2005-05-18
2005 Late May Thoughts
Please add your thoughts from 2005 May 15-30. Please check the groundrules before posting. They are unusual. If you make personal attacks against me or other posters, your comments will be deleted. If you, don't like the groundrules, you can debate me in the alt.politics.bush newsgroup
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21 comments:
My absence
I have poor health and very low energy as a result of the drugs I take to control HIV. There is no way I have time or energy to respond to every post or to respond instantly to the posts that I do handle. I have many other tasks to accomplish besides monitor this blog.
I know several Marines personally, all of which agree that 95% of the "information" posted on your site is wrong and/or misleading.
If that were true, you could pick a particular example, and prove something I said was untrue. All we have is an anonymous person's second hand assertion something unspecified that I said is untrue, hardly persuasive.
At least I have hyperlinks to back up what I say, and if you doubt anything for which there is no hyperlink, complain and I will provide one. You can then evaluate the original source for yourself.
I hold nearly all American soldiers in contempt. They are the ones mindlessly commiting the crimes against children in Iraq. The word of professional hitmen exonerating themselves holds almost no weight with me.
Buy the oil!
James pointed out it would have been a lot cheaper and no one would have been killed if the US simply negotiated a deal to buy Iraq's oil.
That is completely correct.
Now help me convince the Neocons of that. They refuse to notice that it only costs $1 for a stick of dynamite to blow up a pipeline that takes 2 weeks and millions of dollars to repair.
Ironically, the USA was buying half Iraq's oil right up to the eve of the invasion. Since then there has not been even a drop out the northern pipeline.
Further, the motives for the war are more than just oil. See my list.
You might think, “No one could be that bloody minded to start a $300 billion war just to get exclusive access to oil”. Read the neocon literature. They believe in a military solution for every problem.
The Media Bias
(in late April) Roedy said...
All the American TV networks support the war. They are owned by Republicans. All the CEOs donate to the Republican party. I don't know where the idea got started the TV media were organs of left-wing thought. They love the war partly because the theatrics help sell advertising.
If the mainstream media supports the war so much, then why is it that their coverage for the war is so consistently negative?
In a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, ABC News' Terry Morgan said,
"There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that America projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous. That's different from the media doing its job of challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor." [transcript of interview]
Isn't convincing? How about all of the troops that are overseas that complain about the slanted media coverage they always get? Oh, that's right, we shouldn't listen to them because they are "professional hitmen exonerating themselves." So naturally, you shouldn't listen to what any soldiers have to say, right? Maybe a premise that the American military must always be lying? Now if that's not an instance of closed-minded bias, I don't know what is.
Anyway, listen to these words: they are the words of an American serviceman overseas (for those who won't believe "second-hand accounts"), who sent an e-mail to blogger Arthur Chrenkoff [link] in which he says,
"No wonder the rest of the world thinks we're the evil ones. We're the ones telling them we are, over and over again. How about a story where the Army Major carries a dying Iraqi kid in his arms, visibly distraught at the carnage those bastards lay on little kids every day? [photo] How about a power plant coming on line, or kids going to a new school, or a market with free people shopping, or the 30 attacks that DIDN'T go off because of the other 99% of interrogations that went according to plan? Nope, it's just those evil, war-mongering, blood-for-oil soldiers, doing what 'everybody knows' they do when no one's looking. With the 'news' coming out of Iraq 100% bad, there's no reason to expect anyone who relies on the media for information to have any positive thoughts on the effort there, no matter what their political standing. Even my family back home is starting to think it's a Vietnam-style 'quagmire'. Al-Qaeda couldn't get better PR service if they paid for it, and the media are providing gladly and free-of-charge!
If this is how liberals support the troops, then could they please f*cking STOP already? Don't tell those of us in the military you 'support the troops', and then spend 110% of your time and print space breaking your necks to paint us all as bloodthirsty criminals because of the acts of a faw, all as a thinly-disguised way to grind a political axe with a President with which 90% of the media has a deeply political beef. It isn't fooling anybody - especially 'the troops.' We're perfectly aware that, to the media, we are expendable pawns in a political chess game, and we resent the hell out the very real damage they do to us every single day. And they wonder why the military votes overwhelmingly Republican as a block? Give me a break!"
Wrong and/or Misleading Information
Someone said...
I know several Marines personally, all of which agree that 95% of the "information" posted on your site is wrong and/or misleading.
Roedy responded...
If that were true, you could pick a particular example, and prove something I sad was untrue.
Well, let's see, where should I begin?
(for reference, please check out the March and April archives where I provided plenty of commentary and hyperlink support for these arguments)
How about atrocities?
You claim that we used napalm in Fallujah, which was banned by the UN in 1980. [artocity #2]
Good... except, (1) we didn't use napalm in Fallujah (incendiaries, yes, but not air-delivered napalm). And (2) incendiaries are not totally banned by the UN, if you actually read the protocol. [link]
Mustard and nerve gas [atrocities 3, 4, and 7] - all information supporting that claim traces back to a single Islam Online article, and none of it reached the mainstream media, including Al Jazeera (which, of all media sources, would be inclined to report on such a war crime as that).
Atrocity 5 - Mk 77 incendiary bombs. Banned by the UN? Nope - not at all. Read the protocol. [link]
Or there's Atrocity 17 - which says that American soldiers bombed mosques, hospitals, and private residences.
Again, all true... except what you don't say is the hundreds of arms caches that have been found in mosques and hospitals and schools, or that the Geneva Conventions state that the abuse of those protected structures (i.e. using them for a military purpose) causes them to lose their protected status [link] Therefore, American attacks on those structures are NOT atrocities or war crimes.
Atrocity #13 - troops that are supposedly issued candy to use children as human shields.
Yeah... first of all, you don't have a hyperlink to a source. Second of all, just because children come out to soldiers that are giving away candy doesn't explain at all why soldiers are doing that. Have you ever considered the possibility that the soldiers are just being nice and trying to demonstrate that by giving out candy? Oh wait - that's right - all US soldiers are automatically evil and could only give out candy for sinister and devious reasons.
I've argued all of these points in more detail over the past two months, with dozens of hyperlinks providing sources to back up my claims. Something tells me there's more than just not being able to "pick a particular example and prove something I said was untrue."
Napalm At Fallujah
Brian asserts the USA did not use napalm at Fallujah. He supplied no backup for this assertion.
I assert that the USA did use napalm at Fallujah. My essay has supporting hyperlinks to The Sunday Mirror, Uruknet and the Union Tribune.
You can research the matter for yourself by reading some of the 28,000 hits from searching for [napalm Fallujah] at google.ca.
Media Bias
Bias is a measure of how different someone's stance is from your own.
So the American media looks biased left to Brian, and biased right to me.
My complaint with the media is they hide stories embarrassing to the administration.
Brian's complaint is that they do not show an equal mix of the joy and sorrow of war.
“War is Hell”
~ William Tecumseh Sherman
It is dishonest to try to make war look pretty or even tolerable.
Further, the objective fact remains, the media are owned and operated by Republicans.
If you doubt their control, check out the DVD Outfoxed.
Napalm at Fallujah
In this case, I trust the government's statement that we did not use air-delivered napalm in Fallujah [source]. Although you shouldn't take the government at face value, you also cannot assume that the government lies 100% of the time. The reason why I believe the government in this case is that (1) none of the mainstream media picked up on this story. Even if you go with the, in my opinion, unrealistic assumption that all US news media sources are controlled by Republicans, how do you account for Al-Jazeera's silence on this issue? Surely they aren't controlled by Republicans as well! Of all major news sources, they'd be the ones that I would expect to jump on this issue and inflame the Islamic world with this story.
(by the way, the article at The Sunday Mirror [link] refers to the use of "outlawed napalm gas" - the same "napalm gas" that appears in similar articles in Al-Jazeera.com and Islam Online (which are both owned by Al Jazeera Publishing, completely separate from the Al Jazeera that everybody knows at Al-Jazeera.net [link] . How many times do I have to say this: NAPALM GAS DOES NOT EXIST! There's no such thing! Napalm is a jellied gasoline, not a gas.
Furthermore, the Union Tribue article you cite [link] doesn't even mention the city "Fallujah" in the article! It talks about the perfectly legal use of incendiaries against Iraqi troops.
The Definition of Bias
Roedy said... a lot of stuff... like Bias is a measure of how different someone's stance is from your own.
Not true. Check out dictionary.com [link]. It defines bias as "A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment." or "An unfair act or policy stemming from prejudice." and "A statistical ssampling or testing error caused by systematically favoring some outcomes over others."
If you use it in the verb form, the definition changes to "to influence in a particular, typically unfair direction; prejudice."
Just in case dictionary.com got it wrong, let's check out another source: Merriam-Webster Online [link]
How about "an inclination of temperament or outlook" or "a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment" Then there's "deviation of the expected value of a statistical estimate from the quantity it estimates" or "systematic error introduced into sampling or testing by selecting or encouraging one outcome or answer over others."
None of those definitions have anything to do with how different someone's opinion is from someone else's. Virtually all of them involve some sort of preference, inclination, or error as the result of favoring one outcome over others.
This leads into my next post...
The Media Bias
Roedy said...
Brian's complaint is that they do not show an equal mix of the joy and sorrow of war...it is dishonest to try to make war look pretty or even tolerable.
Did I ever make the claim that war was a great thing? Or that we should have more? I've never said that war is pretty - and I bet you can talk to any veteran out there who has experienced combat in person and they'll agree.
However, just because there's a war going on doesn't mean that nothing good can come about as the result of the war. Let's see - what things has war solved? Hmm.. it ended slavery, Fascism, and Nazism off the top of my head. Oh wait... that's right! We can't talk about the good side of any war, such as World War II! Or maybe we should just write off World War II as a war that destroyed the cities of Europe and Japan, killed 40 million people, and cost trillions of dollars without any redeeming qualities.
What sort of "good side" am I talking about in reference to the war in Iraq?
Check out my next post:
Good news from Iraq
(if you want the complete listing of the May 9 installment of "Good News from Iraq", check out this link: [link] )
Here are some highlights...
Reconstruction
In less than one year, over 2100 reconstruction projects have been started, of which 349 have been completed and employing 170,000 Iraqis. [link]
The city of Basra is going to be updated, including the construction of additional bridges. [link]
Construction is proceeding on rehabilitating a water treatment plant, the Army has installed diesel generator systems to rehabilitate Mosul's six water treatment plants and eight pump stations (not to mention clearing the sewer / storm-drain systems), several school buildings destroyed during the war are being rebuilt, installing over 240,000 phone lines in Baghdad, repaired and reconnected over 1200km of fiber optic backbone network, and rebuilt three bridges. [link - pdf]
Over 2000 fired teachers have been rehired for schools in Baghdad and eight provinces. [link]
49 schools have been rehabilitated by the Al Rassafa Third Educational Directorate, not to mention building 16 new schools and rebuilding 6 others from the ground up. [link]
Contracts have been signed to begin construction of two 200MW generators in northern Iraq. [link]
Expanding and rehabilitating one water treatment plant in Iraq and building another to increase capacity by 120 million gallons per day [link]
Japan and the United Nations are working to restore the marshlands of southern Iraq after being massively damaged by Saddam Hussein. [link]
US troops have eliminated long lines at gas stations by installing new pumps and stations and providing increased security. [link]
Iraqi contractors and US soldiers have helped complete repairs at a school in Fallujah, including installing new doors, fans, six water tanks, a water pump, and toilets. [link]
US soldiers have held school supply drives to equip Iraqi schoolchildren, ranging from backpacks and pens and pencils to spiraled notebooks and protractors. [link]
The US Army Corps of Engineers are helping oversee the renovations to the Najaf Teaching Hospital - repairing damagedf floors, walls, cehilings, as well as improving the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, emergency power, and sewage treatments. This hospital is currently educating 250 undergraduate students. [link]
A US Army reservist volunteered his Sundays to act as a doctor in the Al Rasheed district. [link]
So, that's how things look on the humanitarian side of things. How much of that was reported by the news media? And why would Republicans want to hide any of this information?
Napalm
I don't believe Bush on napalm because he has never once told the truth about anything. Can you think of anything? Even one time he told the truth about anything of consequence? I just finished documenting dozens of his lies. I trust the images of charred limbs and I trust the word of his victims.
Napalm Gas
You are dealing with translations from Arabic. They could have meant to say napalm and gas, or naplam gel. From the point of view of the person burned, that is a fine distiction. All they see is a wall of flame.
Bias
Ideally there would be an objective measure. There is no objective measure of what media should report, only an objective truth about each story reported.
So that is why I defined media bias cynically after the manner of Ambrose Bierce.
Question For Brian
Why do you support continuing the war, now that Saddam is caputured?
Lies
Before you trust the Bush administration on the napalm issue, consider how many lies they have told:
They lied about the WMDs.
See a list of individual lies quoted verbatim.
They lied about torture.
They lied about the who ordered the torture and abuse.
They lied about the Qu'ran desecrations.
They lied about the connection between 9/11 and Iraq.
They presented forged evidence about the Niger uranium to the UN.
They lied about the Sgrena hit.
Answer for Roedy
Roedy asked...
"Why do you support continuing the war, now that Saddam is captured?"
That's a very good question - here's where I'm coming from:
The biggest reason why I support the coalition troops in Iraq is that without our support, their government would probably collapse. This is less true now that we've helped set up the Iraqi security forces and government, but if we pulled out of Iraq a year ago, what do you think the chances would have been of the elections going off smoothly back in January? Without coalition and Iraqi security forces, the insurgents would have been far more successful in terrorizing the people and keeping them from voting or forcing their vote. Probably the worst thing that could happen in the region, from a US point of view, would be the establishment of a fundamentalist dictatorship in Iraq, since Al Qaeda's overarching goal is the reestablishment of the caliphate, where the Islamic states would be unified and follow the laws of Islam and be ruled by a religious leader [link].
If such a theocracy was set up in Iraq, that would increase the threat to the United States because it would provide a sanctuary from which Al Qaeda could train, without fear of the internal security forces or other forces hunting them down. After all, that's why we overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Furthermore, besides the whole security threat to the United States, we have a moral obligation to stay in Iraq. After all, we did invade their country and overthrew their government. During the course of the wars that Iraq has gone through, starting with Iran-Iraq in 1980, and particularly after Desert Storm in 1991, much of Iraq's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair (through a combination of direct damage from the war itself and neglect on Saddam's part, who preferred to use government funds to build dozens of elegant palaces instead of providing enough power and water to his citizens). In many cases, in the course of reconstruction, Coalition forces have had to completely rebuild from the bottom up because the former infrastructure had fallen into disrepair.
It would be morally wrong for the United States to go into a country, overthrow their government, and then leave everyone in such a state of chaos. The resulting power vaccum would be filled by whoever could grab power, and usually in power struggles like that, Democracy ends up on the bottom. Besides that, the country's infrastructure would still be in a horrible state of affairs and, without international support to reubild it, the process would take a huge amount of time (assuming that the new government would even want to rebuild it - the Taliban in Afghanistan chose to keep their citizens in a near-starvation state as a way of exercising power over them). As the old saying goes, "You broke it, you've gotta fix it."
Since Saddam chose to continue a guerilla war against the United States following the collapse of his government, the job of the military was not done. (which the US government did not anticipate, hence the initial denials saying that the war was over and resistance was simply sporatic remnants of Saddam's regieme. We simply didn't think that Saddam would plan, from the start, to continue to fight the US with unconvnetional forces and it took a couple months for that realization to work its way through the bureaucracy) The guerillas / insurgents posed a stability threat to any reconstruction efforts and also to the establishment of a free Iraqi government.
Of course, even after we captured Saddam, that doesn't end the guerilla war. Not only did some of the Baathist loyalists continue to fight, but by now there are foreign insurgents brought in from Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries, under the leadership of Al Qaeda. They don't care if Saddam is killed - the Sunnis never liked Saddam in the first place. And once again, if the US simply pulled out its forces, then security would collapse and the country would collapse into chaos (much like what happened to Afghanistan following the defeat of the Soviets - everyone just forgot about them, leading to civil war and the ultimate dominance of the Taliban). Therefore, at the very least, the US forces had the moral obligation to establish a new Iraqi government with the stability to stand on its own.
Although we've made significant progress in Iraq, ranging from the elections in January to the growing effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces, we can't pull out immediately since there is still the insurgent threat and the Iraqi security forces are still being equipped and trained. However, this is the ultimate plan, with US troop strength dropping around December, along with formally handing over responsibility of security to Iraqi army and police forces [link]
Besides the above reasons, which comprise the bulk of my rationale behind supporting coalition forces in Iraq, there are a few supplementary reasons:
1) We're winning. The majority of Iraqis stand solidly on the side of their government and do not want the insurgents to win. [link] [link] Even Sunnis are starting to believe that their country is heading in the right direction. 40% of Sunnis believe their country is heading in the right direction, versus 11% in January. Roughly 80% of Iraqis have confidence in their security forces, 70% have confidence in their government. [link] The key to winning a guerilla war like the one we're fighting right now is winning the support of the local people - without that, victory is impossible (save for a Stalin-like solution of deporting everybody to Siberia). We've made significant headway in gaining the support of the Iraqis - particularly their support for their own government.
If the war was truly settling into a Vietnam "quagmire" in which we do not have the support of the local population (or the local population does not support their own government), and the majority of the insurgents come from, are being housed by, and are being supported by the local population, then I'd say we'd be wrong to back the Iraqi government. But that's not the case - we're backing a government that is supported by the people and fighting insurgents, most of which are foreign, who happen to be launching quite a few attacks against other Iraqis. The insurgents definitely do not have much popular support, as evidenced by the high number of tips that Iraqi citizens are giving to coalition troops about the whereabouts or plans of the insurgents. [link] [link]
2) We're killing members of Al Qaeda, both their leadership and their followers. The fewer of them that survive, the lower the chance of another September 11th happening. It's one thing for terrorists to attack government embassies or soldiers, but when they attack civilians, particularly if they launch attacks that can kill me when I'm just working in a business office, that really pisses me off. You don't just kill 3000 American citizens and get away with it.
Long answer to a short question, but that's basically why I still support continuing the war. It never was about capturing Saddam, just as the war on terror isn't about capturing Osama bin Laden. They are symbolic targets, whose capture definitely helps in the perception of winning the war, but in and of itself, their capture does not decide who wins the war. Besides, regardless of why we got into the war in the first place, we've got to deal with the current situation. The way I see it, if we pull out of Iraq, the result will be bad both for the Iraqi people and the United States and will be a victory for Al Qaeda.
Napalm Gas
Roedy said...
You are dealing with translations from Arabic. They could have meant to say napalm and gas, or naplam gel.
Actually, the original Islam Online article [link] does make the distinction between napalm and gas. However, it only claims that the US used chemical weapons in Fallujah. The only reference to napalm was that the US admitted to using napalm during the three-week invasion of Iraq - which is true, although the cases that they talk about involve the perfectly legal use of napalm on Iraqi troops.
The New York Transfer News website repeated the Islam Online article [link] but with a different headline - "Resistance Says US Using Napalm, Gas in Fallujah" instead of Islam Online's "US Troops Reportedly Gassing Fallujah." It's actually pretty funny, since the articles in both sources are exactly identical, the "Resistance Says US Using Napalm, Gas in Fallujah" article makes no reference to the use of napalm in Fallujah.
Most likely, people who read the NYTN article at some point misread it as "Resistance Says US Using Napalm Gas in Fallujah", overlooking the comma, which led to the whole "napalm gas" thing.
The reason why I make such a big deal out of this "napalm gas" mistake is that the error is repeated over and over again, which means that the people referring to "napalm gas" don't have a clue what they're talking about - they're just reading it from another source and making statements like the United Kingdom's Sunday Mirror which said that "US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah" [link] or Al-Jazeera.com which said that "there have been reports of 'melted' bodies which proves that the napalm gas had been used." [link]
Even if you were right in assuming that there was just a horrible translation on the part of Al-Jazeera.com, which claims to report on "the world today in English," which I highly doubt because the popularly known Al-Jazeera never made any claim about 'napalm gas' ([results of Google search from english.aljazeera.net] versus the [results of Google search on www.aljazeera.com]), then how would melted bodies do anything to support the claim that napalm AND gas were being used in Fallujah?
Maybe I could write off this whole "napalm gas" thing as a bad translation, except for the fact that the claims about napalm (or chemical weapons, for that matter) have not shown up in any mainstream media sources. Even taking into account the supposed Republican control of the main US news sources, how does that account for BBC? Is BBC owned by the Republicans as well? Or are they being run by a bunch of wealthy British Bankers and the Alluminati? What about Al-Jazeerah? Why do they remain silent? Are they also owned by Republicans? The silence of the international media on this topic, especially Arabic media sources to whom that article would be far more significant, leads me to believe that claims about US use of napalm and chemical weapons in Fallujah as being false.
Legality Of Napalm
Despite Brian's lawyerly and technical defense of the use of napalm, that does not change the fact the UN banned napalm in 1980 because it “concluded that the spread of fire with these weapons affected military and civilian targets indiscriminately, that the injuries were intensely painful, and that medical treatment was beyond the resources of most countries.”
Brian is correct that the USA thumbed its nose at the world and was the only country to refuse to ratify the ban. Napalm is still illegal, it is just the the USA still refuses to recognise the rule of international law, just as it refuses to recognise the authority of the international courts.
Only the most depraved sadist could watch a child roasted alive with naplam to face a slow, agonising death and claim this was just fine with him because of the legal technicalities.
Thread Closed
This thread is now closed.
Please put your comments in the currenth thread.
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