How Basra Slipped Out of Control: by Gareth Porter
POSTED BY: Howard
UPDATED: Thursday, October 27, 2005 15:21
VIEWED: 10359
PAGE 6 of 6
Quote:
Originally posted by Tweek128:
Regarding Foxnews, if you look at their actual news reporting--not their opinion or "analysis" pieces--they stand up to cnn or msnbc. Have you actually read Foxnews' work, or do you simply accept what their competitors and detractors say regarding them and find no evidence to the contrary? Now this may seem like a foolish question, but the core of it is, do you know they are "tabloid" news because you know firsthand, or because that's the conventional wisdom of what you've read?
Yes, I have, and I stand by my criticism of American mainstream media. There’s a big difference between saying "The police believe X" and Noddy nobody the Anchor Man saying "Well it's defiantly Y!".
The first is reporting the facts of the incident, the second, as I said, is sensationalist, rating grabbing and has no place in real news reporting.
To put it simply I don’t give a flying
what Noddy nobody the Anchor Man thinks. Let me make up my own mind.I guess it's another agree to disagree moment.
Quote:
The difference is that we have not had situations in other cities as you had in Basra, with the detention of British servicemen.
I alluded to it in an earlier post. The British are performing undercover operations that has twice brought them into conflict with the police. The police the first time round released them to the British forces. This time around they ignored the order from the Iraqi administration to release them and apparently handed them over to 'insurgents'.
You're trying to compartmentalise Iraq into 'British' and 'American' areas. You simply can't do that, because what happens in American areas affects what happens in British and vice versa.
The fact is American personnel are operating as armed military groups, and if any police element wanted to arrest them, they couldn't.
Can you imagine the scene? A couple of Iraqi police walking up to a group of Americans, backed by tanks and Humvees, with an open line to air support, dropping their hands on shoulders and saying “Your nicked me old china!”.
Two guys in a car, even if they are Special Forces, are a much 'softer' target.
Far from not acknowledging it I am, but it's due to the different operations of the American's, rather than different problems.
Quote:
Further, open warfare is different from terrorism. While open warfare may be unleashed upon buses, police stations, schools, and children, that does not change the fact that they are not conducting open warfare. They are conducting terrorist operations. Suicide bombers in cars, roadside ieds, and random attacks on soft targets is not open warfare.
If insurgents conduct themselves as terrorists, they are terrorists. How can you say otherwise? Would you disagree with my definition in the earlier post regarding targetting innocent civilians?
Be careful. Your point requires a rather blinkered view of warfare.
Who were the targets for the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
Civilians.
So was the American military at the time a military or a Terrorist organisation?
Is the American Military Terrorists when they put a missile through a medicine factory, or a hospital or any other number of countless civilian targets?
Were the North Vietnamese Terrorists or an Army during the Vietnam war?
Targeting civilians is something that happens in modern warfare.
No offence is meant but your assertion regarding Terrorists/Insurgents shows a lack of knowledge of military tactics and how these things work. The insurgents in Iraq are low-tech. They have cars, trucks, bombs and cheap low-tech assault rifles (AK-47/74 etc). Their foe (largely the American military) is high tech, they have tanks, planes, missiles and all manor of high-tech gear.
The Insurgents are thus doing exactly what the Vietnamese did in the 60's/70's, by turning their foes strengths against them. It's called guerrilla warfare.
The Insurgents can't perform a precision aerial strike on an entrenched American position, but they can drive a car packed out wi
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Then the BBC knows how to respond better once the facts are out. The press here's too arrogant to believe that they have to yield to contrary facts so long as they believe they're right. (This may seem to feed into your comments regarding the American media, but I'll address why that's not the case below.) A good case in point is the false Texas Air National Guard "documents" on Bush that Rather was pimping. Don't know if you know the story behind it, but bloggers that were able to find copies of the documents online compared the font of the docs to what was possible at the time. Further, typewriter experts were contacted and all the ones contacted were almost positive that they were forgeries. More basic comparisons showed that the docs looked like they were typed on MS Word, and a recent version at that.
Gotta go. More later.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME