Dear Mr. Obama

I received this from iVoteRight just as I was leaving South Korea and this is the first chance I've had to post it. It speaks for itself... now please excuse me. I have something in both of my eyes.

Terrorism Myths Debunked

From Common Sense and Wonder

Independent research debunks one of the Democratic Party's favorite talking points about the global consequences of the war in Iraq.

Armed with government statistics showing a big increase in terrorist attacks since 2002, Democrats routinely assert that President Bush ignited a firestorm of terrorism throughout the Muslim world when he sent troops into Iraq. The claim and the statistics are used to illustrate what Democrats see as the foolishness of the president's belief that toppling Saddam Hussein's regime would reduce instability in the Middle East and eliminate a major potential source of terrorism.

A survey released in May by a Canadian university proves that the statistics paint a distorted picture of terrorism outside the borders of Iraq.

Fareed Zakaria, a columnist for Newsweek, praised Simon Fraser University for producing "a well-researched, independent analysis of the data relating to terrorism." The analysis shows that, excluding civilian casualties in Iraq, deaths caused by terrorism have declined by more than 40 percent since 2001.

It "makes no sense" to count civilian casualties in a war zone as deaths caused by terrorism, Mr. Zakaria wrote. Since the mid-1990s, thousands of civilians have been killed in war zones in other countries around the world, and those victims weren't counted as casualties related to terrorism.

Perhaps the most telling statistic is the 65 percent decline in terrorist attacks since 2004. Al-Qaida-initiated attacks peaked in 2004, but Osama bin Laden and his followers haven't been able to sustain the carnage.

The Simon Fraser study attributes the sharp decrease in terrorist attacks to effective counterterrorism operations, discord among the jihadists and an "extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years." Read the rest...

You can read Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek column here.
The Simon Fraser University press release is here.

What surprises me is that this press release is dated May 21, 2008 and I haven't heard anything about it until now. The Democratic party's Department of Propeganda (the American news media) is doing a fine job.

Saddam Hussein's Nukes

By Investors's Business Daily

Hear about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq? No? Why should you? It doesn't fit the media's neat story line that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed no nuclear threat when we invaded in 2003.

It's a little known fact that, after invading Iraq in 2003, the U.S. found massive amounts of uranium yellowcake, the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel, at a facility in Tuwaitha outside of Baghdad.

In recent weeks, the U.S. secretly has helped the Iraqi government ship it all to Canada, where it was bought by a Canadian company for further processing into nuclear fuel - thus keeping it from potential use by terrorists or unsavory regimes in the region.

This has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. Yet, as the AP reported, this marks a "significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy."

Seems to us this should be big news.

Seems like. Read the full story here.

My Concerns for America

By Jon Voight

The Democrats have targeted young people, knowing how easy it is to bring forth whatever is needed to program their minds. I know this process well. I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they helped create and walked away.

[...]

If Mr. Obama had his way, he would have pulled our troops from Iraq years ago and initiated an unprecedented bloodbath, turning over that country to the barbarianism of our enemies. With what he has openly stated about his plans for our military, and his lack of understanding about the true nature of our enemies, there's not a cell in my body that can accept the idea that Mr. Obama can keep us safe from the terrorists around the world, and from Iran, which is making great strides toward getting the atomic bomb. And while a misleading portrait of Mr. Obama is being perpetrated by a media controlled by the Democrats, the Obama camp has sent out people to attack the greatness of Sen. John McCain, whose suffering and courage in a Hanoi prison camp is an American legend.

You can read the full article at the Washington Times.

Lt. Colonel Jeffery Chessani

After devoting 20 years of his life to defend ours, Lt. Colonel Jeffery Chessani, USMC, faces criminal charges because of a legitimate combat action taken by four of his marines after being ambushed in Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005, the so-called Haditha Massacre – a massacre that never happened.

Time magazine with the help of insurgent propaganda operatives in Iraq and Congressman John Murtha created a media firestorm, calling all of the marines involved “cold blooded murderers” before the investigation had even been completed.

A military judge dismissed all charges against Lt. Colonel Chessani, but the politicians in the Pentagon appealed the dismissal. Jeff Chessani is the scapegoat they must convict to satisfy the liberal, anti-American media and John Murtha.

Click here to read the full story at WorldNetDaily.
Click here to donate to Lt. Colonel Jeffery Chessani's defense fund.

Where Are Saddam's WMD?

By William Gertz - The Washington Times

I've had this column by Bill Gertz posted at Brucified.com for some time now and, because I refer to it in several articles on this website, and changes over at Brucified, I need to move it here. I can't find the complete original online so here's the full text. I believe Mr. Gertz wrote this around the end of 2004.

This is, what I think, happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."

Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.

The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.

The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.

Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.

The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material. Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said.

"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."

The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.

A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.

The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.

"The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.

The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.

According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.

It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.

A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.

The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.

A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said. However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said. The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.

Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.

The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.

Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.

The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.

Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.

"Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.

Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.

The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.

Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.

The Russian "Spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.

Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing. The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.

Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

This may also expalin a more recent event in Syria - Dozens Dead in Syrian Chemical Weapons Experiment

Don't Forget Our Troops

From The Conservative Oasis

Here's an excellent post with a simple, straight forward analogy (that even liberals can understand) which pretty much sums up my own opinion about the abysmal job the Media is doing reporting on Iraq.

Right now the silence is deafening. Iraq and the news about our troops seems to not even exist, compared to what it has been, over the last few years. And I don't think that the reasons WHY it is quiet make me very happy.

It is quiet because we have no CRAP for the media to peddle.

We have no GITMO news. We have no Fallujah news. We have no Abu Ghraib. We have no more stories about rape or shooting innocent people.

So- I guess… we just don't have news about Iraq. At least, it appears that way…

Let me jump around a bit, to make a point.

In my house, I don't pay much attention to the plumbing. Or the electrical. Pretty boring stuff, really. It just does what it is supposed to do. So, there is no "news" about my plumbing to report.

What we have seen over and over in Iraq is a news media that, as a group, and in general, was incredibly willing to report what was WRONG about our 'plumbing' in Iraq- now they are amazingly silent when it comes to our 'plumbing' in Iraq working well and properly.

The thing is though, our troops deserve to be treated better than plumbing. They are not a simple "utility" that we complain about when it does not work, and ignore when it does work.

Read more about the media and Iraq here...

The Surge Worked

By John Mccain and Joe Lieberman - The Wall Street Journal

It was exactly one year ago tonight, in a televised address to the nation, that President George W. Bush announced his fateful decision to change course in Iraq, and to send five additional U.S. combat brigades there as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy and under the command of a new general, David Petraeus.

At the time of its announcement, the so-called surge was met with deep skepticism by many Americans -- and understandably so.

After years of mismanagement of the war, many people had grave doubts about whether success in Iraq was possible. In Congress, opposition to the surge from antiwar members was swift and severe. They insisted that Iraq was already "lost," and that there was nothing left to do but accept our defeat and retreat.

In fact, they could not have been more wrong. And had we heeded their calls for retreat, Iraq today would be a country in chaos: a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, overrun by al Qaeda and Iran.

Instead, conditions in that country have been utterly transformed from those of a year ago, as a consequence of the surge. Whereas, a year ago, al Qaeda in Iraq was entrenched in Anbar province and Baghdad, now the forces of Islamist extremism are facing their single greatest and most humiliating defeat since the loss of Afghanistan in 2001. Thanks to the surge, the Sunni Arabs who once constituted the insurgency's core of support in Iraq have been empowered to rise up against the suicide bombers and fanatics in their midst -- prompting Osama bin Laden to call them "traitors."

As al Qaeda has been beaten back, violence across the country has dropped dramatically. The number of car bombings, sectarian murders and suicide attacks has been slashed. American casualties have also fallen sharply, decreasing in each of the past four months.

These gains are thrilling but not yet permanent. Political progress has been slow. And although al Qaeda and the other extremists in Iraq have been dealt a critical blow, they will strike back at the Iraqi people and us if we give them the chance, as our generals on the ground continue to warn us.

The question we face, on the first anniversary of the surge, is no longer whether the president's decision a year ago was the right one, or if the counterinsurgency strategy developed by Gen. Petraeus is working. It is.

The question now is where we go from here to sustain the progress we have achieved -- and in particular, how soon can more of our troops come home, based on the success of the surge.

Gen. Petraeus has already announced that five "surge" brigades will be withdrawn by mid-July. The process is now underway. The Pentagon has also announced that it is conducting a series of internal reviews to examine whether and when additional troops can be withdrawn -- with Gen. Petraeus, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Central Command each asked to offer their own analysis. As the president awaits these recommendations, it is important for the rest of us to keep some realities in mind.

First, it is unknown whether the security gains we have achieved with the surge can be sustained -- and deepened -- after we have drawn down to 15 brigades. Until we know with certainty that we can keep al Qaeda on the run with 15 brigades, it would be a mistake to commit ourselves preemptively to a drawdown below that number.

As the surge should have taught us by now, troop numbers matter in Iraq. We should adjust those numbers based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders in Iraq -- first and foremost, Gen. Petraeus, who above all others has proven that he knows how to steer this war to a successful outcome.

Every American should feel a debt of gratitude to Gen. Petraeus and the great American troops fighting under him for us. This gratitude is due not simply for the extraordinary progress they have accomplished in Iraq, but for what they have taught us about ourselves.

If the mismanagement of the Iraq war from 2003 to 2006 exposed our government's capacity for incompetence, Gen. Petraeus' leadership this past year, and the conduct of the troops under his command, have reminded us of our capacity for the wisdom, the courage and the leadership that has always rallied our nation to greatness.

As Americans, we have repeatedly done what others said was impossible. Gen. Petraeus and his troops are doing that again in Iraq today.

The war for Iraq is not over. The gains we have made can be lost. But thanks to the courage of our troops, the skill and intellect of their battlefield commander, and the steadfastness of our commander in chief, we have at last begun to see the contours of what must remain our objective in this long, hard and absolutely necessary war -- victory.

Democrats Defeated in Iraq

Do Democrats Really Want Us to Fail in Iraq?
By Adam G. Mersereau - AmericanThinker.com

Any time our government takes us to war, there is bound to be strong disagreement, but Iraq has been particularly divisive. At times it seems as if some Americans -- certain liberal Democrats in particular -- are eager to declare or even hasten our defeat.

Our missteps in Iraq have been numerous enough to discourage any patriot. Yet leading Democrats are beyond the point of discouragement. They are pessimistic; even hopeless. They have been this way for a long time.

At the first sign of difficulty, they deemed the war a mistake and victory impossible. They quickly adopted the language of defeat and surrender. Some declared the surge a failure before it began and General Petraus a liar before he uttered a public word about its effects. Others are quick to believe reports of alleged atrocities by our own troops, as if seeking an American disgrace. Now, leading Democrats seem to believe that recovery from past mistakes is impossible, and that any hint of success can be only illusory.

Why do so many Democrats cling so tenaciously to hopelessness, failure and despair in Iraq, even in the face of important recent successes?

The reason for this defeatism among Democrats lies beneath mere power politics, electioneering or disdain for President Bush. The real source of defeatism is rooted deep within the liberal mind.

Defeatist Democrats oppose the war in Iraq, not so much because they fear failure, but because they believe failure is inevitable. They believe the Bush Administration's goal of helping Iraq establish a democratic government is a fool's errand. They believe that the Western values on which democratic government is based -- and the Judeo-Christian truths from which those Western values are derived -- are not valid for Iraqis.

The Democratic Party is the home of modern liberalism, and modern liberals are deconstructionists. As this appellation suggests, deconstructionists are engaged in an effort to philosophically disassemble traditional Judeo-Christian truths. To the modern liberal, the very idea that traditional Judeo-Christian truths might be true for all men is oppressive, limiting, judgmental, discriminatory and outdated. The deconstructionists will not rest so long as anyone in our society believes that traditional Judeo-Christian truths might actually be universals. They desire a post-modern (and post Judeo-Christian) America, in which almost all traditional values and morality are reduced to the status of mere personal preferences, rendering it nonsensical to extend them beyond one's self or one's own community.

Yet Western civilization is founded on the idea that many Judeo-Christian truths -- and the Western values that spring from them -- are true for all men and women. This idea is especially important in the United States, a nation founded on a distilled set of Judeo-Christian beliefs and values that were declared to be true for all men.

Those beliefs and values are well known to most Americans: That God created all men, meaning that any legitimate government must recognize the fundamental equality of all men before Him; that the affairs of men are guided by the hand of Providence, meaning that government is not the final authority in the lives of its citizens; that the natural corruption of the human heart behooves us place checks and balances on governmental power; that it is best for all people, even rulers, to be subject to the rule of law; that government should protect all religions, leaving a man's conscience free to seek God as he thinks best, rather than constraining the religious urge by tyrannical decree or by force; that the maintenance of justice requires the freedom of the people to assemble and speak freely, even against those in power.

Most importantly, however, America's Founders believed that these Judeo-Christian truths were not true only for themselves but for all people. This meant that, for the first time in the history of the world, a nation would be built in which citizenship was determined primarily by allegiance to a set of declared truths. In other words, because these truths were held true for everyone, American citizenship would be available to anyone. (Even though the application of those truths is sometimes defective, such as in the case of early American slavery, the truths themselves have consistently proven larger than the flawed men who penned them.)

Because traditional Western values are so closely aligned with Judeo-Christian truths, the deconstructionists find it necessary to deconstruct traditional Western values as well. This helps explain the Left's love affair with socialism and communism. The Soviet Union, for example, was unashamedly founded on principles quite opposite those of Western civilization, and particularly those on which America was founded. So long as the Soviet Union appeared strong and robust, it seemed to provide a constant reminder that Western values were not true for everyone, and that mankind could indeed find another way to organize a just and productive civilization.

Those were the glory days for the deconstructionists. They reveled in the apparent success of the Soviet Union, and made it their mission to ignore Soviet communism'a obvious flaws (while disparaging America). For as long as the Soviet Union appeared powerful and healthy, their case against the universality of Western values seemed credible.

Elevating non-Western civilizations to impede the ascendance of Western values led directly to the "multiculturalism" movement. Going beyond the mere study of other cultures, multicularalism seeks to indoctrinate people with the notion that (almost) all cultural values are equally valid. This helps deconstructionists promulgate their claims against Western civilization. After all, if the non-Western world is thriving without Western values, those Western values cannot possibly be true for all people.

To elevate other cultures, the multiculturalists inevitably must strain to find beauty in many cultures that are not so beautiful; some in which children were sacrificed, in which violence is a way of life, in which discrimination is systematic, in which women are treated as property, and in which totalitarianism, ignorance and occultism have resulted in great human suffering. The more lovely they can make other cultures appear, the smaller and less significant appear traditional Western values. This is the multiculturalist agenda.

The deconstructionists not only downplay the failures of other civilizations, they grossly exaggerate the failures of our own.

Proud of your Judeo-Christian heritage? The deconstructionist sees only religious oppression and bigotry in our past.

Inspired by the great sacrifices made by Americans to eradicate slavery on our shores? The deconstructionist will argue that no amount of white men's blood can compensate for the injustice of slavery, upon which, they claim, our illegitimate nation was built.

Grateful for the advancements in the human condition spurred by free enterprise? The deconstructionist insists that free enterprise is singularly responsible for global poverty and the destruction of the planet.

What does all of this have to do with Iraq? Everything.

If traditional Western values of governance ultimately provide the basis for a strong, peaceful and free Iraq, then the world will see that much of what was true for 18th century white European Judeo-Christian colonials is also true for 21st century Muslim Iraqis. The universality of Western values -- and of the Judeo Christian truths that form the foundations of those values -- will gain profound credibility. Deconstructionism and its current political host, the Democratic Party, will both suffer enormously. For deconstructionists bent on discrediting Western values, victory in Iraq is the worst possible outcome.

The most ardent deconstructionists do not believe victory is even possible. Because deconstructionists believe Western values are a sham, they believe President Bush's strategy cannot possibly prevail. How, after all, can we expect Western principles of governance to help heal Iraq if the very foundations of Western governance are flawed?

So they feel duty-bound to say or do whatever is necessary to truncate the violence by accelerating our inevitable failure. In their hearts, they believe they are acting out of humanity, to stop the pointless suffering of a futile struggle. They must bring low all successes, and they must amplify all failures. If enough Americans would only reach the conclusion that Iraq is beyond hope, they will call more vigorously for withdrawal.

Western values would be left bleeding in the streets of Baghdad, and the deconstructionists would win an important victory.

So things are worse than they seem. While our soldiers are fighting on the battlefield, the leadership of the Democratic Party is deconstructing the Western values for which they fight.

Listen closely to Osama bin Laden's recorded monologues, and you will detect at least some subtle similarities to the diatribes of the Democratic Congressional leadership. This is not a coincidence, for the core beliefs that Judeo-Christian truths and Western values are passé, and that Western civilization is therefore a sham, are to some degree shared by both camps. This leads to Democratic anti-war rhetoric that strikes many average Americans as unpatriotic.

But in fairness, the Democrats are not unpatriotic. They love America. They simply define America differently than most Americans. Their America is a very small place. They do not believe that America's greatness is found in the truth of its founding principles, but in their own enlightened leadership, and in a deconstructed brand of "freedom" that more and more resembles license.

They do not believe our founding truths are necessarily true at all. No wonder they want to cut and run.

In War: Resolution

By Victor Davis Hanson

Somehow we forget that going into the heart of the ancient caliphate, taking out a dictator in three weeks, and then staying on to foster a constitutional republic amid a sea of enemies like Iran and Syria and duplicitous friends like Jordan and Saudi Arabia - and losing less than 4,000 Americans in the five-year enterprise - was beyond the ability of any of our friends or enemies, and perhaps past generations of Americans as well.

Read More...

'Redacted' Bombs

From the New York Post

It's hard for Hollywood pacifists like Brian De Palma to capture the hearts and minds of America if Americans won't see their movies.

While the public is staying away in droves from “Rendition," “Lions for Lambs" and “In the Valley of Elah," audiences are really avoiding “Redacted," De Palma's picture about US soldiers who rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then kill her and her family.

The message movie was produced by NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who insisted on deleting grisly images of Iraqi war casualties from the montage at the film's end. Cuban offered to sell the film back to De Palma at cost, but the director was too smart to go for that deal.

“Redacted" - which “could be the worst movie I've ever seen," said critic Michael Medved - took in just $25,628 in its opening weekend in 15 theaters, which means roughly 3,000 people saw it in the entire country. “This, despite an A-list director, a huge wave of publicity, high praise in the New York Times, The New Yorker and left-leaning sites like Salon.

Al Qaeda vs 82nd Airborne

Last August, Al Qaeda terrorists in Samara made a plan to kidnap US soldiers and to make a public spectacle of their imprisonment and murder, just two weeks before General Petraeus's internationally viewed testimony on Iraq. They sent over 40 terrorists against an isolated 4 man sniper team.

Read More...

General Sanchez Blasts Biased Media

Media Ignores Most Of The Speech
But eagerly report what supports their biased agenda.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,
Some of you may not believe this but I am glad to be here. When Sig asked me if I would consider addressing you there was no doubt that I should come into the lion's den. This was important because I have firmly believed since Desert Shield that it is necessary for the strength of our democracy that the military and the press corps maintain a strong, mutually respectful and enabling relationship. This continues to be problematic for our country, especially during times of war. One of the greatest military correspondents of our time, Joe Galloway, made me a believer when he joined the 24th infantry division during desert storm.

Today, I will attempt to do two things - first I will give you my assessment of the military and press relationship and then I will provide you some thoughts on the current state of our war effort. As all of you know I have a wide range of relationships and experiences with our nations military writers and editors. There are some in your ranks who I consider to be the epitome of journalistic professionalism - Joe Galloway, Thom Shanker, Sig Christensen, and John Burns immediately come to mind. They exemplify what America should demand of our journalists - tough reporting that relies upon integrity, objectivity and fairness to give accurate and thorough accounts that strengthen our freedom of the press and in turn our democracy. On the other hand, unfortunately, I have issued ultimatums to some of you for unscrupulous reporting that was solely focused on supporting your agenda and preconcieved notions of what our military had done. I also refused to talk to the European Stars and Stripes for the last two years of my command in Germany for their extreme bias and single minded focus on Abu Gharaib.

Let me review some of the descriptive phrases that have been used by some of you that have made my personal interfaces with the press corps difficult:

"dictatorial and somewhat dense"

"not a strategic thought"

"Liar"

"does not get it"

"The most inexperienced LTG"

In some cases I have never even met you, yet you feel qualified to make character judgments that are communicated to the world. My experience is not unique and we can find other examples such as the treatment of Secretary Brown during Katrina. This is the worst display of journalism imaginable by those of us that are bound by a strict value system of selfless service, honor and integrity. Almost invariably, my perception is that the sensationalistic value of these assessments is what provided the edge that you seek for self agrandizement or to advance your individual quest for getting on the front page with your stories! As I understand it, your measure of worth is how many front page stories you have written and unfortunately some of you will compromise your integrity and display questionable ethics as you seek to keep America informed. This is much like the intelligence analysts whose effectiveness was measured by the number of intelligence reports he produced. For some, it seems that as long as you get a front page story there is little or no regard for the "collateral damage" you will cause. Personal reputations have no value and you report with total impunity and are rarely held accountable for unethical conduct.

Given the near instantaneous ability to report actions on the ground, the responsibility to accurately and truthfully report takes on an unprecedented importance. The speculative and often uninformed initial reporting that characterizes our media appears to be rapidly becoming the standard of the industry. An Arab proverb states - "four things come not back: the spoken word, the spent arrow, the past, the neglected opportunity." once reported, your assessments become conventional wisdom and nearly impossible to change. Other major challenges are your willingness to be manipulated by "high level officials" who leak stories and by lawyers who use hyperbole to strengthen their arguments. Your unwillingness to accurately and prominently correct your mistakes and your agenda driven biases contribute to this corrosive environment. All of these challenges combined create a media environment that does a tremendous disservice to America. Over the course of this war tactically insignificant events have become strategic defeats for America because of the tremendous power and impact of the media and by extension you the journalist. In many cases the media has unjustly destroyed the individual reputations and careers of those involved. We realize that because of the near real time reporting environment that you face it is difficult to report accurately. In my business one of our fundamental truths is that "the first report is always wrong." Unfortunately, in your business "the first report" gives Americans who rely on the snippets of CNN, if you will, their "truths" and perspectives on an issue. As a corollary to this deadline driven need to publish "initial impressions or observations" versus objective facts there is an additional challenge for us who are the subject of your reporting. When you assume that you are correct and on the moral high ground on a story because we have not respond to questions you provided is the ultimate arrogance and distortion of ethics. One of your highly respected fellow journalists once told me that there are some amongst you who "feed from a pig's trough." If that is who I am dealing with then I will never respond; otherwise, we will both get dirty and the pig will love it. This does not mean that your story is accurate.

I do not believe that this is what our forefathers intended. The code of ethics for the society of professional journalists states:
...public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility

The basic ethics of a journalist that calls for:

1. Seeking truth,

2. Providing fair and comprehensive account of events and issues

3. Thoroughness and honesty

All are victims of the massive agenda driven competition for economic or political supremacy. The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our servicemembers who are at war.

My assessment is that your profession, to some extent, has strayed from these ethical standards and allowed external agendas to manipulate what the American public sees on tv, what they read in our newspapers and what they see on the web. For some of you, just like some of our politicians, the truth is of little to no value if it does not fit your own preconceived notions, biases and agendas.

It is astounding to me when I hear the vehement disagreement with the military's forays into information operations that seek to disseminate the truth and inform the Iraqi people in order to counter our enemy's blatant propaganda. As I assess various media entities, some are unquestionably engaged in political propaganda that is uncontrolled. There is no question in my mind that the strength our democracy and our freedoms remain linked to your ability to exercise freedom of the press - I adamantly support this basic foundation of our democracy and completely supported the embedding of media into our formations up until my last day in uniform. The issue is one of maintaining professional ethics and standards from within your institution. Military leaders must accept that these injustices will happen and whether they like what you print or not they must deal with you and enable you, if you are an ethical journalist.

Finally, I will leave this subject with a question that we must ask ourselves--who is responsible for maintaining the ethical standards of the profession in order to ensure that our democracy does not continue to be threatened by this dangerous shift away from your sacred duty of public enlightenment?

The full speech is here

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