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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: c.horn who wrote (382081)3/30/2003 10:44:12 AM
From: username  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 769670
 
Exactly. The entire concept of a "fast war" was invented by people outside the administration in the first place. Nobody in the administration has said anything remotely resembling that; in fact the president and everyone else in the administration have consistently warned against taking that view.

Once the media had planted their invented "fact", they were then free to find fault with it, blame the administration for screwing everything up and if the administration tried to "deny" this media-manufactured fact, they would then look like liars. The media can't just say what someone else says. They must offer their interpretations. Otherwise, what's the point of watching them move their mouths at all? They then broadcast an interpretation of a guess. Which is fine, that's not much of a problem for the actual military planners unless somebody accidentally guesses the truth.

Another prime example is the media "analysis" of the tactics. Someone who is no longer a general, but whom the call "General" has an opinion about some tactic, but he doesn't know what the tactics are, so he is guessing. Then his guess doesn't quite fit with what happened yesterday. Something has changed. According to the media, problems arise whenever the war tactics are "changed". The war can become "bogged down" and all that nonsense. As you of course already know, nobody outside the military planners has a clue about the tactics of this campaign, which are fluid and can (and probably do) change on a daily basis. The most interesting stuff is the stuff that is not being given to the media. The real tactics include the understanding that the media is going to pervert whatever is offered to them by the military for their own purposes anyway; they have no idea what the tactics are and never will, on purpose. They are fed only what they can be fed without compromising American lives. The media's propensity for manufacturing combat news was exhibited most recently in Desert Storm when Wolf Blitzer was reporting under his desk at the Baghdad Marriott and General Schwartzkopf had to stand in front of reporters and not crack a smile while they were asking him where his tanks were going to go tomorrow.

I do like the idea of reporters going with combat units. Those guys have guts, and as a general rule, they appear to be reporting without the editorial spin.



To: c.horn who wrote (382081)3/30/2003 11:13:08 AM
From: Thomas A Watson  Respond to of 769670
 
Rule 1. 95% of the talking heads have their heads up their butt. All talking heads have no idea about 99.99% of everything goin on. And i have only seen a few with any demonstrated ability to rationally connect dots. At this time I would say msnbc has the stupidest along with cnn. I don't bother with the networks. Fox has the majority if not all of the few very best. But fox has many idiots also.

Many talking heads have an agenda. Only the central command knows what they are doing today and thinking about what they are going to do tomorrow.

But they may not do all of what they planned tomorrow and do something entirely different. The plan is like the weather and changes as the patterns change.

The early ground war, was an amazing tactical surprise. It allowed the capture of the oil fields in tact. The herding of the Iraqi forces into smaller geographic area makes for the more efficient spotting of emerging targets.

The leaders and all forces will be killed and captured. The poor communications of the Iraqi forces will allow information from captured forces to reveal the location of hidden bunkers and their entrances. The ability to squeeze forces will allow predator and global hawk spying to see who what and where remaining forces are.

Special forces or air power or conventional ground power will liquidate, subvert and it's all inevitable.

Chemical weapons are not effective against special forces. We own the night.