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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Suma who wrote (27559)	1/23/2005 3:41:07 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Which "analysts" would that be Suma? Liberal journalists for the MSM? Perhaps former gov't officials who just happen to be die hard liberals with a political agenda? I guess we should allow Iran & Syria to freely send terrorists, weapons & money into Iraq to kill our troops & innocent Iraqi citizens? I guess we should do nothing while they harbor, train, finance & support terrorists & pursue WMD's? Is there any point where you think the US or anyone should use force to defend themselves from known enemies who have sworn to kill every one of us? How about a few honest answers to the above questions.

To: Suma who wrote (27559)	1/23/2005 4:32:43 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Distorted picture On terror, reporters see what they want to see Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1476) Sunday, January 23, 2005 The Washington Post's Dana Priest has demonstrated yet again why so many Americans don't trust the "mainstream" media to tell the truth about what is going on in the war on terror. Her story Jan. 14 on a study by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA's think tank, ran under a scare headline: "Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground: War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report." One wouldn't gather from the headline or Priest's lead that the study, "Mapping the Global Future," has next to nothing to do with Iraq. Based on interviews with 1,000 non-government experts around the world, it paints four scenarios for what the world might look like in 2020. The most important developments in the next 15 years, these experts said, will be the rise of China and India as economic powers that could rival the United States, and the decline of Europe, due to its shrinking and aging population and sclerotic welfare states. Priest hangs her scary lead on a single sentence in the 119-page report: "The al-Qaida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq." This is the rather commonplace observation that over time, veterans of the current war will replace veterans of the war against the Russians in Afghanistan 20 years ago as the leaders of al-Qaida. The calendar alone guarantees that. But Priest describes this single sentence as: "an evaluation of Iraq's new role as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists." Except, of course, there is nothing "new" about Iraq being a breeding ground for terrorists. Saddam Hussein had a special camp at Salman Pak to train terrorists from other lands, and had given sanctuary to terrorist leaders, including one of the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing, and Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian who is the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. The biggest thing that's changed since the American invasion is that now there is a high likelihood that jihadists who come to Iraq will be killed there. But if Priest told the truth, she couldn't turn a story on the NIC report into an attack on Bush administration policy in Iraq. Priest and The Washington Post are hardly the only news organs to slant their reportage to put the situation in Iraq in the worst possible light. Marine Cpl. Isaac Pacheco, who works in the Coalition public affairs office in Baghdad, wondered why no one in the "mainstream" media has seen fit to do a story on Sgt. Addie Collins, an Army reservist from Los Angeles, who -- through donations from friends back home -- has supplied 10,000 pairs of sneakers, sandals and boots to children in Ar Ramadi. "Many service members shake their heads in frustration each time they see their daily rebuilding efforts ignored by the media," Pacheco said. Web logger Bruce Thompson (Machias Privateer) notes that even with all the terrorist attacks, the murder rate in Iraq, on a per capita basis, is about the same as in Chicago. Don't expect to see this fact reported in The Washington Post anytime soon. "I just read yet another distorted and grossly exaggerated story from a major news organization about the 'failures' in the war in Iraq," Lt. Col. Tim Ryan, a battalion commander in the First Cavalry Division, wrote in an email to friends. "Print and video journalists are covering only a small fraction of the events in Iraq, and more often than not, the events they cover are only the bad ones," said Ryan, who is now stationed in Fallujah. "Many of the journalists making public assessments about the progress of the war in Iraq are unqualified to do so, given their training and experience. The inaccurate picture they paint has distorted the world view of the daily realities in Iraq." Ryan wondered why journalists devote so little attention to atrocities committed by the resistance, and so much on scandals like Abu Ghraib. "The media serves as the glass through which a relatively small event can be magnified to international proportions, and the enemy is exploiting this with incredible ease," Ryan said. "It's a disgrace when many on whom the world relies for news paint such an incomplete picture of what actually has happened."

To: Suma who wrote (27559)	1/23/2005 5:22:28 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Milwaukee Democrats To Face Felony Charges In Election-Day Conspiracy By Captain Ed on Silence Of The Cheese Two sons of prominent Democratic polticians and three paid party activists will face felony charges as a result of a widely-publicized attempt to keep Republicans from voting on Election Day in Milwaukee. The charges will be filed on Monday, highlighting the other unrelated issues of voter fraud in Wisconsin's largest city and Democratic stronghold: jsonline.com The investigation into the Great Tire-Slashing Caper will end Monday with felony charges against the adult sons of two prominent Milwaukee politicians - U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore and former Acting Mayor Marvin Pratt. Sources close to the 83-day-old probe said Sowande Omokunde, Michael Pratt and three other paid Democratic activists will each be charged with a single felony count of criminal damage to property, legalese for vandalism. Omokunde, also known as Supreme Solar Allah, is the 25-year-old son of the rookie congresswoman. Pratt, 32, worked on Kerry's local campaign, which was chaired by his father. Pratt, Omokunde and the other staffers will be accused of cutting the tires of some 20 vans and cars rented by the state Republican Party to usher the party faithful to and from the polls on election day. The charges will state that the damage to the vehicles was well in excess of $2,500 - the minimum required to merit a felony. Originally police reported one arrest, that of Opel Simmons III, a Democratic activist working for John Kerry. Cary Spivak and Dan Bice now report that Simmons will face no charges and has returned to his home in Virginia. The initial report gave the impression that the tire-slashing was an isolated act by one person out of control. Now, however, the district attorney's actions indicate that this was a conspiracy, even if the specific charge isn't included. I wonder why the DA is so reluctant to include a conspiracy complaint. If five people come together to plan a felony and then commit it, does that not constitute a conspiracy -- especially when the intent of the felony is to deprive people of a vote in a presidential election? Spivak and Bice note that federal charges are unlikely if the charges match up against the state charges in this case, but if Wisconsin doesn't charge them with the conspiracy, then the feds should file a civil-rights criminal case against the five. Why did the Milwaukee DA decide to just focus on the felony vandalism? It could be the powerful parents of the two men. That also could explain why the investigation dragged on for over two months. But the reluctance could be credited to the connections back to the Kerry campaign and the uncomfortable questions that raises. According to Spivak and Bice, the campaign headquarters hardly thought about civil rights and disenfranchisement when they heard about the slashings: <<< Sources say that investigators caught a break in the case because the slashings quickly became the talk of the Kerry headquarters on the morning of Nov. 2. "People came back and bragged about what they did," said one source. Added a second: "Ultimately, they didn't see this as a badge of shame that they needed to hide from their co-workers." >>> So the Kerry campaign staff knew exactly who committed the crime, and yet it took over two months to bring charges against the quintet? It sounds like a lot of people in Kerry's office became accessories after the fact. One could presume that investigators asked the staff about the slashings; if they protected the five slashers or remained silent about what they knew, that could form an obstruction of justice charge, too. We need to know much more about the Kerry campaign's involvement in this incident, either before or after the fact. We also need to know why the DA seems intent on charging these men with the minimum necessary for trial. The FBI should remain on the case and refer it to the US district attorney and take jurisdiction from Milwaukee in order to ensure that local politics haven't played a role in the investigation.