Know Thy Enemy…

Re( 1): 'Storm Warning...', MySandmen, Mr. Atos
Re( 2): 'The shadow cabinet speaks', The Belmont Club, Wretchard
Re( 3): 'The Odds Against', The Belmont Club, Wretchard
Re( 4): 'Haifa Street', The Belmont Club, Wretchard
Re( 5): '"Insurgents want their stories told" -- Associated Press', The Belmont Club, Wretchard
Re( 6): 'Corrupting Our Sight 2', The Belmont Club, Wretchard
Re( 7): 'A Street Corner in Ramadi', The Fourth Rail, Bill Roggio
Re( 8): 'AP Admits Relationship with Terrorists', PowerLine, John Hinderaker
Re( 9): '9/9/2004: Bush Guard Documents: Forged', LittleGreenFootballs, Charles Johnson
Re(10): 'The Washington Post & My Embed', The Fourth Rail, Bill Roggio
Re(11): 'Notes, Video & Transcripts from CNN Appearance', The Fourth Rail, Bill Roggio
Re(12): 'Preposterous: Iraqi Females Detained', The Security Watchtower, C.S. Scott

I am thankful adults are in charge…

I am relieved we were adult enough to vote for them…

Mr. Atos defines the internal enemy:

The enemy-within implores us to slice our own throats.The storm converges on all
aspects of civilization simultaneously. Once the impact has undermined the stability of structure and foundations, it can dismantle components with ease. The enemy-without ignores legality altogether; civil relationships among men, being an inconvenient anathema to violent persuasion. Their code consists of one article: "Agree with us or we'll kill you." The enemy-within alters legality by semantic confusion to render a despotic precedent that states: "Agree with us or we'll sue, fine, fire, or jail you." Compulsion being the preferred form of violence, the enemy-within manipulates the system accordingly. It infiltrates our courts and mires due process. It hijacks legislative authority to implement mandate by rogue edict. It destroys justice by substituting the moral concept of liberty with an indefinable abstract called fairness. The enemy-without practices violence with no law. The enemy-within uses the law to justify violence in the form of tyranny.

We see elements of the internal enemy in the media:

The Odds Against

It may have been pure luck, but it was surely the longest of odds that would
have brought an Associated Press cameraman to the site of a surprise attack on
two Iraqi electoral workers.

Haifa Street

Two or three dozen people, at the most, would normally have witnessed these
events. But due to the great good fortune of the killers, a photographer from
the Associated Press was present and pictures of the execution were carried on
newspapers throughout the globe, sending the executioner's message not merely to
a handful of bystanders to hundreds of millions of readers throughout the world.

"Insurgents want their stories told" -- Associated Press

In this regard, one hopes it is not impertinent to ask whether a photographer who does not "swear allegiance or otherwise join up philosophically with them (insurgents)" can take their pictures. Mr. Stokes might like to state whether the Associated Press photographer who took a sequence of pictures of an execution on Haifa Street, Baghdad is one of these "brave Iraqi photographers" to whom the insurgents are willing to entrust their stories. If so, at what point did the "brave Iraqi" photographer become aware that the story of the day was going to be the live execution of two Iraqi election workers?

Just asking.

Corrupting Our Sight 2

Yet the practice of assigning stringers dependent on the indulgence of killers for both their lives and access must run the risk of corrupting the reportage. It is almost tantamount to providing each terrorist cells with their very own Alan-a-Dale; and if the digital troubadour will not sing to their liking then surely the killers will not allow him to sing at all.

Want More…

A Street Corner in Ramadi [Updated with another photo from February of 2005]

Did the media fall for yet another insurgent information operation in Ramadi?

Last weekend, several news sources, including the Associated Press and CNN, reported a major insurgent attack on the provincial government headquarters in the heart of Ramadi. We reported the story on Sunday, with skepticism, noting Insurgents have conducted false propaganda operations in the past, such as the incident in early December where the Associated Press reported a fake uprising based on stringers, so the possibility exists this report is false as well."

AP Admits Relationship with Terrorists

So the terrorists wanted to be photographed carrying out the murder, to sow more
terror in Iraq and to demoralize American voters. That's why they tipped off the photographer, and that's why they dragged the two election workers from their car, so they could be shot in front of the AP's obliging camera. And the AP was happy to cooperate with the terrorists in all respects.

9/9/2004: Bush Guard Documents: Forged

I opened Microsoft Word, set the font to Microsoft’s Times New Roman, tabbed over to the default tab stop to enter the date “18 August 1973,” then typed the rest of the document purportedly from the personal records of the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian.

Even More…

The Washington Post & My Embed

To most of the media, my position on the war automatically makes my reporting and analysis of Iraq suspect, even though they did very little work in looking at exactly what I wrote. But Joe Galloway has been against the war in Iraq from the start and has been very vocal about it, and no one questions his motivations. Note how he is treated in this article, "a legendary military correspondent." Thomas E. Ricks, who is writing a book titled “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq," is an objective journalist whose credentials should never be questioned. If you are member of the club, there is no attempt to discern you position on the war; journalists are by default objective and unbiased. Bloggers such as myself, who actually follow the day by day operations and developments in Iraq, and perform accurate analysis based on these details the media cannot be bothered to track, are of course "pro-war," "activists" and such. What a sad state of affairs for our media.

Notes, Video & Transcripts from CNN Appearance

Here are some of my brief (and I mean brief) impressions of the appearance. I found it very interesting that a large majority of the CNN audience did not "have confidence" in the news they were receiving from Iraq. It would have been interesting to have explored the reasons for this further. After watching the interview again, it was obvious Barbara Starr and I were talking about two entirely different subjects. Ms. Starr was discussing the administration and "strategic communications, information operations, spin, spin, spin," as well as the difficulties reporters encounter in Iraq. I was discussing how the media has failed to provide the proper context for the war, specifically in military operations, and how their reporting plays into the hands of al-Qaeda.

Preposterous: Iraqi Females Detained

The information on the female detainees was obtained by the ACLU, which apparently believed (1) something illegal or immoral was going on and/or (2) the story would further undermine the war on terror, a war the ACLU has been against since late 2001. There is no other explanation as to why they pushed this information to the media, except their belief this would further damage the credibility of U.S. efforts in the global war on terror.

… Let us end this embarrassment…

...... I can provide far more examples......

......... I have some in mind, do you want more.........


However, Wretchard nails the reason for ultimate victory:

An idea kept nagging me during the whole week of the General's Revolt until David Adesnik's post brought it home. It's this: in a democratic society the most effective way to bring down a "failed policy" is for the opposition party to offer a better alternative. Because in the last analysis, nobody is going to put Generals Zinni, Clark, Batiste or Newman in the White House out of dissatisfaction with President Bush management of the War on Terror. They're not running for office but Hillary Clinton and maybe John Kerry will be. That inescapable fact means there is no substitute in the national security debate for a rational Democratic Party platform on defense. The alternative to President Bush's policies is not what General Batiste proposes but what the Democratic Party promises to implement. As long as it is what Governor Richardson and Donna Brazile say it is, then Donald Rumsfeld is assured of a job. Perhaps it would be more productive for President Bush's opponents to see if they can articulate something that makes sense.

9/11 changed everything. Enough Americans now realize that they were imbiciles sleepwalking through history. Being led by the nose by a corrupt and ignorant Fourth Estate. Sleeping in a mirage of peace and prosperity unearned and undefended.

My own experience on the morning of 9/11 is illustrative:

1. I wake and do all the preliminaries to head off to work.
2. At first impact I am listening to Hugh Hewitt and watching Fox News. Hewitt breaks in and states that an aircraft had hit the World Trade Center and that he will get us information as he gets it. Fox News blurbs on it, but has no video so I switch to CNN and turn up the volume
3. They soon have a live video feed.
4. Then the next plane hits…
5. A CNN ‘Journalist’ exclaims “Oh, what are the odds of two planes accidentally crashing into the World Trade Center” (paraphrasing) I thought there were no odds.
6. Hugh Hewitt declares the obvious: that we appear to be under terrorist attack

I knew at that moment that my place of work was a target of opportunity

From that point on CNN, and the rest of the ignorant media, became nothing more than a sitcom to me. I have no faith in unreferenced and/or unsourced material. I never will.

What else changed.
Look around the blogosphere.
Much of the fire eminates from that hour…

Know thy enemy.
Keep him close.
They are fools
and fools are forever.

LateR

and sorry about the length of this post. A horrific combination of Atos/Wretchard got me on a rant - and the sad thing is, this stuff sticks in my mind like nothing else...