Iraqi Prisoner abuse

Originally posted by pcsmicro
I think we can all agree if it were not for our Far Left friends such as CNN aka
communist news network, this innocent american would not have been beheaded. ....

They seem to be on the side of the terrorists and not on the side of the ones fighting the terrorists.

Ok!

Now please tell me exactly how far RIGHT you have to be to think that CNN, who serves the world, is extremely left leaning? As unfortunate as it is, I am sorry to tell you that CNN is not far left leaning and no where near left leaning as the Fox News Channel is toward the right. Blatant, uncountered liberal bashing occurs on Fox, and you never see any such unprofessional behaviors on CNN.

The problem is with the conservatives who watch CNN. You want the war, but you can't deal with the death and destruction that has always and will always accompany such acts of violence. Maybe one day there will be something from which you actually choose to learn. You want to trick yourselves into believing that GW's declaration of the war being over, while grandstanding on an aircraft carrier, is actually reality. Ignoring the rest of the world, we easily started this war, but you better think again if you think it is going to be easy to end.

Another unfortunate truth to all this is that regardless of whether or not we agreed to go there, we can't just leave. Iraq, thanks to our overwhelming help, has gone from a land devoid of organized extremist islam to a breeding ground for terrorism.

For years to come our troops will be loosing their lives for the sole reason of preventing our recent actions from backfiring and causing this country more grief than it has ever experienced.

If left leaning is simply showing what is happening and not wraping it in the flag and seeking only the positive aspects of the war, then anything else is not centrist or right, but flat out wrong.

If you want happy times, don't go fighting wars in a part of the world where regardless of who you're fighting for they don't like your presence.

Left leaning my ***.

Mark
My Astronomy Home

So, you think CNN is centrist in its perspectives, and there were no Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in Iraq before the war ...


And we're the ones with no firm grip on reality???

It's comments like those in the post above which make me ever so thankful that the Reagan revolution took place when it did. Sometimes I forget how truly close to socialism we came, and how easily we could slip back into that tendancy.

Thanks!

Originally posted by Darin Chappell
So, you think CNN is centrist in its perspectives, and there were no Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in Iraq before the war ...

Thanks!

Yes, I believe CNN is a far more reliable source of news that is somewhere near being balanced from both sides. I believe Fox News is so far out in right field, it is impossible to get an accurate report on the factual information.

I believe there was no creditable evidence of cooperation between organized Islamic fundamentalist and the Hussein government. Just as there is wide spread religious fundamentalism in this country, most of which is Christian oriented, I have no doubts that such fundamentalism existed in Iraq before the US occupation.

You are very welcome.

Mark
My Astronomy Home

News media distorts facts to fit their own agenda. Be it right wing or leftist they make points based on their views not the merits of the news for what it is just that news.

Originally posted by bcfos
News media distorts facts to fit their own agenda. Be it right wing or leftist they make points based on their views not the merits of the news for what it is just that news.

Huh?

Ok,

I guess we can agree that there is distortion in the news... The degree of that distortion and to which side of the ideological spectrum differs greatly depending upon which network we are speaking.

Mark

"I believe there was no creditable evidence of cooperation between organized Islamic fundamentalist and the Hussein government."

So, Mark...

You have evidence to which the 9-11 Commission did not have access? Because they have said (republicans and democrats, mind you) that there were connections between Al-Queda and Hussein.

In fact, Al-Zarqawi was living in and operating out of Iraq for quite some time before the war. No one of that magnitude in the terrorism schemes of bin Laden could have been working so openly in dictatorial Iraq without the approval of Hussein, so how can you say what I have quoted from you above with anything even remotely approaching a straight face???

Darin,

I'd like to know exactly with which 9/11 commission are you familiar?

"The report said that bin Laden explored possible cooperation with Saddam at the urging of allies in Sudan eager to protect their own ties to Iraq, even though the al-Qaida leader had previously provided support for “anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan.”

Bin Laden ceased that support in the early 1990s, opening the way for a meeting between the al-Qaida leader and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in 1994 in Sudan, the report said. At the meeting, bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps in Iraq as well as Iraqi assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded, the staff report said." : MSNBC

From another voice: NPR

I believe you are confusing your blind support for BUSH with the findings of the commission.

Mark
My Astronomy Home

No sir, what you have cited there is not the Commission report, which has not even fully come out yet, but a staff memorandum that was released to the press, and was dissavowed by the two leading members (one from each party) on the Commission. As a matter of fact, the Commissioners cited went on to say that it was obvious that there had been connections between Bin Laden and Hussein ... just not in relation tot he specific attack of 9-11, a conclusion with which the Bush administration has never dissagreed.

I quote this editorial from the N.Y. Times for your consideration. You have to sign up to actually read the link, so I thought a full quotation was in order. Here it is in full:

"The Zelikow Report
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: June 21, 2004

E-mail: safire@nytimes.com

WASHINGTON — "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" went the Times headline. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed" front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words "Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . ." This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that "there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . ."

All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

"Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?" Kean asked himself. "Yes . . . no question." Hamilton joined in: "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don't disagree with that" — just "no credible evidence" of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.

The Zelikow report was seized upon by John Kerry because it fuzzed up the distinction between evidence of decade-long dealings between agents of Saddam and bin Laden (which panel members know to be true) and evidence of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attacks (which, as Hamilton said yesterday, modifying his earlier "no credible evidence" judgment, was "not proven one way or the other.")

But the staff had twisted the two strands together to cast doubt on both the Qaeda-Iraq ties and the specific attacks of 9/11: "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Zelikow & Co. dismissed the reports, citing the denials of Qaeda agents and what they decided was "no credible evidence" of cooperation on 9/11.

That paragraph — extending doubt on 9/11 to all previous contacts — put the story on front pages. Here was a release on the official commission's letterhead not merely failing to find Saddam's hand in 9/11, which Bush does not claim. The news was in the apparent contradiction of what the president repeatedly asserted as a powerful reason for war: that Iraq had long been dangerously in cahoots with terrorists.

Cheney's ire was misdirected. Don't blame the media for jumping on the politically charged Zelikow report. Blame the commission's leaders for ducking responsibility for its interim findings. Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff.

Yesterday, Governor Kean passed along this stunner about "no collaborative relationship" to ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Members do not get involved in staff reports."

Not involved? Another commission member tells me he did not see the Zelikow bombshell until the night before its release. Moreover, the White House, vetting the report for secrets, failed to raise an objection to a Democratic bonanza in the tricky paragraph leading to the misleading "no Qaeda-Iraq tie."

What can the commission do now to regain its nonpartisan credibility?

1. Require every member to sign off on every word that the commission releases, or write and sign a minority report. No more "staff conclusions" without presenting supporting evidence, pro and con.

2. Set the record straight, in evidentiary detail, on every contact known between Iraq and terrorist groups, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's operations in Iraq. Include the basis for the Clinton-era "cooperating in weapons development" statement.

3. Despite the prejudgment announced yesterday by Kean and Democratic partisan Richard Ben-Veniste dismissing Mohammed Atta's reported meeting in Prague with an Iraqi spymaster, fairly spell out all the evidence that led to George Tenet's "not proven or disproven" testimony. (Start with www.edwardjayepstein.com.)

4. Show how the failure to retaliate after the attack on the U.S.S. Cole affected 9/11, how removing the director of central intelligence from running the C.I.A. would work, and how Congress's intelligence oversight failed abysmally.

5. Stop wasting time posturing on television and get involved writing a defensible commission report."


Mark, do you dispute the facts of this editorial? If so, in what part, and based upon what evidence? Everything I have seen in the non-CNN, non-NPR channels of information have shown that the report avowing "no credible evidence" of a connection between Hussein and Bin Laden terrorists was incomplete and misleading at best ... an attempt at anti-Bush spin based upon known falsehoods at worst.

I also find it interesting what you wrote in your last sentence to me. I quote:

"I believe you are confusing your blind support for BUSH with the findings of the commission. "

So, does anyone who disagrees with you have a "blind support" for the president? Do you feel the need to "put me in my place" when you engage in intellectual discussions? Must you be condescending in your attitudes in all political discussions, or just in those in which you engage conservatives? I am really interested, because I find it fascinating that those on the left cannot simply discuss the ideas of the debate. They always seem to have to couch things in an issue of intellectual honesty. Because they cannot seem to grasp that other equally intelligent people might actually look at the facts and come down on the other side of the debate.

As a matter of fact, there are several things about which I disagree with the President. I do not have a blind belief in him or anything else, so you do not have to categorize me as some lemming-like moron. I actually have studied the scenario and found the weight of evidence to come down against the accusations of that staff report. Unfortunately, those evidences were not reported on MSNBC, CNN, NPR, ABC, CBS, or NBC. Wonder why? Of course that explains why you were unaware of the situation, doesn't it?

Darin,

Thank you for bringing that editorial to my attention. I must point out that most of us, the American public, trust the networks you mentioned before we put trust into an editorial of a newspaper. I'm not saying that everything in the editorial is false, but it seems that if I didn't know about it, I'm sure there are many with the same exposure to the same networks and not that one newspaper.

Of course I'm sure I could have turned over to Fox News and received a different story. If fact, instead of airing the story, they immediately began exploring ways to refute it, including pulling the VP onto one of their talk shows.

To each his own, and I believe that works for news networks as well.

Darin, I don't put my complete trust into that editorial, and I must again point out that it is an editorial, not an unbiased report, if one exist.

Now I would like to take my leave of this thread. I'm spending far too much time arguing with you guys when it is obvious that no one is going to succeed in convincing the other.

Think....then vote.

Mark

Mark,

You wrote, "I must point out that most of us, the American public, trust the networks you mentioned before we put trust into an editorial of a newspaper." Yes sir, I do know that. Quite frankly, that is a big part of the problem with the voters in the country. Because you accept what is taught in the mainstream press, regardless of the facts that are presented elsewhere, you have a skewed view of the issue. I am not attacking your intelligence here, please understand that. It is just that there is no possible way for anyone to make a fully-informed decision, without first being fully informed. If the facts of that editorial are correct, then the "news stories" upon which you relied are incorrect, is that not the case? Please, prove the facts false, and I will publicly recant what I have suggested here. Otherwise, please recognize that part of a liberally biased media effort is not to report inaccuracies alone, but to FAIL TO REPORT the whole truth as well.

You also wrote, "Darin, I don't put my complete trust into that editorial, and I must again point out that it is an editorial, not an unbiased report, if one exist." I appreciate your willingness to conclude that an editorial is not the appropriate basis upon which to found your total opinion. You are also correct in noting that an editorial is not the same thing as anunbiased report. However, bias is not a sin in reporting unless it clouds the facts of the issue. Reporters are SUPPOSED to be biased toward the truth, for example.

I do find it interesting that you also wrote in another thread, "I believe it is no doubt a powerful tool that will not go unnoticed.
Bush will certainly wish this documentary had never existed." You were, of course, writing about Michael Moore's propaganda movie, "Farenheit 9-11." Why is Mr. Safire's editorial (the facts of which you did not dispute) of a nature too shaky to base opinions, but Mr. Moore's film (the "facts" of which have been disputed all over the place) is a "powerful tool?" Do you not see a severe double standard in your thinking, sir? Especially in relation to which of these "editorials" is factually based and which is not?

Finally, you wrote, "Now I would like to take my leave of this thread. I'm spending far too much time arguing with you guys when it is obvious that no one is going to succeed in convincing the other." I cannot blame you there, I suppose. But please ask yourself why it became too cumbersome a task to reply to these threads once the actual FACTS came out in the open? Coincidence alone? Perhaps ... perhaps not. Only you know your true intentions, and I shall not try to assign them from my own keyboard. Take care.