The Discerning Texan
-- Edmund Burke
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Yet ANOTHER Clinton lie exposed...
CLINTON, THE CIA, AND BIN LADEN: Clinton didn't actually authorize the CIA to kill Osama, as he's claimed, according to Newsweek. Someone should ask Sandy Berger about this. (Via Don Surber).
UPDATE: More thoughts from Captain Ed. "I've written before that pursuing partisan blame for 9/11 is a waste of time. It gets in the way of determining where failures occurred and developing the proper approaches to avoid them in the future. The truth is that the issues that created these failures stretched back for years, probably decades in terms of interpretation of intelligence law. However, it gets difficult to remember that when former presidents essentially lie about their roles on national television. Given Clinton's unique history, this prevarication and self-aggrandizement comes as no surprise, but it is still pretty disappointing." This won't help Hillary.
ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts from Ron Coleman.
Labels: Appeasement, Bill Clinton, Hillary, Misreporting Events, Osama Bin Laden
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
New Non-Profit in the Making: Lefties for Lies
Labels: Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events
Another Fake Photo (this one from AFP)
If you buy these, I've got a bridge to sell you...
Confederate Yankee describes yet another MSM anti-American hoax which Iraqi photographer Wissam al-Okaili has perpetrated on the public--with Agence France-Presse paying the bills. Only you might think that the Sadr City woman who was holding up bullets that she claimed to have "came into her room and hit her bed" might at the very least have bothered to find bullets that HAD BEEN FIRED FROM A GUN. Alas, these were not... :
Photographer Wissam al-Okaili has had quite an interesting summer in Iraq, and apparently made quite a few friends. In July, he published a picture carried in media around the world, as an elderly Sadr City woman held up a object that she claimed was a bullet that came into her room and hit her bed. What was quite interesting about the claim is that the "bullet" had no rifling, and did not match up to a caliber used by any known U.S. or Russian-designed weapons system. Many at the time felt that the object was most likely a fake, but results were never conclusive. Over at Blackfive last night, Uncle Jimbo caught al-Okaili attempting to use this narrative once too often as captured on Yahoo!'s photostream The woman in the photo—Uncle Jimbo notes that she looks like the same woman—makes a very similar claim, holding up bullets that she claims hit her house. And they very well may have hit her house, if the were tossed or kicked in that direction, but it is quite obvious that bullets still in their cartridge casings have never been fired by a gun [note: the cursor arrow in the photo above was added by me to point at the casing during the screen capture, and is not in the original photo]. Based upon these photos alone, we can only say that Wissam al-Okaili may simply be a dupe of a photographer. Obviously, his editors weren't sharp enough to notice that fired bullets don't remain in their cartridges, either. Perhaps al-Okaili was merely the patsy for a manipulative and press savvy Madhi Army propaganda operative, and this AFP photographer was used as so many photographers were used in last summer's conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Labels: Iraq, Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events
Monday, August 13, 2007
Harsh Reality
Labels: Iraq, Media Bias, Misreporting Events
Friday, August 03, 2007
The Making of a "New" American Tabloid
Day by Day by Chris Muir (click to enlarge)
Labels: Cartoons, Iraq, Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events, The Left
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Beauchamp's Star continues to Wane
Er, Beauchamp wasn’t in Iraq but Kuwait; Er, Beauchamp wasn’t in a mass grave of Saddam’s, but he or someone put on his head a piece of skull from a children’s cemetery; Er, Beauchamp’s Bradley wasn’t part of the army of Genghis Khan.
This sounds like a Massachusetts Senator’s trip to Cambodia, his secret cap, and invented description of his fellows.
For more, see here and here and keep laughing at the clown editor of TNR at Memeorandum.
Labels: Iraq, Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events, The Left
Friday, July 27, 2007
UPDATED Glass, Beauchamp, and The New Republic: Losers on Parade
Any way you look at it you lose..." -- Paul Simon
Those lyrics from Mrs. Robinson could not be more appropriate to the situation with The New Republic and it's "embed" in Iraq, now revealed as Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Jack Kelly discusses the case and finds that it is a no win situation for TNR's anti-war "plant" :
Now that they've demonstrated their diarist is a real soldier, the New Republic's editors feel vindicated. But the issue is not whether Pvt. Beauchamp is a soldier. It's whether he's telling the truth or not. And his story stinks to high heaven. No one else at the base ever seems to have a seen a woman who fits the description of the woman in the chow hall. No mass graves have been discovered during the time Pvt. Beauchamp has been at FOB Falcon. It is physically impossible for the driver of a Bradley to see a dog to the immediate right of his vehicle.
It would be better for Pvt. Beauchamp if he made his stories up. It breaks no military rule to BS gullible liberal journalists. But if Pvt. Beauchamp is telling the truth, he and his buddies have broken so many articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that I haven't space to list them all.
It isn't only Pvt. Beauchamp who'd be in trouble. If the latter two stories are true, then his fire team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant and platoon leader either witnessed them, and did nothing about them, or were negligent in supervising their soldiers. And if I were his company commander, I wouldn't be expecting below the zone promotion to major anytime soon.
His superiors won't be happy campers, and neither will his fellow troops, to whom he has brought unwanted scrutiny, deserved or not. I suspect Pvt. Beauchamp soon will be the guest of honor at a blanket party.
That he is Pvt. Beauchamp suggests this is not his first brush with the UCMJ. He called himself PFC Beauchamp on his Web site last September, which indicates he's been busted a stripe. He's been in the Army long enough to be a Spec 4.
On his blog (Sir Real Scott Thomas), Pvt. Beauchamp indicates he's an aspiring writer who joined the Army to establish credentials for voicing his liberal political opinions.
"I know that NOT participating in a war (and such a misguided one at that) should be considered better than wanting to be in one just to write a book," he wrote May 18, 2006. "But...maybe I'd rather be both."
But is Pvt. Beauchamp telling the truth about what he sees in Iraq?
In a blog entry for May 8, 2006, Pvt. Beauchamp describes an atrocity: "'Put a 556 in his head.' (The caliber of an M-16 rifle is 5.56 millimeters.) On the street below, the man's brown face dissolves in a thick red mist. The lights in the city's houses shut off in unison. Electricity rationing. Water rationing too. You ever tried to survive for more than a few hours in 120 degree weather?"
On May 8, 2006, Pvt. Beauchamp was in Germany, where temperatures rarely reach 120 degrees, and the electricity and water work just fine.
My guess is that these are not the only things that Pvt. Beauchamp made up. And it appears that TNR's scandal with Stephen Glass may just be the tip of the iceberg for that left-wing rag. So is anyone asking the forbidden question: why is it that a large majority of the "made up" news only seems to come from the Left? Could it be a natural result of a bankrupt ideology with no long-term historical "success stories"--because Marxism does not work and never has worked as an economic/political model--or is it the fact that the Left (aka "World Socialism") already has the blood of over 200 million political murders (and counting) on its hands?
Chalk up another big "win" for the blogosphere (especially Ace); but it isn't like the Left has made it hard or anything... they don't seem to get it that in the age of the Internet and the blogs, you can't just roll out lies and automatically have it accepted as gospel anymore. To many so called "journalists" that is a bad thing--but real journalism needs to be about getting the story right. And the fact that bloggers like Ace are making that happen can only be good for a democracy in the long run.
UPDATE: John Hawkins offers a refresher course on the evils of Communism (which = "Socialism"):
Got that?Communism is a system that forces human beings to behave in a method that runs contrary to human nature and as such, is always destined to fail, impoverish the people living under it, and crush the human spirit. Communism is all about forcing people to work for the state, stealing the fruit of their labor, and giving faceless bureaucrats unlimited power and control over every aspect of the human existence.
That's why Communist nations always end up being totalitarian. Because when the people see what a nightmare communism is, they reject it, and then the elitist left-wingers who implemented the system in the first place have to use force to maintain the system.
The free press has to go because it'll report the truth about how terrible communism is for the people. Real, honest elections are out because the people would vote to get rid of communism. The communists always end up turning to secret police, gulags, non-stop government propaganda, and murder, sometimes on an almost unimaginable scale, to keep the people under control.
In the 20th century, communist regimes killed more than a hundred million people including (rough estimates that vary a lot depending on whose work you believe)
Mao: 77 million
Soviet Union: 61 million
Pol Pot: 2 million
Kim Il-Sung: 1.6 millionThe Nazis were lightweights compared to the communists who killed far more people, enslaved far more people, and held power for a much longer time.
If you want to know why Communism has never been treated with the utter disdain of Nazism in the United States, it's because liberals have always been sympathetic to commies. Liberals flirted with Communism in the forties and fifties and vigorously defended the communists who moved into positions of power in Hollywood and even the communist spies in our own government. Even today, you have liberals slobbering over that evil old monster Castro and wearing Che Guevara t-shirts.
But, despite the liberal comfort with Communism, it is an evil system with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Labels: Iraq, Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events
Media Misreporting even creeps into Political donation stories
Hey, I'll bite: Thank you Michelle and thank you Warner Todd Hutson. Thank you both for continuing to expose the frauds in our elite media. Please keep it up!Great catch here by Warner Todd Huston at Newsbusters on a Chicago Sun-Times reporter’s magical transformation of a big Democrat contributor into a “staunch Republican.” Presto change-o:
Why is it that every time the MSM writes a story about a supposedly “staunch Republican” who is vocally supporting the opposing Party, we have to wonder of its veracity? Maybe it’s because there always seems to be a few little problems with the claim of “staunchness” on the part of the MSM’s favored Party hopper du jour? And in this case, the Chicago Sun-Times story titled “GOP lawyer sold on Dems” by Jennifer Hunter, we have no better assurances than we ever do that the claimed “staunch Republican” is either very “staunch” or very “Republican.”
Sun-Times writer Hunter dug up a supposedly “staunch Republican” named Jim Ronca, a trial lawyer from Pennsylvania. Mr. Ronca, claims Hunter, is “certain of one thing: He is not going to vote Republican in the 2008 presidential election.”
But there is more than that. He also says he’ll financially support Democrats, and he makes this announcement as if this is somehow an earth shattering rebuke to the GOP, or so the Sun-Times wishes us to believe.
Here is the kicker from Hunter’s story:
“I’m not only going to vote Democratic, I’m going to financially support the Democrats,” Ronca said after a luncheon forum of the American Association for Justice, featuring Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Barack Obama, former Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Joe Biden. “The Republicans in Washington are an embarrassment.”
Judging from his public donation record, though, this “staunch Republican” also apparently believes that Republicans everywhere else are an “embarrassment,” too. Check out the majority of his political contributions:
$1,000 Harris Wofford (Democrat, PA) 6/22/1994
$250 Charles Oberly (Democrat, PA) 10/3/1994
$500 Edward Kennedy (Democrat, MA) 11/16/1995
$250 Stewart Greenleaf (Republican, PA) 12/29/1999
$250 Patrick Casey (Democrat, PA) 6/3/2000
$500 Ron Klink (Democrat, PA) 6/13/2000
$500 Ron Klink (Democrat, PA) 9/15/2000
$500 Arlen Specter (Republican, PA) 11/5/2001
$500 Allyson Schwartz (Democrat, PA) 3/30/2004
$2,000 John Kerry (Democrat, MA) 5/27/2004
$500 Allyson Schwartz (Democrat, PA) 8/23/2005
$1,000 Bob Casey (Democrat, PA) 9/13/2006
$500 Bob Casey (Democrat, PA) 9/30/2005
$500 Bruce Braley 9/5/2006Conservatives on the Internet asked Hunter to explain. Her reaction? A column complaining about: 1) how mean the Internet watchdogs are; 2) how readers should blame her editor, not her; and 3) how one registered Republican just decided he’s supporting Hillary, so no one should complain about her embarrassingly inaccurate description of Ronca as a “staunch Republican.”
The thanks you get…
Whiny Jennifer Hunter ought to quit worrying so much about "meanness" (has she had a look at the Democrat Underground lately?) and start worrying more about checking her misreported "facts" before they make their way into the newspaper.
Labels: Blogging, Media Bias, Misreporting Events, The Left
Friday, July 20, 2007
UPDATED More Media Misreporting of Fact: TNR and "Scott Thomas"
If it were an isolated incident, it would be one thing; but based on all the other fabrications, outright lies, and even image photoshopping--which have been an across-the-board features of the MSM's coverage of our war efforts--it is hard not to begin to believe that some/many of these false stories have common origins or benefactors: (Soros? MoveOn? Center for American Progress?... the list of suspects is long.) And the beat goes on...
The following is from Stephen Spruiell in The Corner:
The effort to get to the bottom of a fishy New Republic article allegedly written by a soldier stationed in Baghdad — first noted by Tom Smith at the Tank and then given a huge boost by Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard — is really gaining traction. Criticism from knowledgeable veterans has mainly focused so far on the pseudonymous soldier's account of a sadistic private he knows who can apparently run down dogs with laser-like precision in a 30-ton Bradley fighting vehicle:
One particular day, he killed three dogs. He slowed the Bradley down to lure the first kill in, and, as the diesel engine grew quieter, the dog walked close enough for him to jerk the machine hard to the right and snag its leg under the tracks. The leg caught, and he dragged the dog for a little while, until it disengaged and lay twitching in the road. A roar of laughter broke out over the radio. Another notch for the book.
But as defense analyst Stuart Koehl writes in an e-mail to Goldfarb, that's nearly impossible:
I am looking now at a 1/32nd scale model of a Bradley, and I can say with some assurance that the driver's hatch is on the left side of the vehicle. Immediately to the driver's right is the engine compartment, the cooling grill of which rises above the level of the driver's hatch, making it impossible to see anything on the right side of the vehicle. Even if the driver was head-out, he still couldn't see anything to his right below the level of the top deck (all armored vehicles have significant blind spots close in, which is why they need dismounts to protect them from RPG guys in foxholes). So, if, as the blog says, the driver "twitched" the Bradley to the right, he must have used extrasensory perception in order to catch the dog. Because there's no way he knew the dog was even there.
A Desert Storm vet offered a lighter take:
The article makes it sound like the BFV (Bradley Fighting Vehicle) is some sort of Klingon warship with a cloaking device and a sound silencer, capable of sneaking up on sleeping dogs and running them over before they can get up and move the 2 feet they'd have to get out of the way.
And earlier, Michael Yon e-mailed Goldfarb and said the story "sounds like complete garbage." About the only detail TNR would provide to Goldfarb by way of vouching for the story is that, according to the soldier, a particularly vile episode he describes took place at Forward Operating Base Falcon. Yon writes, "I spent time with [the soldiers at that base] this year... 1-4 CAV is an excellent unit. I emailed the commander, LTC James Crider, about the story."
If it turns out that TNR has fallen for another fabulist, it will be worse than last time. Stephen Glass was at least by all accounts a talented fraud. These articles, on the other hand, read like some of the more deranged scribblings we find in the NR mailbox and tack to the weirdo wall.
UPDATE: More from Milbloggers Greyhawk and Blackfive. This thing is a FAKE.
Labels: Iraq, Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events, The Left
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Associated (with Murderers) Press: all the bad news that's fit to print
I’m beginning to get the impression there is nothing more important to the Associated Press in its Iraq reportage than the number of “American soldiers killed in this unpopular war.” That phrase, with a number, is typically trotted out no later than graph three in AP stories on Iraq. It’s as though the body count is the sole measure upon which all decisions and action must turn. There certainly has been no effort by the Associated Press, or other major news organizations on the ground in Iraq, to examine progress in anything but the most dismissive manner, with a quick revert to body count.
In case you care, Terrorist Death Watch’s tally of officially announced terrorists offed by U.S. forces in Iraq since June 1 last year is 1,578. I suspect that number is conservative. The Associated Press remains noticeably disinterested in that number. In addition to that, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of terrorism suspects taken prisoner. There are car bomb factories and Iranian weapons smuggling operations that were shut down. There are people who have come forward with information. There are Iraqi units that have come on line, combat effective, playing a growing role in operations.
Since Memorial Day last year, we’ve seen Anbar turn, we’ve seen Sunni-Shiite reconciliation become popular enough that Moqtada al-Sadr is now trying to get in front of it. We’ve seen businesses reopen and people return to their homes in Baghdad. We’ve seen Shiite militias aggressively engaged and Sunni insurgents on the run. We’ve seen the number of sectarian murders drop. Those facts typically get buried when they are mentioned at all, unless there’s an uptick in death, when they suddenly become news again, to be cited as evidence of failure. AP prefers its milestones grim.
Labels: Appeasement, Hearts and Minds, Islamic Fascism, Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events, The Left
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Was George Orwell "Channeling" CNN?
Labels: Hearts and Minds, Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
UPDATED Dim-witted Dems/MSM stuffed in attempt to Katrina-ize Kansas Tornado; Obama claims 10,000 died!
Feel better now? Me neither.
(ps - be sure and watch the Harry Reid video too...)
UPDATE: Obama's death toll in Kansas only off by 9,988! I see several possibilities: (1) either Obama is flat out lying--and knows it, or he is a lot dumber than we think; (2) Obama's advisors who gave him this advice are either lying or stupid--and Obama did not review the information for accuracy (not a good quality for a President of the United States...); (3) Obama and/or his advisers think their target audience is either too clueless or too committed to care about a little thing like "the truth"; or (4) some combination of the above.
Labels: Bush Derangement Syndrome, Democrat Sabotage, Media Bias, Misreporting Events
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Tony Snow suggests possible Milblogger reprieve UPDATED
UPDATE: Meanwhile Stars and Strips has its own take on the Milblogger question.
Labels: Hearts and Minds, Media War, Military, Misreporting Events
Friday, March 16, 2007
Pay No Attention to the Nutroot behind the News Desk
Cartoon by Gary Sheffield (click to enlarge)
Labels: Cartoons, Hearts and Minds, Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events
83% of Americans Consider Media Biased.
Labels: Hearts and Minds, Media Bias, Media War, Misreporting Events
Monday, February 26, 2007
An Open Letter from the Front Lines UPDATED
CSM James Pippin writes to the American People from Mosul: you need to read this.
This dispatch is only scratching the surface for Michael Yon, who has risked life and limb for over a year now as an embed--to bring to us the story that our defeatist media refuses to cover. We owe him our thanks and our support; I've given him mine. You can keep his mission moving forward by giving as much as you can here.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, the good guys have nabbed more AQ leaders in Iraq.
UPDATE: Another great interview of SFC Smith near Basra. Wonderful frankness here.
Labels: Iraq, Middle East, Military, Misreporting Events
Sunday, February 11, 2007
It is the Media's War to Lose
Labels: Iran, Iraq, Media Bias, Media War, Middle East, Misreporting Events
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Treachery: NY Times Buries Al Qaeda Iraq stories so Public will Disassociate the two...
I am happy that President Bush is showing the courage of his convictions in waging the war abroad; but apparently the President has not yet gotten the message that the only way this war can be lost is for the American people to lose the will to fight it here at home. And enemy Number One towards that shameful ending is the New York Times. It is time for Alberto Gonzalez and Justice to pull the trigger--big time--on the publishers of this disgrace of a newspaper. The first round should come in a multi-million dollar fine of the NYT, with a threat of worse if any more openly seditious activity occurs. This would not only levy a heavy financial hit on the Times; it would send a message to all of the other seditious papers and networks that they could be next.
Labels: Al Qaeda, Iraq, Media Bias, Media War, Middle East, Misreporting Events, US Politics
Monday, January 22, 2007
The Associated (with Islamists) Press caught in a Lie
Here is Michelle's blog entry (check out the original AP story at the bottom...), and lastly, the Hot Air video that nailed the AP in their tracks.
Another glowing example of the power of the blogs to cut through the elite media propaganda.
Labels: Associated Press, Iraq, Media Bias, Middle East, Misreporting Events
Sunday, January 21, 2007
American "Wins" Misreported--it is time to get Drastic about it
I did note these three headlines today from the Associated (with our enemies) Press did make a bit more of a splash:
- Bombs Kill 18 in Separate Iraq Attacks
- Iranians Reportedly Set for talks with US (story about how they want talks with the US...)
- 3 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq - roadside bomb, fighting Sunni insurgents
Notice a pattern?
The fact that you seemingly have to go to the Jerusalem Post to read about our successes in this war is one illustration of the extent to which the American Elite Media seems to be heavily invested in an American defeat; they seemingly care less about America winning this war--their only and overriding concern is to "get Bush" and to get a Democrat into the Presidency --no matter that doing so would put the United States and the West behind the proverbial 8-ball in its war for survival. The media's printing of classified secrets, and its horribly skewed coverage is costing American lives abroad and public morale and support at home. When our own media is openly rooting for mass murderers against American kids, and showing propaganda snuff films that helps the Islamists recruit, it is time that We The People and our Executive Branch rethink how we are going about this media war.FDR, for example, had no compunctions whatsoever about vetting newspapers and radio for enemy-friendly propaganda or for information that gave away any secrets--and he did censor newspaper and radio content numerous times throughout World War II. And this was in a time when our homeland (save Pearl Harbor) was relatively immune to direct enemy attack; today that has all changed, as we found out on 9/11--and a well placed suitcase nuke could take out an entire city. This is no longer implausible--indeed the question the way we are fighting this war today seems to be when, not if. At least FOUR of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 came across the Mexican border illegally (not exactly a feat that requires rocket science these days...). If Osama were to lay out his millions for a Russian-era nuke, what is to say that could not easily come across our border illegally. Yet we seem to care more about the political aspects of border security than about the fact that an open border could invite catastrophe such as the US has never seen on its shores.
Today, we live with a nightmarish, Stalinist-like Political Correctness in this country that was not present in the 40's; yes that makes it harder for the President to take unilateral action without a big stink being raised. But when our sons' and daughters' lives are on the line--and when our lives may be on the line--I personally could care less about what "looks good" politically; we need to use EVERY weapon at our disposal. When the consequences of abandoning our commitment to the Iraqi people are so horrific to the stability of the entire world--e.g. ceding the entire Arabian penninsula to a Nuclear Iran just for starters--then we must stop fighting this war like a "beauty contest" and start doing whatever it takes to WIN.
It is well past time to take off the gloves--and that means against the seditious American news media as well as our enemies abroad. Prosecutions; heavy fines of offending publishers, media outlets and individuals; and jailing reporters who do not reveal the sources of leaked classified material--all would be critical weapons in protecting our state secrets and ensuring the public was informed about the positive things that were happening abroad. And over time, these unpopular-at-first steps would harden American resolve at home, thus making our defeat a virtual impossibility. If that is what it takes, then why not?
One of my biggest complaints about this Bush Justice Department has been its timidity when it comes to gettting to the bottom of the many damaging leaks that the New York Times, Washington Post, and other seditious media have published against the "wishes" of the US government. Well it is time to stop "wishing" and start "dishing"--dishing out indictments, that is... And if agencies under scrutiny for leaks (like the CIA) do not show up to scheduled interviews with the FBI leak investigators (as was reported last week), then slap a subpoena on the stonewallers--no matter who they are (see Jay Rockefeller post yesterday)--so fast their heads will spin, and then put them in front of a Grand Jury. And if they still don't cooperate, throw away the key until they do.
War is not pretty; it is a messy, sloppy, ugly business, laden with mistakes. That is its very nature. But that does not mean that the American people have to see every mistake and every mishap in bold headlines or on Katie Couric or Keith Olberman's newscasts with little or no counterbalance whatsoever. The Constitution gives the President extraordinary powers during wartime; Lincoln even suspended habeus corpus. This may be the most critical war for the future of the US that we have ever fought; we simply must use EVERY tool at our disposal to win this War, even if it means Hollywood and the Media would scream bloody murder and cry "wolf". So what? Are they not already doing this every day?
Taking off the gloves at home means using the President's Constitutional powers to stop the media bleeding at home against a press which have shown themselves in large part to be the enemies of our men and women in harms way. Faster, please.
Labels: Associated Press, Iraq, Media Bias, Misreporting Events, War Successes
