How many eye witnesses do you need?
We already have three shop keepers on record and a chief of police.

Mr. Noonan,

Rightly or wrongly, the burden of proof in the minds of most Americans now rests with Bush and his supporters. But it isn't soley because of the MSM focus on violence by itself. Add to that volatile cocktail that is Iraq are issues raised within Bush circle of advisors. Specificly Bush National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadleys assessment of Al Maliki where he writes that while talking to Americans Maliki seems to have good intentions, "The Reality on the streets suggests that either Maliki is either ignorant of what' going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient." Hadley wrote his memo after returning to the US from Iraq on October 30.
After the publication of Stephan Hadleys bleak assessment of Maliki in the NYT, it seems that Bush is behind the Iraqi PM the way he was behind Rumsfield: In the best position, Bush believes anyway, to shove him out when things don't go as Bush wants.
After meeting with the King of Jordan, Maliki showed his appreciation for Bush support by canceling 1 day of a 2 day conference by with the King of Jordan, saying that the three way meeting would not be "the best use of time." And he did it while Bush was en-route with Candoleeza Rice to Amman, Jordan. Of course, Malikis position isn't in danger strictly for lack of support from Bush.
Muqtada Al-Sadir, who controls the largest block of seats in the Iraqi parliament, decided he will withdraw from Malikis governing coalition, unless he gets the Americans to surrender control of security forces. Al Sadr has that political power because he can back it up with considerable security forces of his own.
Bush and Maliki aren't in trouble because of MSM bias. They are in trouble because neither has control they claim over the situation in Iraq. And speaking of Bias, I had to report these events in your blog because you did not. I'd like to know why?
This is your blog, and I appreciate the investment in effort and money this blog represents. But looking at the list of recent posts, can't these events be added to the list?
Look forward to your response.

Say Taxpayer, given that the NYT has such a poor record on getting it right in Iraq, and releasing info to hurt the administration and the GWOT, why would you site them? I find your request to be a typical lib foolishness.

JAT,

Everything you mentioned is influenced in large part by public opinion which is largely controlled by these news agencies which believe quick and shocking is better than cautious and correct. I know a free press is important to keep the government in check and allow the people to make informed decisions, but who is keeping the press in check? Don't you find it troubling that "news" shows have an hour long special leading up to elections with "fake but accurate" documents? How about the hundreds of thousands who died in the Super Dome? Why is it that the press can have a full hour show or full front page story and when they rush to judgement and get it wrong, they sneak out with a 6 line retraction on page 7B or a couple of lines on a web page? Where is the equal time to correct their mistakes?

You bring up the political pull that Sadr has and blame that on Bush. Why do you think he has so much pull? If the media were to show Iraq as working toward a functioning government, other nations may be more willing to help and Sadr may have to actually play ball to keep what control he has. The difference between working towards a new country and spiraling into civil war is what the people want. Outside help is going to be influenced by the news coming out of the country. As we've seen throughout the past years, if 6 people believe Iraq is moving forward and 1 person believes Iraq is sliding backwards, who do we see in the coverage? The headline will read "Iraq plunging into Civil War," and that 1 source (or that 1 person and 3 to 4 annonymous sources) will give their one side of the story. Since everyone likes to say Afghanistan went to crap when we left it to go to Iraq, did Afghanistan go off without a hitch before Operation Iraqi Freedom? Were there absolutely no disenting views anywhere at all (annonymous or named?) Were soldiers and civilians not killed on a daily basis in Afghanistan where we had to have a rolling total on the front page of the newspapers?

I don't believe anything out of the media on any topic, not just Iraq. They may be able to cover a basic who, when, what, where and why local story (accident at Grant and 5th today) but even those have many errors.

How did I reach this conclusion. I got interested in a couple of low profile stories that I followed through the months. The interest immediately made me more of an expert than the journalists who would report periodically on the story. and had many other stories to cover. I was amazed at the factual errors, the lack of focus on the important issues.

Sometimes I would contact the reporter to try to clarify and provide guidance. But that's not my job. Usually, it's laziness, they seem to have a template. I don't know.

Take everything with a grain of salt.

I don't believe anything out of the media on any topic, not just Iraq. They may be able to cover a basic who, when, what, where and why local story (accident at Grant and 5th today) but even those have many errors.

How did I reach this conclusion. I got interested in a couple of low profile stories that I followed through the months. The interest immediately made me more of an expert than the journalists who would report periodically on the story. and had many other stories to cover. I was amazed at the factual errors, the lack of focus on the important issues.

Sometimes I would contact the reporter to try to clarify and provide guidance. But that's not my job. Usually, it's laziness, they seem to have a template. I don't know.

Take everything with a grain of salt.

Don't see this when googling "buried alive iraq" retrieves nothing current. There are stories about such events related to Saddam Hussein's trial, stories from gulf war 1, but nothing current on the first page of result. I'd expect the MSM to show up on the first page of such a search (didn't go beyond that).

Nate,
It's burned alive, not buried alive. You'll find results that way.
JAT,
The waving about of the Hadley memo as significant is exactly the problem with the MSM. All it says are that as far as the sectarian violence is concerned, things aren't going our way in Iraq; so if that's true then it must be true that either Maliki doesn't know what's going on, doesn't want them to go our way, or if he does then he doesn't have the power to change it. This is the most elementary analysis, yet the MSM waves it around as though it's saying something, when in fact it's saying nothing. This is not news. News would be if they knew which one it was. Yet the media jumps on it because to them this is some brilliant statement, and it shows just how facile their typical analyses tend to be.
Mark,
I think the Iraqi example is a good one in that they may be learning what we should have learned so far. If the media reports stories supporting a certain agenda in bad faith, then they should be subject to civil penalties. We punish all kinds of companies for misrepresenting facts about their products or their sales practices, so why not apply these laws to the news media? Why not put some pressure on them to start some kind of quality control when it comes to their own product? Big American companies do recalls all the time when their products are faulty, but how often do you see retractions for poor material on the evening news? I can't say that if the terrorists ever succeed in another attack and it comes out that those terrorists knew about our anti-terrorism practices via the New York Times and so circumvented them, the editors should get put on trial for aiding those murderers. If we can hold the Enron execs responsible, why not the New York Times?

Sorry, typo, the second to last sentence should be can.

JAT,

Certainly there is public doubt about the Bush Administration and the war, but that doubt is entirely generated by misleading and, at times, outright false reporting about the situation in Iraq. We've had saturation coverage of what amounts to enemy propaganda for more than two years now - no surprise that when you listen to lies for two straight years that you start to doubt your own side.

This story is just one of three recent AP stories proven to be outright lies - the photos from Lebanon, the report of 11 Iraqi civilians killed by US troops and this story of people being burned alive...all of them grossly mis-reported in the MSM. This is far beyond the odd mistake we can expect from any human organization; this has risen to the level of deliberate misrepresentation in the service of a particular goal - in this case, to secure defeat of the United States in order to teach George Bush and the Republicans a lesson.

Its really rather sick what we're seeing here - this is as if the AP took its news reports from Goebbles in WWII and presented them as fact to the American people.

Just Another Taxpayer wanted a response to his nonsense. Around these parts the answers he has received could be called a 'liberal bitch slappin'. Woe is me, woe is me, is the battle cry of the libs, and its rubbed off on the demorats. In the end Iraq will be a robust democracy with a vibrant economy and proud nationalists in charge. Libs can't stand this possibility since they have gone from being anti-war to actually wishing us ill-will in achieving victory. Read between the lines on any posting by a lib and you'll see delusion, weakness, and an individual who you would certainly avoid as a friend. JAT fits the description.

Hi Morris,

Thanks! So much for my aging eyes... I'll see what I can find. (I've not seen mention of buried or burned on the little TV or other MSM I watch/hear)

Without bringing Iraq into the picture why would anyone ever believe the media? They are the ones who, sometime around the late 80's-early 90's, strapped explosives to a pickup to blow it up so they could say it was unsafe. After that why would I ever believe them? You only get to lie to me once before I don't believe you again.

Too often the media fall back on a whine that well, what they said WAS true---overlooking the fact that it was only a very small part of the truth, and a carefully selected segment at that.

Once again, I remind you of the blind men who "saw" an elephant by touching it. One reported with absolute certainty that an elephant was like a rope, another that it was like a wall, another that it was like a tree, another that it was like a huge leaf, another that it was like a big snake. And all were correct.

We need media which are willing to step back and look at the whole elephant, which are willing to present an accurate assembly of all the parts and pieces, and which will then allow us to draw our own conclusions.

Agenda-driven media do far more than simply take a pass on looking at the whole elephant. They choose which part to examine and report on, making that selection based on the impression they want to create. So they are far worse than they would be if they just happened upon a trunk instead of a leg, for example. Our media know full well that they can generate public opinion and then guide it by merely choosing what parts to report on----and then they veer wildly from the standards of true journalism by telling us not only that they have given us the whole story, but by telling us how we are supposed to react to it.

Again, Mark, if you want more positive stories to come out of Iraq, why don't you just go there and write some?

I do love the sly chickenhawk-esque tool that the liberals use, its become such a mainstay of their debate, Im surprised we dont see it more. Then again, perhaps its so over-used that it just blends in more.

Remember folks, if you support something you first have to be directly involved...at least according to the left.

Dickdee,

Where exactly is this slappin' you refer to? Tony Snow didn't deny the memos accuracy. Only that Malikis sudden change in plans wasn't caused by it. The memos out there, and its no holy piece of national security.
The only slap recieved was Malikis snubbing of Bush. If you don't want to count the "Thumpin"
Bush supporters took at the polls because of Iraq.
If we are to win in Iraq, fresh perspectives are necessary. The issue is weather America wins in Iraq. George Bush is increasingly proving that if there is to be any victory, it will be in spite of, not because of him. We need to win. Whose at the helm when or if that happens doesn't matter.
If victory in Iraq were possible under the leaderhsip of Newt Gingrich or John McCain, or perhaps, a dem, would you want still want to win, even if it meant George Bush went down in history as a failure who nearly lost it all for us?

Dickdee,

Where exactly is this slappin' you refer to? Tony Snow didn't deny the memos accuracy. Only that Malikis sudden change in plans wasn't caused by it. The memos out there, and its no holy piece of national security.
The only slap recieved was Malikis snubbing of Bush. If you don't want to count the "Thumpin"
Bush supporters took at the polls because of Iraq.
If we are to win in Iraq, fresh perspectives are necessary. The issue is weather America wins in Iraq. George Bush is increasingly proving that if there is to be any victory, it will be in spite of, not because of him. We need to win. Whose at the helm when or if that happens doesn't matter.
If victory in Iraq were possible under the leaderhsip of Newt Gingrich or John McCain, or perhaps, a dem, would you want still want to win, even if it meant George Bush went down in history as a failure who nearly lost it all for us?

JAT espouses one of the favorite new Left talking points---that the Dem wins in November were "...because of Iraq."

It is important to remember that opinion is not always based on fact, as Mark has been pointing out. When Bush made a decision based on what he beleived, as told to him by trusted experts, you all called him a "LIAR!!!!!!!!!!!" Ooohh, you just loved that word!

But when you say something that is not true, or make a decision based on erroneous information fed to you by an agenda-driven media, I'll bet you don't think of YOURSELF as a "liar".

So, first off, there was a backlash at what some people thought was going on in Iraq. Not, you understand, against the actual facts, but against the perception. It is very important to remember this.

And secondly, you have to remember that Iraq was not a major topic in the elections. The Dems won because they pretended to be conservatives, which gave the electorate a choice between two conservatives, one of whom could claim to be a new broom sweeping clean and enacting conservative legislation which had not been enacted by the incumbent.

The actual message of the election is that the public wants conservatives in office. The secondary message is that the Democratic Party realized this, and therefore ran as conservatives. While the election was not a victory for Republicans, it was certainly a victory for conservatism, even when it was a fack conservatism donned for the duration of the elction cycle.

So much bile was created by the Left that it had to have an effect on the general public, which became disgusted with things in general---and which led to a feeling of "If I feel this disgusted now, maybe I should try someone new and give him a chance."

The effort to make the election a mandate against our involvement in Iraq is understandable, given your lack of true issues, but it is false.

Good golly Ms. Ally you just love to hear yourself. (write?)
My goodness how does that head fit on those shoulders?

I really love this stuff:

"When Bush made a decision based on what he beleived, as told to him by trusted experts, you all called him a "LIAR!!!!!!!!!!!"
Ok...Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Clarke did not count.

"And secondly, you have to remember that Iraq was not a major topic in the elections."

I have to laugh at that one. Please.

And then this jewel:

"The actual message of the election is that the public wants conservatives in office."

Stop it. Your killin me. ROTFLMAO

And this:

"So much bile was created by the Left that it had to have an effect on the general public, which became disgusted with things in general"

I get it. EVERYTHING is the lefts fault. Yeah, thats the ticket. Poor picked on Repubs, I feel so bad now. We shoulda listened to them truthful swiftboaters. Theres a group o' guys that really knew what was going on.

Yep, Ms. A. stand up and blast that horn from your might bandwagon.

Shill.

Sceptre,

Mostly it is a matter of not wanting to be a security burden to the American and Iraqi forces over there - the only people who should go to Iraq are those who are directly helping the Iraqi people; everyone else is just in the way and complicating matters (and, yes, this most especially includes the media).

Outside of that, it is a matter of money - I don't have the resources to just pick up and go. But, you and the rest of the left can be helpful here - if you want all us right bloggers to go to Iraq, I suggest you start a subscription fund at a lefty blog: Send a Righty to Iraq. You pay, we'll go.

Donna,

Good point.

The actual message of the election is that the public wants conservatives in office."

Stop it. Your killin me. ROTFLMAO

Absolutely, so true....so true! Go ahead Raker, live in that little dream world where you and lohse compare your wood! Oops, forgot Gar too!

Agenda-driven media do far more than simply take a pass on looking at the whole elephant. They choose which part to examine and report on, making that selection based on the impression they want to create.

Why so much hatred for Fox News, Li'l Almy? After all, it's on your side.

Of course raker sees no bile coming from the Left. After all, it's HIS viewpoint, and therefore correct, and therefore good, and therefore not vicious or malicious. You BDSers think it is fine to smear people personally, to make bizarre claims like assuring people that electing a Republican would mean water hoses and police dogs used against blacks, to claim a man wants to be the only one to decide "who lives and who dies" just because he is against using federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research (going so far as to claim, falsely, that he was against stem cell research in general) and so on. You have wallowed in bile for so long you think it is normal. The vicious nasty lies you continually spout about Bush prove that bile is your natural element.

What was so funny was the nastiness from the Left, followed by whining about the nastiness in politics.

And if you had actually paid attention to the election, instead of just having Airhead America tell you what to believe, you would have noted the many Dems who were pro-life, pro-gun, pro-tax cuts, against early departure from Iraq, and in general out-conservativing the conservatives. To hear the rhetoic it often sounded like an intra-party debate. It was often commented upon, the dilemma that would be facing those Dems elected as conservatives---would they vote the way they ran, and enrage the growing radical element of the Party, or would they revert to their true colors and tick off those who elected them? This is nothing new---it's been a matter of discussion for months. You really do need to try to keep up.

As for Iraq not being a major topic of discussion during the election, it probably would have been more accurate for me to say that offering solutions to Iraq did not occupy much of the Dem platforms, such as they were. There was a lot of bitching and moaning about Iraq, but no solutions offered, so the claim that the election showed a mandate for a Dem solution is simply silly. None was offered, none was voted on.

You DID call Bush a liar when it turned out that some of the intelligence he had relied on was not reliable. You know you did. We heard you, screaming the word over and over again, writing it on your pathetic little protest signs, making a huge deal out of it. Name all the names you want to-----you said it.

And as for "swiftboating" it merely means producing truths to counter lies, in its origin truths about false claims of military valor and competence. I know it hurt then, and I am sure it hurts now, to have such truths brought out when you are so devoted to your lies, but that's life. Of course your comment which introduced the word "swiftboaters" was incoherent and irrelevant, but I thought I would clarify the term at least.

Fox freaks you out because it's the first time you have ever heard both sides of a story on the news. Yes, it is scary for you. Yes, it does pose a threat to agenda-driven media. But get over it. There is a growing number of people who actually want to learn what is going on, not just a few selected tidbits which are chosen to advance an agenda. Your hysteria at actually having an opposing viewpoint presented is telling. It shows us how dependent you have been on the "fake---but accurate" model of psuedo-journalism, and how fragile your position is, so easily threatened by mere exposure to the facts.

In fact, Fox does present the Liberal side, calling on some of your Lefty icons to try to make sense of your gibberish. Don't blame Fox because it can't be done. Fox does not make them look stupid or never have answers or try to divert topics by responding with questions of their own--typical Left tactics. (As a matter of fact, when I was one of you, it was that inability to actually answer a question posed by an interview that started to nudgeme toward the center, and then toward the right. I figured if you had answers, you would give them. Ergo.....) But blaming Fox for the incoherence of the Left is, again, simply silly. They put out both sides, which you just can't handle, and you always end up looking bad, which you also can't handle.

Almiranta,

Your analysis was brilliant. The midterms weren't a referendum on Iraq. While extolling the virtues of Fox news and swiftboating, you failed to point out where in your post you explain why Bush supporters took a "thumpin", and the dems are now "measuring the drapes" for their new office space in Congress. I'm waiting for an answer.
In another post, you stated that the midterms result proves Americans wants conservatives in Government. I agree, 100%. But what the midterms also prove is that Americans can find few of those conservatives among Bush supporters.
Bush is no conservative. He is a religious liberal. Bush eagerness to use government power to redistrubute wealth up under the guise of religious virtue is as bad as redistributing wealth down in the name of secular humanism.
That aside, you never addressed the issues presented in my post.
Facts.
Tony Snow admits Hadleys memo exists, and did not dispute the accuracy of the memos text as reported in the NYT. Maliki snubbed Bush by refusing to meet with him after the memos publication. And Muqtada Al-Sadr who controls the biggest block of votes in the Iraqi parliament has boycotted participation in Malikis government, til Maliki can get the Americans to agree to surrender control of security forces.
Is any of this good, or helpful to the American cause in Iraq? If so, how?
Finally, there are voices that still believe victory can be achieved in Iraq, not because of, but inspite of Bush. Newt Gingrich is among those who has said so. And isn't American victory in Iraq the biggest issue here. So this begs the question: Can Bush supporters seperate victory in Iraq from Bush. If the cost of winning in Iraq is condemning Bush as a failure who nearly lost it all, are you prepared to accept that?
What is more important here? How Bush looks or securing American victory in Iraq?

"AP stories proven to be outright lies - the photos from Lebanon, the report of 11 Iraqi civilians killed by US troops and this story of people being burned alive...all of them grossly mis-reported in the MSM."

Mark, you don't know more than the reporters over there. Picking out the one news article you find that agrees with you isn't going to help.

"some people were burned alive in the sectarian violence. I know that this story of utter savagery was greeted with delight on the left"

Well the left must be savage if, this is true, but it's a lie, so it must be a product of your own hatred for the left.

It's really like this: Either 90% of the world is right, and Bush is a liar, and things are terrible in Iraq, or, Marks idea - everything is a conspiracy.

USA,

No, not a conspiracy - just a worldview; the MSM worldview is that the United States is bad, especially with GW as President. Because of this, when reports of atrocities come across the wires, the MSM runs with it because it fits their world view...cursory checking of the story would reveal it to be false, but they just don't bother.

The bias isn't a plot, its just the way things are - your job, as a citizen, is to discount what you read and hear unless absolutely confirmed by sources with no axe to grind.

The worldview is a conspiracy.

"your job, as a citizen, is to discount what you read and hear unless absolutely confirmed by sources with no axe to grind."

I'm doing my job, I discount you don't I?
...You have an axe to grind.

After looking at what can be found googling, the AP report is dismissed because the witness is unreliable (yet an Iraq police officer). The military report doesn't seem to refute the AP report--basically just reporting on what happened after the fact, that the AP report couldn't be confirmed. (not discounted) There were 4 mosques reported set on fire, none named, one checked, with a negative impact report. During that military check, there was an attempt to set another mosque on fire. That leaves open the possibility that other mosques were set afire. Seems like there's more to learn here if it's possible to learn anything else.

JAT, I choose what I want to post, and I did not choose to address the Hadley memo so I won't address it now. I just don't have the time to research every single thing that comes across here so I concentrate on those topics I feel like addressing. Sorry, you don't get to assign a topic to me.

But to the things I DID address...thank you for acknowledging that the country is more comfortable with conservatives in office. I do think this election proved that, again, just as the 2004 election did. I also agree that many voters seemed to feel that the Republicans they voted down had either not been conservative enough or effective enough in their conservatism.

I have to agree that Bush has not been as conservative as many of us had wished---the reason why he has gotten so much disagreement from Republicans and why the term "Bushbot" is so silly---we have disagreed with him many times.

But I strongly disagree with your assessment that "Bush eagerness to use government power to redistrubute wealth up under the guise of religious virtue is as bad as redistributing wealth down in the name of secular humanism."

First, I find it nonsensical in that I know of no religious basis for anything that the Left can refer to as an effort to "..redistribute wealth up..." I know it is a favorite claim of the radical Left that Bush's goal is to make the rich richer, but an objective look at economics says that a strong economy needs to have a lot of people who can not only afford to pay people to work for them, to finance businesses and equipment and infrastructure but to then buy the products and services produced. Also, a strong economy does increase the number of people who fit that description. In a prosperous econoumy, people will prosper. It seems ludicrous to try to even imagine a prosperous economy which does not allow prosperity.

I find the Left's claims of Bush merely trying to enrich the rich to be much like claiming that it is the trees waving around that make the wind blow.

No economy can be stimulated, or strong, if all economic levels are not included in the economic plan. It may FEEL good to punish the successful for simply having more, but it is a self-defeating attitude. I know I have never gotten a paycheck from anyone who made less money than I did. Now I have my own business, and if I can't make more money, I can't expand and I can't hire more people and I can't raise the pay for those who work for me now. An attitude that tries to limit my income will only hurt those downstream from me, closing off economic growth for them as well. I'll work harder if my benefits increase proportionately. If you try to impose a belief-system-based philosophy upon me which says I only "deserve" to benefit to a degree YOU establish, then I am not motivated to strive to increase my production. That is simple economics, as proven by the disasterous economies of Socialist states.

And furthermore, the desire to impose such limitationa stems from a belief system of what is right and what is wrong, what is just and what is not, which is a lot closer to "religion" than an objective understanding of economics.

The conservative, free market, approach to economics does not depend on an evaluation of what a person "deserves", based on any belief system. It is a system of equal opportunity, not equal outcome.

The only time I can remember President Bush talking about religion in the same context as government was when he suggested that independent faith-based groups might be better at outreach programs to address needs which vary from community to community than centrally located and ponderous bureaucracies. This clearly had nothing whatsoever to do with a religious basis for redistributing wealth upward. Your comment is inaccuate on two counts---the assertion that Bush WANTS to "redistribute wealth upward" and that this desire is based on his religios beliefs.

And finally, going back to the election, historically the party in power has lost more seats in six-year elections, on average, than the GOP did this year. So while the majority in both houses was lost, it was far from a historical referendum. Yes, the Dems did win....but they need to keep that win in perspective. They did not have a landslide, and they did not win by offering a different political perspective. They won in a middling sort of way, historically predictable, and they won by not mentioning their true political agendas. When you agree that they won by running as conservaatives, aren't you also agreeing that if they had run as Liberals they would not, or might not, have won?

Almiranta,

I don't know if you answered any of my questions, but at least you acknowledged I brought issues worth considering as well as points of agreement, minus the Bush-Rove name calling theatrics. This is progress. In an earlier post, before the midterm "thumpin", you went along with 2 others who'd posted suggesting I do as McCain said he would do if the dems won.
Your post was met with elegant condescension, and over the top bologny speak. But as far as assigning you topics, the one for this blog was media bias. I took up the Hadley memo because it was based on fact, not opinion.
It is also I believe part and parcel of the problem Bush faces. He can' keep saying I'm not a flip flopper while he's running back and forth between cabinet selections, Iraqi govt. officials, strategy reconsiderations, and the like before Rumsfelds assessment that what happening in Iraq "isn't working well enough or fast enough", turns into Bush as Capt. Smith on the Titanic. As the ship of state sinks beneath him, Bush looks more and more ridiculous, running around from place to place, desperatley looking for someone who'll listen to him, who still has the power to make the ship float.
Bush needs to undertsand that he's done, and that he needs a completley new set of perspectives on the problems he faces at home and abroad.
More on Bush relgiosity, and why that makes him a liberal later.
Thank you for your post, and while I can't make you address the Hadley memo, I would appreciate it if you would.