace Pol Pot with communists loyal to Vietnam and the Soviet Union.


Dripping with sarcasm, the Washington Star editorialized on August 23, 1978:


"Presumably the senator's theory is that except for American influence, Cambodia might have been controlled by the kind of ‘popularly supported revolution' that is now rearranging things in Vietnam. If boatloads of refugees fleeing Cambodia can be found floating side by side with boatloads of refugees fleeing Vietnam, that's a coincidence. Naturally there would be former lackeys of the Americans who would try to get out of doing their share in building the new Vietnam.

"The senator's faith in the Hanoi regime is central to his thinking about the rest of Southeast Asia. ...To have Cambodians fighting Vietnamese makes people of the McGovern point of view readier to wax indignant about human rights in Cambodia.

"... (This) just shows how well Senator McGovern knows the difference between repressive totalitarian communists and popularly supported people's democracies that may have to slap a wrist once in a while.

"We hope this clears up any misunderstandings about Senator McGovern's consistency as a thinker in the foreign policy area. And we are glad he noticed what's been going on in Cambodia."


In 1974 it was easy for Democrats to serve America's enemies. Vietnamese communists had limited territorial ambitions and no matter what happened on Southeast Asian battlefields, their Soviet overlords were kept in stalemate by American nuclear weapons. Their physical combat operations never reached American soil.


This is not 1974. Democrat gains in the November, 2006 elections were called, "...an obvious victory for the Iranian nation" by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As the Progressive Caucus prepared to sit down with McGovern, al-Qaeda in Iraq promised, "We will not rest from our Jihad until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have destroyed the dirty black house -- which is called the White House."


These threats are underlined by the ongoing jihadi war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and over a dozen other countries, the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the September 11, 2001 attacks, and numerous terror attacks claiming hundreds of lives going back to the Iranian hostage crisis which began November 4, 1979-just over a year after McGovern called for the US to lead an invasion of Cambodia.


McGovern's parroting of the Hanoi line echoes that of a less-well-known servant of foreign communism, Earl Browder. As General Secretary and Chairman of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) from 1932 to 1945 Browder led his socialist slaves in a series of "mind-boggling" reversals. The CPUSA's intense anti-fascist propaganda activity focused on the events in Europe suddenly became anti-war agitation on August 23, 1939--the day the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed.


Browder again whipsawed his party on June 22, 1941 as Hitler broke his pact and invaded the Soviet Union. Communists who, for the last 22 months, had been fervent anti-war activists suddenly supported US entry into the war. They joined the military and the diplomatic corps and worked within the unions to maximize war production by blocking strikes. The CPUSA even dissolved itself in 1944 into the Communist Political Association. As a result of communist support of the war effort, World War Two did not face significant organized domestic anti-war propaganda or agitation. The party again sharply reversed, reverting to true pro-Soviet, anti-American form after the Soviet capture of Berlin on April 30, 1945. At each reversal of policy, hundreds of communists resigned from the party, many of whom eventually made their way into the American cultural elites. Browder himself was stripped of all party position in 1945 and soon tossed out of the then-re-founded CPUSA.


It is neither useful nor accurate to label as communist McGovern, or his modern-day allies in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Nonetheless, his life contains many parallels to the political life of the CPUSA. McGovern volunteered for the Air Force serving with distinction in North Africa and Italy. His first entry into politics was to campaign for the pro-Soviet Progressive Party ticket in 1948. The CPUSA endorsed Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace and communists were thick in the ranks and leadership of the campaign which garnered only 3% of the vote. McGovern was elected delegate to the Progressives' first national convention. Four years later McGovern joined the Democrat Party where he eventually made his mark as a US senator serving, "Ho Chi Minh's popularly-based revolution...." McGovern and his ilk are better understood as favoring an America submissive to "progressive," "enlightened" foreign powers with which they share a utopian ideological affinity.


What will it take for those opposed to American victory in Iraq to wake up? The jihadis are not a progressive force. Today's anti-war leftists are motivated not to strengthen jihad but to weaken America in order that "progressives" around the world might once again have their day. This key element of the "progressive' value system must be recognized by writers working to defeat them. The examples of McGovern and Browder provide an answer: a reversal will require the jihadi threat to "progressivism" to outweigh the American threat.


Jihadis have a long history of co-opting allies and then turning around to eat them alive. Somewhere-perhaps, as in the 1930s, in the streets of Europe-"progressives" may come to see the Islamic fascists as more threatening than America. As that point arrives, even without a centralized CPUSA or Soviet Union to lead them, many anti-war leftists can be led to change their tune, declare a truce with America and, as in WW2, join the war against the fascists. Until then, Americans will need to continue rhetorical combat in a domestic political war with those "progressives" amongst us who believe that America is more dangerous than jihad.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/learning_from_george_mcgovern.html

 

[maineman]

are you EVER going to explain how America's Iraq war casualties decreased by 60% because the surge is working yet the casualty numbers somehow stayed the same?

yes or no?

 

[Paul Revere]

are you EVER going to explain how America's Iraq war casualties decreased by 60% because the surge is working yet the casualty numbers somehow stayed the same?

yes or no?

Come on RSR you told the locals over here in

that you were at the USMESSAGEBOARD.com debating with the "Big Boys."



So far I have only witnessed you verbal masturbate with your keyboard.

 

[maineman]

here is the thread where you claim that we have seen a 60% decrease in US casualties. Here is the thread where you claim that you have somehow explained that assertion in light of the US DoD casualty figures that clearly show that no such decrease has occured. Please give me the post number from this thread that contains that explanation.

 

[maineman]

All you need to do is type the post number from this thread where you explain how we can see a 60% reduction in American casualties in Iraq while seeing the monthly casualty figures stay relatively identical.

And maybe the post number of where you explain why the last six months of American casualties are nearly 40% higher than the previous six months.

and why our casualties for April are on track to be the bloodiest month of the whole war.

 

[maineman]

any day now