10 Comments

Roger:

At least a whore is honest about the fact that she is for sale.

The growth of international news agencies like CNN and BBC exposed a sort of Catch-22 that they’ve so far papered over. It is the same Catch-22 that the far left consistently attempts to ignore. Reporters without Borders, post-modernism, internationalism vs sovereignty, open borders, etc. — all of these things work only so long as all people agree to them.

The fact that Salafists (BTw, I found another good term for them, Calaphitists) are willing to kill reporters distorts the whole reporting process. I remember an item a month or so back where a Canadian paper had switched all of AP’s “insurgents” into terrorists. The AP vigorously protested, saying that the change could endanger their stringers.

I’m sure it was a slipperly slope they descended one reasonable seeming step at a time, but in the end it is nothing more than craven behavior. Having one side dictate stories under the threat of death is not news. Not even remotely news.

I try to imagine WWII era American or British papers tolerating reporting done with a Gestapo pistol pointed at the head of the reporter. I can’t. It would have never happened. Editors would have understood that no news is better than propoganda dressed up as news.

Today all we get is intellectual, professional and ethical cowardice. They sold honest reporting down the river for ratings. Disgusting.

Thanks for that disclosure. Otherwise I would never have noticed the Gay Patriot ad.

Interesting post he has from the headquarters of the not so vast gay right wing conspiracy commending Barney Frank for challenging Eason Jordan about his claims of mistreatment of journalists by American troops. Interesting times in which we live.

Roger,

There’s an extremely popular war story, Band of Brothers, that plays often. It’s popular, I think, because it takes military folks, and follows their war, letting us get to know each of them. It tells the story of their battles through their eyes and their words, their thoughts and emotions. I not only see the war, I feel it.

We need at least one of these from our Iraq battles. My suggestion, you as a screenwriter, novelist…. and in depth view of their days available at http://avengerredsix.blogspot.com/ (by the way, a REAL Silver Star medalist), and hey? I think it could be a hit!!! You both have a huge following.

Blackhawk Down — takes again, a soldier and an author, and brings those days to us.

Think about it, and I won’t charge a thing for the suggestion! I’m just selfish…. I want a big-time, outstanding story of what our guys and gals are doing….

OK, this is like gargling broken glass for me, but…

good for Barney Frank.

Oh, Barney Frank can be pretty hawkish, when it’s called for:

http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2001/11/22/frank/

Osama bin Laden has no humane values. He’s a mass murderer who happens, unfortunately, to be very skillful at it. And you’d have to go back to Mao, Stalin and Hitler — or perhaps Pol Pot — to find a more noxious regime than the Taliban. So I think there’s a moral as well as pragmatic case for our war against bin Laden and the Taliban that was lacking in Vietnam. You hear people say that since Sept. 11 Americans have lost their innocence. But I think it’s more profound than that. I think we’ve lost our sense of guilt, which we’ve had ever since Vietnam. The left-wing critics of the war in Afghanistan represent a tiny slice of the population. American people across the political spectrum overwhelmingly support the war, because they know it is overwhelmingly just.

Wow, talk about perfect timing! Gay Patriot is making himself more widely known just as ìExcitable Andrewî Sullivan is taking a breather:

ìTHE DISH AS YOU’VE KNOWN IT: After much hemming and hawing, I’ve decided to put the blog as you’ve known it on hiatus for a few months.î

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_01_30_dish_archive.html#110723289508671920

When the level of journalistic complicity with Saddam Hussein was first revealed, Glenn Reynolds wrote: “This isn’t journalism’s Enron. It’s journalism’s Nuremberg.”

We should never forget.

Here’s a piece I wrote at the time:

http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_photoncourier_archive.html#106367449910733568

David Thomson: Sullivan is probably exhausted from changing positions so often (no pun intended–well, maybe just a little intent.)

RogerA,

I’ll resist further puns, but Sullivan clearly needs some time for the tortured twisting he’s done to clear his reader’s memory banks. Besides, he probably doesn’t want to have any part of the “full disclosure” stuff that’s going on in blogdom these days.