Thanks to a favorite daily read, the Media Notes column by Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, for pointing me to an interesting post by conservative blogger John Hinderaker of Powerline concerning the Republican strategy for the November election.
“The administration's strategy, as outlined by the Post, is to run mostly on three issues: tax cuts, immigration and national security. The administration is urging Republicans not to run away from Iraq, but rather to emphasize the conflict as a key national security issue…
“The public's negative view of Iraq is driven mostly by biased press coverage, not the realities on the ground.”
As Nazi (and don't even think it - I'm not suggesting anyone is a Nazi...just using a relevant quote by one) propoganda guy Joseph Goebbels once said:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
What are the realities on the ground? Sure, Iraq has somewhat of a government but there – and I gleen this from as many media outlets and sources as I can – there is not a lot of security in many parts of the country and there is simmering sectarian conflict bubbling just below the surface. I don’t buy that there is some vast left wing media conspiracy to lie about how things are going in Iraq, fueled by blind fury against Bush. That’s ridiculous. But hey, when you don't like the message, keep claiming the messenger is biased (and eventually some will come to believe it).
Heck, Condi Rice said “thousands of tactical errors" were made in Iraq. Bremer said we weren’t prepared for the post-war insurgency. Cheney said we’d be greeted as liberators. And where is all that Iraqi oil that we were told would be flowing in a post-Saddam Iraq???
posted by JP at 6:03 AM
3 Comments:
Not only that, but the one media outlet that could get the good news out, The Voice of America Radio, finds it too dangerous to have a correspondent in Iraq.
But really, it's better than it looks, you biased people you.
While I'm no war monger and think this and other foreign entanglements are boondoggles at best and disasters at their worst, their is one voice that has consistently and loudly countered the media accounts of the war: the soldiers who have actually been there.
I've had at least a dozen conversations with different soldiers and 100% believe they left their area of Iraq better than they found it. They mention the construction of schools, hospitals, roads, sewers, etc.
I know there are some vets who don't sing that song, but my informal media searches + personal experience puts that ratio at 95 % believing the people of Iraq are better off with us there.
I also saw a report that noted the habit we've gotten into of reporting daily tally of deaths due to the war in Iraq, and pointed out that if you listed all deaths from every arena of war and savagry throughout the world on a daily basis, places like Darfur, Uganda, the Sudan, Chechnya and other African locales would overshadow Iraq.
Just playing devil's advocate here.
I've had those same conversations with local Guardsmen. I don't deny that it seems there are good things going on, but security seems tenuous in some places. Ask the CBS newsteam that was killed and hurt by a roadside bomb how things are going.
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