Originally posted by flashman: So the WHOLE world is so far to the left that they get this impression... Hmm...
You can speak to what the "whole" world thinks?
Well, I have never ever seen or read or heard anyone, in any media outside the US, say anything similar to what the US right claims about the "leftist" media.
As I said before, many media outlets outside of the US agree with and share the same political leanings as the US left and their friends in the US media. Why would they agree with a rightie from the US to whom they disagree?
"Lord, please let me be the person my dog thinks I am"
Posts: 416 | Location: Lost in Space | Registered: June 17, 2006
Does that change the fact that she said the following..."some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians"?
In this instance -- this particular instance -- she's correct. It's dishonest to give her remarks a meaning or assign a context to them other than what she intended.
No she isn't, Iran has been killing our Soldiers and Marines.
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." Ronald Reagan
No she isn't, Iran has been killing our Soldiers and Marines.
Which doesn't alter in the least the fact that without their involvement, the Iraqi attempt to clear a superior JAM force from Basra would have not been successful.
Therefore, she was quite correct.
'Question authority. Think for yourself. Filter out the spin. Engage elected officials critically. Make them defend what they're doing in your name. Derive the truth. Speak truth to power.'
Posts: 4038 | Location: Boston | Registered: April 16, 2005
Originally posted by seabreeze: [As I said before, many media outlets outside of the US agree with and share the same political leanings as the US left and their friends in the US media. Why would they agree with a rightie from the US to whom they disagree?
If the US far right is so singular and isolated in it's opinions that nobody, either in the US or anywhere else, shares or even resounds it's opinions and POVs on the US media, that should tell you something -- other than everybody in the world is Commie scum.
________________________ "Tobacco is my favorite vegetable." --FZ
"Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex." --FZ too
Originally posted by Jack White: Which doesn't alter in the least the fact that without their involvement, the Iraqi attempt to clear a superior JAM force from Basra would have not been successful.
Therefore, she was quite correct.
Jack, where are you getting this information? From everything I have read, the ISF supported by American advisers and air support, were by far the superior force in Basrah. In fact, in most of the uprisings in the Shia part of the country, the ISF has prevailed. I don't doubt that a deal was brokered between the ISF with the Iranians and JAM in Basrah, but I am highly skeptical it was because the Iranians did us a favor. In fact, I think the opposite is true, Maliki may have done his buddy Sadr and the QF commander a favor by not destroying them completely.
It is still my opnion that Pelosi does not have her facts straight in regards to this situation and therefore her statements are out of line.
Posts: 2260 | Location: WI | Registered: November 16, 2007
Y'know, it seems my brain cells weren't functioning particularly well last night since I was confusing Basra with Sadr City, where the recent truce was indeed brokered by Iran, at least in large part. (NY Times article)
But even so, there was something in my memory banks that nagged me about Iran abandoning al-Sadr in Basra (where the Iraqis were indeed helped by serious American and British air support). It was this NY Times article from April 20, which said, in part:
"Whether to counter those allegations (of training and equipping the Mahdis) or simply because, as many Iraqis have recently speculated, Mr. Sadr’s stock has recently fallen in Iranian eyes, the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, on Saturday expressed his government’s strong support for the Iraqi assault on Basra. He even called the militias in Basra “outlaws,” the same term that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has used to describe them.
“The idea of the government in Basra was to fight outlaws,” Mr. Qumi said. “This was the right of the government and the responsibility of the government. And in my opinion the government was able to achieve a positive result in Basra.”
The simultaneous combination of Iran's stance and the retreat of militia fighters in Basra may give fuel to accusations by some American and Sunni Arab officials that Iran has taken a powerful and increasingly open role in Iraqi politics.
Mr. Qumi’s statements now give strong support to that view. They also suggest that Iran, which has historically tried to play Shiite groups against one another in Iraq, has decided to pull back on its support for the group that American officials have continually pointed to as an Iranian-trained troublemaker: Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
Whether that means that the stock of Mr. Sadr himself has fallen is unknown, although Mr. Qumi seemed to avoid discussing the cleric and certainly refused to give him any credit for ending the fighting in Basra. At one point during the fighting, members of the Iraqi Parliament traveled to Iran, where Mr. Sadr is believed to be residing, and helped negotiate the terms of a truce."
Whatever, I did make a mistake in my references.
'Question authority. Think for yourself. Filter out the spin. Engage elected officials critically. Make them defend what they're doing in your name. Derive the truth. Speak truth to power.'
Posts: 4038 | Location: Boston | Registered: April 16, 2005
No she isn't, Iran has been killing our Soldiers and Marines.
Presley, do you really think the Iranians would come over and hug your soldiers and marines, lie down and maybe have a cigar??
In a perfect world (which I wish was the case) they would, but in reality this won't happen.
Iran has borders with Iraq, and Iraq is occupied by the USA, and the USA threatens Iran day and night, what do you think would be Iran's plan of action would be in this case??
Of course they will be working against the US presence in Iraq. It's called national security. You know, national security is not something that only the United States protects, other countries like Iran also have national security and they pursue their interests defending it, by any mean.
The question is: why is the United States in Iraq in the first place?? The answer is: pursuing their national interests by securing the Iraqi and Middle Eastern oil supples.
So as you see, everybody pursues his interests whatever were the costs, there are no morals and good will here, it's all about interests. So you shouldn't be surprised Iran is fighting the US presence in Iraq, simply because their interests demand it.
So either you reach some sort of agreement with the Iranians or we're just be going in circles here.
______________________________ "Stick to your blue collar RASS, I will smoke Cohibas"- ccsigloIII.
Posts: 2124 | Location: Egypt | Registered: June 14, 2007
Originally posted by LuckyBreak: Presley, do you really think the Iranians would come over and hug your soldiers and marines, lie down and maybe have a cigar??
In a perfect world (which I wish was the case) they would, but in reality this won't happen.
Iran has borders with Iraq, and Iraq is occupied by the USA, and the USA threatens Iran day and night, what do you think would be Iran's plan of action would be in this case??
Of course they will be working against the US presence in Iraq. It's called national security. You know, national security is not something that only the United States protects, other countries like Iran also have national security and they pursue their interests defending it, by any mean.
Lucky, I don't think you will find one person on this board that disagrees with these statements. However, this doesn't mean that US soldiers do not have the right to defend themselves and to kill or capture hostile Iranian agents in Iraq. Quite the contrary, IRGC in Iraq is fair game.
Posts: 2260 | Location: WI | Registered: November 16, 2007
Originally posted by seabreeze:1000% incorrect. Conservatives have Fox and Talk Radio. The dimocrats have left-leaning or in the tank news folks everywhere (TV, newspaper, magazines, etc). There are numerous studies (no not from right wing outlets) that confirm this.
I think your point about the media outside of the US reflects their own leanings to the left and see no problems.
The left & right label for the media does not do justice to the subject matter if left is taken to mean anti-government and right is taken to mean pro-government.
(I have just pasted one of my previously posted ingenious dissertations and quoted excerpts.)
Required reading for this thread should be Noam Chomsky's and Edward S. Herman'sManufacturing consent explores this topic in depth, presenting their "propaganda model" of the news media with numerous detailed case studies demonstrating it. According to this propaganda model, more democratic societies like the U.S. use subtle, non-violent means of control, unlike totalitarian systems, where physical force can readily be used to coerce the general population. In an often-quoted remark, Chomsky states that "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." (Media Control)
The model attempts to explain this perceived systemic bias of the mass media in terms of structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people. It argues the bias derives from five "filters" that all published news must "pass through" which combine to systematically distort news coverage.
The first filter, ownership, notes that most major media outlets are owned by large corporations. The second, funding, notes that the outlets derive the majority of their funding from advertising, not readers. Thus, since they are profit-oriented businesses selling a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers), the model would expect them to publish news which would reflect the desires and values of those businesses. In addition, the news media are dependent on government institutions and major businesses with strong biases as sources (the third filter) for much of their information. Flak, the fourth filter, refers to the various pressure groups which attack the media for supposed bias. Norms, the fifth filter, refer to the common conceptions shared by those in the profession of journalism. (Note: in the original text, published in 1988, the fifth filter was "anticommunism". However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been broadened to allow for shifts in public opinion.) The model describes how the media form a decentralized and non-conspiratorial but nonetheless very powerful propaganda system, that is able to mobilize an élite consensus, frame public debate within élite perspectives and at the same time give the appearance of democratic consent.
Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking "paired examples"—pairs of events that were objectively similar except for the alignment of domestic elite interests. They use a number of such examples to attempt to show that in cases where an "official enemy" does something (like murder of a religious official), the press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of coverage to the matter, thus victims of "enemy" states are considered "worthy". But when the domestic government or an ally does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story, thus victims of US or US client states are considered "unworthy."
They also test their model against the case that is often held up as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press, the media coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Even in this case, they argue that the press was behaving subserviently to élite interests.
I recall Chomsky's examples with his particular focus on what he called the "Reagan Reign of Terror" using El Salvador and Nicaragua as prime cases of media propaganda models. Howard Kahane's books are invaluable sources to the disciplines of critical thinking, political and otherwise. Apply the theories of the propaganda model as well as Kahane's primary identified fallacies and you'll find, sadly, that you are back to square one, and by this I mean that no administration will pass muster. All use fallacy and all use propaganda if held to Chomskian or Kahanian standards. This is the inevitable conlusion even when their logic engines are utilized on the most rudimentary level. Granted, some political stances are more fallacious than others.
Originally posted by seabreeze: [As I said before, many media outlets outside of the US agree with and share the same political leanings as the US left and their friends in the US media. Why would they agree with a rightie from the US to whom they disagree?
If the US far right is so singular and isolated in it's opinions that nobody, either in the US or anywhere else, shares or even resounds it's opinions and POVs on the US media, that should tell you something -- other than everybody in the world is Commie scum.
Bingo. Of course, some people are so isolated and brainwashed by extreme right media, that they can't possibly consider what the rest of the world (ie the vast majority of the world's population) thinks, let alone attempt to understand it.
Ignorance breeds ignorance.
When the facts change, I change. What do you do, sir? - Lord Keynes
Posts: 2298 | Location: the GTA | Registered: November 28, 2007
However, this doesn't mean that US soldiers do not have the right to defend themselves and to kill or capture hostile Iranian agents in Iraq
Who said they didn't? Every human being has the right and the instinct to defend himself, it's human nature everywhere. Nobody will be attacked and will sit watch himself get ripped without trying to defend himself, even if he knows he has no chance.
The sad thing is that the Arabs always pay the price. The Americans and the Iranians fight proxy wars in Iraq and it's always Arab citizens who pay the cheuqe at the end of the night.
______________________________ "Stick to your blue collar RASS, I will smoke Cohibas"- ccsigloIII.
Posts: 2124 | Location: Egypt | Registered: June 14, 2007
