kenneth fooled by reading the morons at MSNBC using rehashed garbage made up quotes taken out of context. LOL samo samo lamo.
go find "furious and angry" in any MSM article. Go find "embarrassed" in some context.
Your anus neck ring is showing again.
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Inventing News
Airborne Hog Society ^ | April 3, 2005
Posted on 04/19/2005 1:06:03 PM PDT by robowombat
April 3, 2005
Recent articles attempting to highlight divisions between Colin Powell and the rest of the first-term administration of George W. Bush are getting more desperate and more embarrassing, for the media. The latest articles of note from Robin Gedye (26 February 2005 "Powell criticises Iraq troop levels and rift with Europe"), Charles Laurence and Phillip Serwell (21 November 2004 “Powell ‘pushed out’ by Bush for seeking to rein in Israel”) and Geoff Elliot (1 April 2005, “Powell Criticises Bush on Iraq”) are part of a concerted effort by the media to make the case that Bush is wrong, by virtue of being at odds with Powell. Unfortunately for the media, Powell is not cooperating as much as they would like.
Let us put this criticism in context. The leaders of Europe simultaneously supported sanctions against Iraq in the United Nations and then violated those very sanctions by allowing illegal sales of weapons and oil between Europe and Iraq. While claiming to be looking out for the interests of the Iraqi people, the European elites showed that they truly saw the Iraqi people as mere pawns, or less, as they continued trade with Iraq. Saddam Hussein was clearly using money intended for feeding his people to build his military, but the European leaders did not care. They were enjoying the privileged business.
It is ironic that the world leader who stood most firmly with the Iraqi people is so often decried as their greatest enemy. In a Europe where moral clarity is seen as an offensive oxymoron, an Arab world where self-examination is viewed as humiliating rather than constructive, a United States where the left subconsciously values political power more than national security and believes that peace is defined as a lack of US offensive combat operations, the moral clarity provided by President Bush is regarded as repulsive and dangerous. He is despised because he is not a moral relativist, he insists that people really do want to be free, and he dares to commit our military to the task of killing or capturing enemies of human freedom. The delineation could not be clearer or more obvious as to who the good guys and bad guys are. Yet, we still have people who put their political agendas and personal pride above the cause of freedom.
The international media and socialist dead-enders are more and more blatantly revealing themselves to be the most evil and hateful people on the planet. They are nothing more than spectators in life’s struggle, sitting idly by, criticizing, pointing, and complaining from their couch as the rest of us work to spread freedom. Unwilling to participate for their own selfish reasons of insecurity and stubbornness, they would rather be wrong than for the rest of the world to be free.
President Bush has a lot of enemies among this group. The moral relativists and socialists of Europe and the United States clamber behind corrupt socialist leaders of the new Europe that has emerged since the end of the Cold War. No longer having the Soviet Union as a check against our power and influence and no longer having the Soviets as a threat sufficiently large for the Europeans to appreciate us more than envy us, Europe now has an inferiority complex. As we liberate and democratize the Arab and Muslim worlds, Europe sleep walks into economic stagnation and the international equivalent of a mid-life crisis. Rather than jump on the bandwagon, they feel threatened by our power and influence and choose to resist what is so obviously just. Their primary tactic is to criticize, demonize and discredit everything that George Bush does that can be seen as benefiting America, even if it also benefits the rest of the world.
The attempt to misrepresent the words of Colin Powell is representative of their latest tactic for discrediting Bush. Powell is popular among the dead-enders, because he was perceived as the voice of moderation in the Bush administration. For reasons of political correctness and power politics, it was safe and to some degree necessary for even the media to hold him up as the good guy. This reflects the shrewdness of appointing Powell in the first place. With Powell being popular and continually held up as the “moderate” or “progressive” voice in the administration, Bush was continually cast as the far-right wing warmonger. This was a conscious long-term effort to draw a divide between the two men. That did not work well when Powell refused to speak out about any real or perceived disagreements and when Powell personally presented the US case against Iraq, at the United Nations.
Yet, the effort to divide the two still does not end. With Powell leaving office over what may very likely have been professional differences with the President over policy issues, the media again clamors to draw a division between the two, for purposes of demonizing the President. In the skewed worldview of the mainstream media, Bush is evil, but most people are too dumb to realize it; Powell is good, which is self-evident. So the best way to illustrate how evil Bush is, is to draw distinctions between the two men. The maturity and professionalism of Colin Powell does not make this a simple task for the media. A career military officer, rather than a career politician, he does not act rashly, selfishly or without careful thought. His comments are tactful and carefully made.
While many on the American right wing have taken the media’s bait and continued to castigate Powell for being perceived as the voice of moderation in the Bush administration, he has shown himself to be a gentleman among gentlemen. In spite of the manner in which his service and his relationships within the Bush administration have been characterized (and it is worth noting that all of these characterizations are based upon rumor - not Powell’s words) he is still careful in his comments about the Bush foreign policy. And this brings us back to the disgraceful journalism that is becoming the norm.
The headline "Powell criticises Iraq troop levels and rife with Europe" is an example of saying something, in hopes that just saying it will make it true. Powell's actual words were: "enough troops for war but not for peace, for establishing order. My own preference would have been for more forces after the conflict." Well, who does not hold this view? As Rumsfeld pointed out, you go to war with the Army that you have, not the Army that you want. I am sure that the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff understands this.
After reading the deplorable article by Laurence and Serwell, I am convinced that there are absolutely no minimum standards for what passes for journalism at the British Telegraph. Their story read:
"Colin Powell, the outgoing US secretary of state, was given his marching orders after telling President George W Bush that he wanted greater power to confront Israel over the stalled Middle East peace process."
What was this assertion based upon? Who knows? Normally one would take a journalist at his word, but the demonstrated bias and flagrant agenda of the Telegraph in this article and the last, as well as the reputation that it has developed over several years of bad reporting, requires that one approach this article with skepticism. Unfortunately, the authors provide nothing to back up their claim. What they offer is little more than tabloid rubbish. It is fitting that they close their article with this zinger out of left field: "There is also the option that the US may tacitly back Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities."
The most recent bit of tripe from Geoff Elliot, writing in The Australian, begins:
"FORMER US secretary of state Colin Powell claims he is 'furious and angry' about being misinformed over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and has criticised George W.Bush and Donald Rumsfeld for their clumsy rhetoric in the lead-up to the war."
Further reading puts this claim to rest. There is no further mention of the context in which the convenient "furious and angry" comment was drawn and the criticism of Bush and Rumsfeld is, at best, soft and diplomatic. The "criticism" of Rumsfeld amounted to the following quote: "We were sometimes too loud, too direct, perhaps we made too much noise," Mr Powell said. "That certainly shocked the Europeans sometimes -- words like 'Old Europe'." Oh, how harsh. And then comes the knockout punch against Bush:
"And Mr Bush came in for criticism too, with Mr Powell saying he 'presented some positions in a perhaps overstated way, but that's how changes begin, just look at the Middle East,' referring to what appears to be some democratic momentum in the region."
If you actually read that quote without drawing your conclusions before doing so, it seems pretty clear that this is a compliment. To reiterate, "but that's how changes begin, just look at the Middle East." Sounds to me like "good job, Mr. President."
The media is embarrassing itself, as it continues to write glaringly deceptive pieces. One would think that this is obvious to the media, especially since there are so many media watchdog groups and even awards for media bias. But, this flood of criticism may be having the oppositely intended effect of making the media more defensive, more stubborn and more determined to maintain its ways of blatant bias and an otherwise total lack of professionalism. When one views the equally stubborn manner in which the same people continue to fight against the spread of freedom and democracy, then we begin to see a clear trend in their behavior and see their true motivations. They do not want to conform to any standards of right or truth. They want right and truth to conform to them.
The mainstream media is becoming more like a broken clock - right twice per day, wrong the other 86,398 times. More accurately put, they are like a broken clock whose alarm will not stop beeping. We can continue to beat them down and keep telling them that they are wrong, as they continue their annoying noises, or we can just throw them into the trash heap where they belong. |
