Quote of the war - no contest.
I live between Southampton and Portsmouth and its not that bad!!
OI!!!!
I live between Southampton and Portsmouth and its not that bad!!
A letter to Bush
- Thread starter Burb
- Start date
What surprises me here is that people think that war's are fought with no problems at all.
Examples:Friendly fire, accidents etc.
NOw let me tell you this.
Howmany Helo missions do you think they are conducting over there?
100?200? Not even close.
More than a thousand missions a day.
If you compare that to the incidents of helo crashes, its really nothing.
Its a demanding enviroment for both man and machine even if we spend billions on our equipment each year **** will still happen.
This is the biggest deployment of the military since WW2 and the vast majority of this have never been in such a large scale conflict.
This inexperience can/has/will cause problems, but in my eyes, this is being ignored by a lot of people and the media.
OH dont get me started over the media's attitude towards this.
The BBC is a disgrace for being so left-wing and SOOOO PC, as they always report on the bad points of this war mostly.
Remember shock and Awe?
Too badfor the media they didnt get it.
You could tell they were dissapointed when it kicked off.
ALways the crap and never the goods.
C4 News is pretty good i can add.
Onto this "Get it finished quick" motto.
Absolute rubbish.
Over in a month?ROFL!!!
Sorry but the only this war is gonna be over in a month is if you carpet bomb the cities.
Examples:Friendly fire, accidents etc.
NOw let me tell you this.
Howmany Helo missions do you think they are conducting over there?
100?200? Not even close.
More than a thousand missions a day.
If you compare that to the incidents of helo crashes, its really nothing.
Its a demanding enviroment for both man and machine even if we spend billions on our equipment each year **** will still happen.
This is the biggest deployment of the military since WW2 and the vast majority of this have never been in such a large scale conflict.
This inexperience can/has/will cause problems, but in my eyes, this is being ignored by a lot of people and the media.
OH dont get me started over the media's attitude towards this.
The BBC is a disgrace for being so left-wing and SOOOO PC, as they always report on the bad points of this war mostly.
Remember shock and Awe?
Too badfor the media they didnt get it.
You could tell they were dissapointed when it kicked off.
ALways the crap and never the goods.
C4 News is pretty good i can add.
Onto this "Get it finished quick" motto.
Absolute rubbish.
Over in a month?ROFL!!!
Sorry but the only this war is gonna be over in a month is if you carpet bomb the cities.
Like Ices said, try to see the point of view from as many media as possible, and you will see that its really hard for the soldier, and many need at least some rest...
And you will see that many things are really different from what cnn, bbc say...(dont even try to watch fox news, this one should be renamed propaganda channel....).
The Peter Arnett story shows that not many journalist can say what they really see...
And you will see that many things are really different from what cnn, bbc say...(dont even try to watch fox news, this one should be renamed propaganda channel....).
The Peter Arnett story shows that not many journalist can say what they really see...
Seeing as the journalists were "invited" buy the MOD, they arent really going to show us pictures of the deaths surrounding Shock & Awe, etc......
But admitably American Networks are so pro-war its un-true, and the british networks are kind of mixed
But admitably American Networks are so pro-war its un-true, and the british networks are kind of mixed
This OP-ED piece says it all.
They dominate the air, but still the media can't win
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 29/03/2003)
After little more than a week, is this war coverage in trouble? Already questions are being raised about whether the media's plan was fatally flawed. Several analysts are surprised that, despite overwhelming dominance of the air, television and radio divisions have so quickly repeated the mistakes of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, on the ground, rapidly advancing columns become stalled in Vietnam-style quagmires around the second paragraph.
Speaking live from his armchair, General George S. Patton says, "Look, I'm just an armchair general, but, when I lean forward, pick up the remote and switch on the TV, it seems clear these media sonsofbitches pushed ahead too fast in the first 48 hours and then found their supply lines stretched far too thin. The supply of lines just wasn't getting through. OK, it's fun to write 'embedded' the first half-dozen times, and 'shock and awe', but then what? So the *******s got bogged down, then panicked and went into a complete reverse in a desperate manoeuvre to protect their rear.''
Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery (Retd) agrees that the media are in trouble, but blames it mostly on a confusion of war aims. "The problem is they relied on this two-pronged 'shock and awe' business. On the one hand, you'd have these reporter chappies embedded with your Royal Marines and so forth, 'awed' at how absolutely ripping it is to be in a tank. On the other hand, you'd have your crack columnists in Baghdad, 'shocked' at the scale of Anglo-American carnage, with hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, smart bombs landing on every hospital, nursery schools blown to kingdom come, etc.
"Well, the bally carnage never showed up, so it was a week of awe and no shock. The editors assumed that, by the weekend, they'd have Bush and Blair on the run. Instead, we now stand on the brink of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe: even as I speak, George Galloway, John Pilger and thousands of others are being systematically starved of material.
"And let's not forget that disgusting breach of the Geneva Convention when poor bloody Robert Fisk was paraded across the Independent and forced to eke out 1,200 words about his lavatory paper. So much for superior hot air power. Though I must say the line about how 'In the sands of Mesopotamia, Britain lost an empire but at least I've found a roll' was awfully good."
Longtime gay strategist Alexander the Great argues that you have to look at the root causes. "The media had an over-reliance on their elite special forces, the celebrity contingent," he says. "They move fast, but they're too lightly armed to hold their positions and they're easily shot down. Take Martin Amis: the Guardian hires him to penetrate to the very heart of the subject, only to have him limp back with some feeble comparisons between Texas and Saudi Arabia. We've seen all this before: on the first day, you make a spectacular advance, but the publisher never recoups."
Alexander feels the media planners overestimated the degree of resistance. "If you look at the strategically important stronghold of Hollywood, they said it would be a cakewalk. Michael Moore would have a big cake and then walk to the podium, and he'd be greeted by cheers from the beleaguered locals, who've been cut off from the rest of the world for years. Instead, they jeered him. Oh, sure, now we're told it's not because these isolated Hollywood villagers are loyal to Bush, only that they're too terrified of reprisals to speak out. Funny how the story keeps changing."
Philip VI of France says, "When I signed on to the Hundred Years' War, I thought it would be over in 120, 140 tops. Nobody told me we'd be committing for more than two centuries. So I understand the media's impatience. But you know, what looks bad on Day Four doesn't seem such a big deal when you're in Year 137. If I have a criticism, I'd say the media were over-invested in the decapitation approach. For months they pounded the leadership with state-of-the-art precision-guided surgical strikes - Bush is a moron, Rumsfeld's a madman, Blair's a poodle - assuming that, if you remove the nerve centre, the regime will be unable to function. Ha! If there's one thing we French have come to learn, it's that George W. Bush is perfectly capable of functioning without a brain."
Veteran critic the Duke of Wellington says the media never recovered from their terrible miscalculation on the Turkey front. "By Day Three, they'd decided the Rumsfeld plan was a complete turkey," His Grace told a recent media studies conference in Leicester, "whereas Saddam was a brilliant survivor, even though at that point he'd been dead for 72 hours."
The Duke then played a Newsnight report: "They call it 'asymmetrical warfare', and no one appreciates the theory more than Saddam. Bush and Blair expected to fight this war standing up, but by remaining prone the Iraqi president has left the Pentagon's plans in tatters. Saddam knows he can't be `the last man standing', but by drawing Bush and Blair into lying down he's shrewdly re-framing the battle on his terms."
They dominate the air, but still the media can't win
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 29/03/2003)
After little more than a week, is this war coverage in trouble? Already questions are being raised about whether the media's plan was fatally flawed. Several analysts are surprised that, despite overwhelming dominance of the air, television and radio divisions have so quickly repeated the mistakes of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, on the ground, rapidly advancing columns become stalled in Vietnam-style quagmires around the second paragraph.
Speaking live from his armchair, General George S. Patton says, "Look, I'm just an armchair general, but, when I lean forward, pick up the remote and switch on the TV, it seems clear these media sonsofbitches pushed ahead too fast in the first 48 hours and then found their supply lines stretched far too thin. The supply of lines just wasn't getting through. OK, it's fun to write 'embedded' the first half-dozen times, and 'shock and awe', but then what? So the *******s got bogged down, then panicked and went into a complete reverse in a desperate manoeuvre to protect their rear.''
Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery (Retd) agrees that the media are in trouble, but blames it mostly on a confusion of war aims. "The problem is they relied on this two-pronged 'shock and awe' business. On the one hand, you'd have these reporter chappies embedded with your Royal Marines and so forth, 'awed' at how absolutely ripping it is to be in a tank. On the other hand, you'd have your crack columnists in Baghdad, 'shocked' at the scale of Anglo-American carnage, with hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, smart bombs landing on every hospital, nursery schools blown to kingdom come, etc.
"Well, the bally carnage never showed up, so it was a week of awe and no shock. The editors assumed that, by the weekend, they'd have Bush and Blair on the run. Instead, we now stand on the brink of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe: even as I speak, George Galloway, John Pilger and thousands of others are being systematically starved of material.
"And let's not forget that disgusting breach of the Geneva Convention when poor bloody Robert Fisk was paraded across the Independent and forced to eke out 1,200 words about his lavatory paper. So much for superior hot air power. Though I must say the line about how 'In the sands of Mesopotamia, Britain lost an empire but at least I've found a roll' was awfully good."
Longtime gay strategist Alexander the Great argues that you have to look at the root causes. "The media had an over-reliance on their elite special forces, the celebrity contingent," he says. "They move fast, but they're too lightly armed to hold their positions and they're easily shot down. Take Martin Amis: the Guardian hires him to penetrate to the very heart of the subject, only to have him limp back with some feeble comparisons between Texas and Saudi Arabia. We've seen all this before: on the first day, you make a spectacular advance, but the publisher never recoups."
Alexander feels the media planners overestimated the degree of resistance. "If you look at the strategically important stronghold of Hollywood, they said it would be a cakewalk. Michael Moore would have a big cake and then walk to the podium, and he'd be greeted by cheers from the beleaguered locals, who've been cut off from the rest of the world for years. Instead, they jeered him. Oh, sure, now we're told it's not because these isolated Hollywood villagers are loyal to Bush, only that they're too terrified of reprisals to speak out. Funny how the story keeps changing."
Philip VI of France says, "When I signed on to the Hundred Years' War, I thought it would be over in 120, 140 tops. Nobody told me we'd be committing for more than two centuries. So I understand the media's impatience. But you know, what looks bad on Day Four doesn't seem such a big deal when you're in Year 137. If I have a criticism, I'd say the media were over-invested in the decapitation approach. For months they pounded the leadership with state-of-the-art precision-guided surgical strikes - Bush is a moron, Rumsfeld's a madman, Blair's a poodle - assuming that, if you remove the nerve centre, the regime will be unable to function. Ha! If there's one thing we French have come to learn, it's that George W. Bush is perfectly capable of functioning without a brain."
Veteran critic the Duke of Wellington says the media never recovered from their terrible miscalculation on the Turkey front. "By Day Three, they'd decided the Rumsfeld plan was a complete turkey," His Grace told a recent media studies conference in Leicester, "whereas Saddam was a brilliant survivor, even though at that point he'd been dead for 72 hours."
The Duke then played a Newsnight report: "They call it 'asymmetrical warfare', and no one appreciates the theory more than Saddam. Bush and Blair expected to fight this war standing up, but by remaining prone the Iraqi president has left the Pentagon's plans in tatters. Saddam knows he can't be `the last man standing', but by drawing Bush and Blair into lying down he's shrewdly re-framing the battle on his terms."
Sent to me by a friend. Takes awhile to load depending but guaranteed amusing---
It occurs to me that some strange things are going on with our
international relationships. As that happy buffoon Algore once intoned in
his finest animatronic manner, "Everything up is down and everything down
is up!" To wit:
The Germans are calling us warmongers.
The North Koreans are calling us paranoid.
The French are calling us arrogant.
The Russians are exhorting us to rely on diplomacy.
And the Mexicans are accusing us of violating a foreign nation's sovereign
borders.
Just seems kinda odd to me....
And who'd have thought to see the growing bond of affection between those two polar opposites, Dubya and Tony Blair, immortalized in the following video:
http://www.zen15631.zen.co.uk/bb.mpg
It occurs to me that some strange things are going on with our
international relationships. As that happy buffoon Algore once intoned in
his finest animatronic manner, "Everything up is down and everything down
is up!" To wit:
The Germans are calling us warmongers.
The North Koreans are calling us paranoid.
The French are calling us arrogant.
The Russians are exhorting us to rely on diplomacy.
And the Mexicans are accusing us of violating a foreign nation's sovereign
borders.
Just seems kinda odd to me....
And who'd have thought to see the growing bond of affection between those two polar opposites, Dubya and Tony Blair, immortalized in the following video:
http://www.zen15631.zen.co.uk/bb.mpg
Tennessee’s Commies
Red in the antiwar movement.
Peace can make for interesting bedfellows, as citizens of Nashville and environs have recently discovered. Indeed, the state's most revered and self-congratulatory peace activists have been exposed, by talk radio, as being deeply in bed with the Communist party.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
The fun began when local talk-radio sensation Phil Valentine (familiar to NRO readers for leading the anti-state income-tax movement in Tennessee) decided to have a look at the Nashville Peace and Justice Center's website. The group has been sponsoring peace rallies in the area, and is also trying to send a delegation to see Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Valentine wanted to find out exactly who's who in the center's pro-peace coalition.
Many of the members were hardly a surprise. The center is affiliated with clergy and laity concerned about war, so one would expect to find religious organizations on the roster. There are, including the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church, Church Women United, the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation, the Interfaith Alliance of Middle Tennessee, and the Social Concerns Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Church.
Nor did some of the other members seem out of place. Common Cause is listed, along with the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation, LA CASA, the War Resisters League, the United Nations Association and Tennessee Peace Action. Not to be left out, the United Nubian Congress has joined up, along with BURNT (Bring Urban Recycling to Nashville Today).
What caught Valentine's eye, however, was the acronym CPUSA — the Communist party. Holy cow. What are the commies doing there? After all, about the only peace they've provided is the peace of the grave. Valentine's antennae were twitching as he went to the CPUSA's main website, scrolled down to the "contact the CPUSA" section, and found the listing for the Middle Tennessee Chapter.
"I couldn't believe it," says Valentine. "The street address for the Tennessee chapter of the CPUSA is the exact same address as the Nashville Peace and Justice Center." Sensing his readers might benefit from this information, Valentine took the story on air last Friday. Not everyone was happy he did so.
"Matt Leber, the peace center's director, called in," Valentine told me. "At first he denied any affiliation with the Communist party. He said they weren't any Communists within ten miles of him. I pointed out they have the same address as his organization. There was stunned silence. Then he admitted that the CPUSA is a member organization, but said that didn't mean anything."
Leber's position didn't fly too well. Not only were listeners outraged. Officials at the CPUSA tried to cover their tracks. A visitor to the CPUSA site now finds the street address for the Middle Tennessee Chapter of CPUSA has been dropped. Only an e-mail address is given. Anticipating a cover-up, Valentine made printed copies of the original page for those interested in pursuing the link.
Valentine's grilling duties were not finished. Next target was the Jewish Federation. "Their spokeswoman initially denied any association with the Communist party," he says. "When I presented the proof, she admitted they were members but said the peace committee was a 'big tent' large enough to include different points of view. From my perspective, a big tent would include Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Reform-party members. The CPUSA is trying to destroy the tent."
Valentine asked the spokeswoman if the Jewish Federation would remain a member of the peace committee if the American Nazi party joined. "She said, 'Of course not.' So I asked why she would refuse to associate with an organization that's known to have killed six million Jews, but has no problem associating with an organization which, at last count, has butchered over 170 million people worldwide."
Valentine's listeners won't let the story drop. "I try to talk about the war, but most of them want to talk about the Peace and Justice center. I'm finding out something new about the center every day. One listener pointed out that the Methodist Women, who are part of the peace coalition, own the building in which the CPUSA/Nashville Peace and Justice offices are. I've gotten tons of e-mails and phone calls from lay Methodists who are outraged that their tithes are going to this."
Despite its highly interesting and somewhat amusing nature, this story took a bit of time to find its legs. "The Fox affiliate looked into the situation and came to the same conclusion I did," says Valentine. The Tennessean (the local Gannet rag) was several days catching up.
Valentine ended the interview on a philosophical note. "I'm not saying that everybody who is against this war is a Commie. But I know that around the country the Communist party is behind many of the protests. [See Byron York for more on this.] So if you're going to protest the war you need to know who you're in bed with."
Red in the antiwar movement.
Peace can make for interesting bedfellows, as citizens of Nashville and environs have recently discovered. Indeed, the state's most revered and self-congratulatory peace activists have been exposed, by talk radio, as being deeply in bed with the Communist party.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
The fun began when local talk-radio sensation Phil Valentine (familiar to NRO readers for leading the anti-state income-tax movement in Tennessee) decided to have a look at the Nashville Peace and Justice Center's website. The group has been sponsoring peace rallies in the area, and is also trying to send a delegation to see Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Valentine wanted to find out exactly who's who in the center's pro-peace coalition.
Many of the members were hardly a surprise. The center is affiliated with clergy and laity concerned about war, so one would expect to find religious organizations on the roster. There are, including the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church, Church Women United, the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation, the Interfaith Alliance of Middle Tennessee, and the Social Concerns Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Church.
Nor did some of the other members seem out of place. Common Cause is listed, along with the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation, LA CASA, the War Resisters League, the United Nations Association and Tennessee Peace Action. Not to be left out, the United Nubian Congress has joined up, along with BURNT (Bring Urban Recycling to Nashville Today).
What caught Valentine's eye, however, was the acronym CPUSA — the Communist party. Holy cow. What are the commies doing there? After all, about the only peace they've provided is the peace of the grave. Valentine's antennae were twitching as he went to the CPUSA's main website, scrolled down to the "contact the CPUSA" section, and found the listing for the Middle Tennessee Chapter.
"I couldn't believe it," says Valentine. "The street address for the Tennessee chapter of the CPUSA is the exact same address as the Nashville Peace and Justice Center." Sensing his readers might benefit from this information, Valentine took the story on air last Friday. Not everyone was happy he did so.
"Matt Leber, the peace center's director, called in," Valentine told me. "At first he denied any affiliation with the Communist party. He said they weren't any Communists within ten miles of him. I pointed out they have the same address as his organization. There was stunned silence. Then he admitted that the CPUSA is a member organization, but said that didn't mean anything."
Leber's position didn't fly too well. Not only were listeners outraged. Officials at the CPUSA tried to cover their tracks. A visitor to the CPUSA site now finds the street address for the Middle Tennessee Chapter of CPUSA has been dropped. Only an e-mail address is given. Anticipating a cover-up, Valentine made printed copies of the original page for those interested in pursuing the link.
Valentine's grilling duties were not finished. Next target was the Jewish Federation. "Their spokeswoman initially denied any association with the Communist party," he says. "When I presented the proof, she admitted they were members but said the peace committee was a 'big tent' large enough to include different points of view. From my perspective, a big tent would include Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Reform-party members. The CPUSA is trying to destroy the tent."
Valentine asked the spokeswoman if the Jewish Federation would remain a member of the peace committee if the American Nazi party joined. "She said, 'Of course not.' So I asked why she would refuse to associate with an organization that's known to have killed six million Jews, but has no problem associating with an organization which, at last count, has butchered over 170 million people worldwide."
Valentine's listeners won't let the story drop. "I try to talk about the war, but most of them want to talk about the Peace and Justice center. I'm finding out something new about the center every day. One listener pointed out that the Methodist Women, who are part of the peace coalition, own the building in which the CPUSA/Nashville Peace and Justice offices are. I've gotten tons of e-mails and phone calls from lay Methodists who are outraged that their tithes are going to this."
Despite its highly interesting and somewhat amusing nature, this story took a bit of time to find its legs. "The Fox affiliate looked into the situation and came to the same conclusion I did," says Valentine. The Tennessean (the local Gannet rag) was several days catching up.
Valentine ended the interview on a philosophical note. "I'm not saying that everybody who is against this war is a Commie. But I know that around the country the Communist party is behind many of the protests. [See Byron York for more on this.] So if you're going to protest the war you need to know who you're in bed with."
You mean my Socialist Worker Party union dues are going to God-fearing Methodist Women!? Sunuvabitch!
How many times dude??Read the fine print from now on..Its all there...
And the missus says thanks for the new stack of bibles that just came in
