What the Heck was I Thinking!?

In all the chatter about the Associated Press and Jamil Hussein, this is the first post that I’ve seen that talks about one aspect of this matter that is the core concern in this war: Confederate Yankee: Gone in 60 Stories notes that,

This presents us with the unsettling possibility that the Associated Press has no idea how much of the news it has reported out of Iraq since the 2003 invasion is in fact real, and how much they reported was propaganda. The failure of accountability here is potentially of epic proportions.

The key term in that paragraph is “propaganda.” It’s the elephant in the living room that no one (almost) is talking about.
The issue isn’t just the accuracy of the reporting by AP or any of the other blind-in-both-eyes legacy press about Iraq. It’s that this is actually selling the enemy’s propaganda.
This happens because most of the press, and most of the US population, don’t think this is a real war.
I was listening to a podcast from Hugh Hewitt last week that invited callers between 22 and 26 to call and explain whether they had joined the military, or if not, why not.
The reason that question is important is that it brings to light how the person views this war - is it a war “over there somewhere,” or is it no-kidding war against an enemy that doesn’t just want us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. They want us dead or converted to Islam and living under their Caliphate.
This stuff is serious folks. Propaganda helps the enemy. Is that what the press wants to do?

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Captain’s Quarters posts about some of the potentially divisive issues in the coming Democrat majority in the 110th congress,

In order to win control of the House, the Democrats had to moderate their message across a wide front to win suburban voters disillusioned, at least momentarily, by the GOP. As a result, their new profile reflects the center more than the traditional pillars of liberalism, such as labor and urban concerns, and their constituents care more about fiscal responsibility than in funding massive programs.

I posted previously about this so-called wave here and here.

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Dr. Sanity posts (REDISTRIBUTING POVERTY) about a recent article by Thomas Sowell.
In it, she states,

As I have said multiple times, poverty has a cure. But for the left–those “progressives” that Sowell identifies, to embrace that cure would require letting go their death-grip on an ideology whose economic redistribution plans have repeatedly been shown to be catastrophically ineffective and oppressive in the real world.

The ideologically naive on the Left may believe they are actually helping the poor. The hard core political Left and their mainstream Democrat enablers know what they’re doing - buying votes. All of the income redistribution schemes that have been attempted have had two features consistently part of them. They have studiously avoided any performance measures - proof of success or failure; and they have continued because the benefactors (liberal politicians) and beneficiaries (various flavors of “the poor,” “the working class,” or “the working poor”) have understood that the votes come while gravy train stays. End the gravy train and the voters won’t hang around.
Once voters come to realize that they are being duped by their benefactors, and as more money comes out of more people to pay less to the “poor,” the mask begins to slip from the pyramid scheme that is most income redistribution.

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It appears that the violence there has spiraled out of control. Captain’s Quarters posts that,

The French have spent their New Year in much the same manner they have spent the last few that preceded it — by the glow of the fires of their vehicles. In a disturbing new tradition, residents of the Muslim banlieus have set fire to over 300 vehicles:

A car burns after a huge police operation involving 25,000 officers failed to quell one of the most entrenched new year rituals in France, with vandals — many of them children — setting on fire 313 vehicles throughout the country. The worst-hit region was Alsace, where 106 vehicles were set ablaze, including 28 in Strasbourg.

Perhaps the Baker-Hamilton-Chamberlain commission could devise an exit strategy for the French.
This, of course after we abandon California (higher death rate then Iraq per capita) and Washington, DC (ditto)

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Not of the troups, but of the home front! Michael Yon : Online Magazine » Blog Archive » Christmas in Kuwait (And Qatar, and Hanoi, and Singapore, and Jakarta) is his post about a stopover in Qatar. He writes,

This war is strange. I never hear soldiers worried about their own morale sagging. Contrary, the war-fighters here are more concerned to bolster the morale of the people at home. Here in Kuwait, where the dining facilities are bedecked in Christmas decorations, soldiers stream in from Iraq on convoys and stream back north along those bomb-laden roads. The service members here are not all rear-echelon people who never see fighting or blood. Yet their overall morale obviously is high.

Maybe it’s because they don’t have to listen to and read all the news papers, radio and TV news readers. A steady drum beat of defeatism wears on one. Even if I maintain the focus on our strategic goal, I get tired of having to go into the ring.
It makes me think of the scene in the movie, “Cool Hand Luke,” Where Paul Newman is getting a serious a$$ whooping, but continues to get back up and return to the fight. The other guy finally gives up on him.
I think these characters in the press who want to show they can drag down the mighty US are trying to do the same.
It’s obvious that most of the arguments they’ve made have been demolished, but you get tired of telling these people the same thing over and over.

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The title of Patterico’s annual review is confusing at first, until you recall that he’s talking about a print news of which he has a low opinion. Patterico’s Pontifications » Patterico’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer Year in Review 2006 is his annual wrap up of the year’s posts and reactions to it.
Get comfortable, because he’s done a lot of posting.

This year’s installment covers a number of topics, including the Michael Hiltzik sock-puppetry controversy; the alleged Ramadi airstrike; the paper’s decision to reveal the Swift counterterror program; the firing of the paper’s editor and publisher; the Iraq war and the war on terror; the paper’s shilling for Democrats during the 2006 election; and my decision to cancel the paper — among many others.

Patterico has really made an impression on me with his quick analysis and interesting opinions on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to the paper offically known as the LA Times.
I’ve referred to his posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
His blog is one of my regular reads, even when I don’t understand some of the big words he uses.

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Captain Ed of Captain’s Quarters posts about the collapse of the UIC - the Council of Islamic Courts in Somalia. His last two paragraphs have two important points for American’s to remember:

The Islamists can expect no peace, however. The Ethiopian air force scoured the coast for Islamists attempting to reach the harbors of Kenya, specifically Ras Kamboni, where they have a center of operations. The collapse of their hold in Somalia has punctured the myth of invincibility of these supposed holy warriors and exposed as lies their pledges to fight to the death to hold the ummah. Now that they have shown their true colors, the armies of Kenya and Ethiopia will have little trouble wiping up what’s left of the terrorist and tyrranous Arab and South Asian militias.

Once again, this shows the West how to properly square off against Islamist forces. Only by conducting a true war with massive, overwhelming force will these terrorists be destroyed.

The two points are: 1) these guys aren’t 10 feet tall and invincible, and; 2) if you’re going to war, go all the way. Don’t pussy foot around about it.
We Americans let too much of the feel good politics of the situation drive the military range of options.

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