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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (31100)	11/6/2003 11:02:40 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 89467

The Rumsfeld Watch ("More quackery from sec of defense??, Rumsfeld") More Quackery From the Secretary of Defense October 31st, 2003 3:00 PM Mondo Washington this week: villagevoice.com WASHINGTON, D.C.—Despite arguments in the mainstream press that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is leading us down the road to defeat in Iraq, Rumy is being hailed anew as a great warrior and the sexiest man alive. His right-wing fans have opened an attack on the lefty worms and traitors who have unfairly attacked this great American hero. So far there has been little serious criticism of Rumsfeld in Congress, and professional politicians are saying it's too late in the game for Bush to drop the Secretary, even if he wanted to. And anyhow, Rumsfeld represents an important Bush constituency of businessmen and defense contractors. So Rumy carries on unchecked. The man Bush once called "Rumstud" said yesterday he wasn't sure he had seen the Saddam torture videos broadcast recently over Fox, but what the hell, one torture film is as good as another: "When you have people filming, in front of crowds cheering and clapping, you have people cutting off people’s tongues and cutting off people's heads, and chopping off their fingers and chopping off their hands, throwing them off a three-story building, you learn something about a group of people and how they live their lives and how they treated their people." In response to the journalistic naysayers, Rumy still says we're successful in Iraq: "not only has the coalition managed to outpace the progress in postwar Germany, Japan, Bosnia, or Kosovo, they have done it under fire, while fighting a dangerous, low-intensity conflict." The fact that the past week was marked by the worst violence in Iraq since the U.S. declared the war was over on May 1 doesn't seem to matter. Meanwhile, suicide attacks and rocket barrages continue. Some 80 Iraqi security officers have been killed in the last few months. Who was conducting these attacks, a reporter asked the "Babe magnet"—another of the affectionate nicknames given Rumy: Foreigners, he replied. One of the suspects said he was Syrian, but Rumsfeld doesn't believe him. "I think he was probably a Yemeni." Last week U.S. Defense officials blamed Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a top Saddam aide, for masterminding the recent strikes against U.S. and their Iraqi allies. The Pentagon biggies claimed to have obtained this information from captured fighters. This is an important point, since it ties what's left of Saddam's regime to foreigners, opening the way for renewed pressures on places like Syria and Lebanon. But as the Washington Times points out today, al-Douri seems an unlikely suspect, since it is "indisputable" that he has been ill with leukemia since 1997 and requires transfusions, which would be hard to arrange amid the current fighting. Further, he is believed to be in the north—far away from the recent attacks. When he was asked about this, Rumsfeld changed the Pentagon line: "I really don’t have enough conviction on the subject that I would want to try and confirm or deny it." Where the "babe magnet" once was affectionately thought to be a funny old geezer, now he has become a sex icon, making conquest after conquest, in the words of the nationalreview.com, "of the hearts of women all over America, each beating a little harder at the thought of a man who, these ladies like to believe, doesn't need the help of a B-52 to make the earth move." Newsmax.com, the big conservative web site, is fighting back against left-wing jibes and smears on the Secretary: "Now, less than five months after he helped President Bush formulate and execute a bold plan in which a U.S. invasion force drove to Baghdad and toppled the dictatorial government of Saddam Hussein in 21 days, Secretary Rumsfeld is under attack—by the same coalition of Socialist-led anti-war demonstrators and radical left-wing Hollywood 'actors' that tried to undermine our fight against terrorism with their 'blame America' tactics during the war." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: stockman_scott who wrote (31100)	11/6/2003 7:08:04 PM
From: Crimson Ghost	Respond to of 89467

Still another reason to DISTRUST the mainstream press. They will always "spin" the news to favor the establishment. Top Stories - Reuters L.A. Times Bans 'Resistance Fighters' in Iraq News Wed Nov 5, 9:21 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Dan Whitcomb LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Times has ordered its reporters to stop describing anti-American forces in Iraq (news - web sites) as "resistance fighters," saying the term romanticizes them and evokes World War II-era heroism. Latest headlines: · Saddam tried to make deal to avoid invasion AFP - 11 minutes ago · Troops Gather to Honor Comrades in Iraq AP - 20 minutes ago · Iraq Tried Last-Minute Deal to Avoid War AP - 21 minutes ago Special Coverage The ban was issued by Melissa McCoy, a Times assistant managing editor, who told the staff in an e-mail circulated on Monday night that the phrase conveyed unintended meaning and asked them to instead use the terms "insurgents" or "guerrillas." McCoy told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that the memo followed a discussion among top editors at the paper and was not sparked by reader complaints. The memo first surfaced on the Web site L.A. Observed (www.laobserved.com) "(Times Managing Editor) Dean Baquet and I both individually had the same reaction when we saw the term used in the newspaper," McCoy said. "Both of us felt the phrase evoked a certain feeling, that there was a certain romanticism or heroism to the resistance." McCoy said she considered "resistance fighters" an accurate description of Iraqis battling American troops, but it also evoked World War II -- specifically the French Resistance or Jews who fought against Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto. "Really, it was something that just stopped us when we saw it, and it was really about the way most Americans have come to view the words," McCoy said. McCoy said she was confident that the Times reporters who used the term had no intention of romanticizing the Iraqis who have killed more than 100 U.S. soldiers since Washington declared major combat over in May, and that the paper's Baghdad bureau had no objection to the policy change. NOT COOL OR NEUTRAL The policy change reflects the highly politicized atmosphere surrounding the war in Iraq, which has brought charges of biased reporting from all sides of the political spectrum. McCoy said she did not know how many readers had made complaints about the use of the term. "We are loath to proscribe the use of just about any word," she said. "But sometimes certain combinations of words send an unintended signal. You combine these two seemingly innocuous words and suddenly they have this unintended meaning." Allan Siegal, assistant managing editor of the New York Times, told Reuters that he agreed with the decision made by his West Coast rivals. "We don't have a policy but when you mentioned the phrase it sounded like romanticizing to me," Siegal said. "I don't think it's the kind of cool, neutral language we like to see." But David Hoffman, foreign editor of the Washington Post, said his paper had used the phrase "resistance fighters" to describe Iraqi forces and had no objection to the term. "They are resisting an American occupation so it's not inaccurate," Hoffman said. "We try to be as precise as possible and distinguish whether they are former Baath party, Fedayeen, outsiders, insiders. But that's not always possible." According to a search of the Lexis-Nexis database, The Los Angeles Times has employed the term "resistance fighters" dozens of times in the past six months, including three references on Monday. On Tuesday, the day after McCoy issued her memo, the paper used it in an editorial, which criticized the Bush administration for a lack of humility and candor over Iraq.