http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=284256885273104

The reports out of Fallujah came from Al Jazeera, the Western press repeated and amplified it.

It was ‘widely reported’, but poorly sourced.

You have to understand that when you are dealing wiith journalists, or ‘the media’, you are talking to a group of profoundly stupid people who became journalists for fame and ‘to make a difference’.

They are the stupidest and least curious people you will ever meet: true dimwits for whom the leftist siren call of ‘fairness’ is a license to lie.

There was no ‘massacre by trigger happy boys’ there as you contend, there aren’t even any credible reports of any casualties.

It’s the “Jenin Massacre” all over again! Remember that? Another fake massacre–cooked up by the same sources for the same reasons….

The Army didn’t release that report in the editorial, it was leaked. It is not the army’s job to refute civilian media.

Do you even understand what you are asking for when you want “strong government action to discredit the media”? Do you know what that would look like?

You seem, at every turn, to be severely limited in imagination, understanding and critical reasoning abilities.

You have no understanding of the military, its role and tactics and you seem to live in a very strange and sheltered world. I can’t imagine what weird hothouse of bookish speculation and theoretical wonder you work in, if you work at all….

I don’t think you have enough experience out here in the real world to even begin to evaluate the truth, agendas, facts and lies coming out of Iraq.

These witnesses are nameless and faceless variables, for the most part. Not exactly what I would call verifiable sources nor reliable sources for life and death intelligence.

This doesn’t even get into the fact that the media is incapable of correlating data sources and details gathered on the ground, either, assuming that they actually gathered the data and weren’t “given” the witness accounts by stringers and AQ disinformation propaganda operatives.

I have read your link before this, and it admits that the FBI does not have jurisdiction over Blackwater actions in Iraq. Whatever thought process you are using in order to use FBI investigations to justify your conclusions about Blackwater, are invalid and non-sensical.
Perhaps you can make sense of them, but I freely admit I cannot.

Stop with the fabrication strawman, Mitsu. Such things aren’t important to my line of argument.

I will never accept your thinking that if Blackwater was innocent, the “government” should have openly declared it so. Mission Accomplished and all the other things people like you don’t tend to be satisfied by, Mitsu, is only one such example of why.

No amount of evidence is sufficient to convince you of anything that conflicts with your cherished philosophical and so called pragmatic beliefs, Mitsu. I already pre-empted you on this argument. There is nothing to discuss more here and there is certainly nothing you can add by agreeing with me that my philosophies prevent me from being swayed by your arguments and proclamations either.

Propaganda operations are a matter of effort. Not capability. The US government is very capable of countering anti-American propaganda. The will and the effort are not there. Just as you are totally capable of changing your erroneous philosophical beliefs, but the will and intent are both absent.

What you and Gray are suggesting is simply nonsensical. Sure, I can believe a reporter or even a whole news organization might be involved in purposefully or unwittingly promulgating misinformation or disinformation. But certain events, such as the two under discussion here, were covered by many reporters from many independent organizations, included interviews (if you bothered to read the links above or do your own Googling of the two incidents) with a huge variety of eyewitnesses, include comments made by officials of our own government and military, all quoted by many independent journalists. Gray derides the one quote by one doctor, but that article and others also quote many other people from many other reporters.

Furthermore, our government itself has plenty of opportunity to refute or deny the veracity of media reports. For example, as noted above, our military claims our troops were fired upon in the 2003 incident, quoting one officer as agreeing that most of the protesters were unarmed but the fire came from agents provacateurs in the crowd. Nowhere does any report say something to the effect that the entire incident, reported on by multiple independent reporters, did not occur, as Gray quite implausibly claims.

I’d make a similar argument regarding the Blackwater case, which the federal government is (to its credit) investigating for possible criminal prosecution of the guards involved in the shooting. There have been numerous accounts of the incident, including eyewitness interviews by reporters from many different organizations, and multiple reports of sources within the Army and FBI who say that our own government investigators believe the shootings were either entirely unjustified (as reports claim the Army concluded) or mostly (14 out of 17) unjustified (reports saying some FBI investigators have come to that conclusion, which is only slightly less harsh than the Pentagon’s conclusion). At present, the latest report is that 3 guards in particular are being focused on as possible targets of prosecution, and the main difficulty is that the law is vague about whether or not contractors can be prosecuted for crimes committed overseas (a loophole that Congress closed last year, with the approval of President Bush).

Sure, one can be as “skeptical” as you wish, but your thesis of a propaganda net so wide, and so all-encompassing, basically stretches credulity. If these two major, extremely important incidents in Iraq have been fabricated by the all-powerful “media” — there should be strong attempts by the government to discredit these reports — where are they? Unless you believe that this has already happened and the evil media are suppressing it. That somehow our own government is unable to get their message out. That, to me, is just not credible.

However, you’re welcome to your beliefs — it’s evident that no amount of evidence is sufficient to convince you of anything you don’t want to believe.

If Bush actually went on every network to proclaim a denial about Blackwater, it would indeed be part of enemy propaganda because Bush does not interfere with legal investigations, even if they are instigated by his political foes. Thus the media would have no reason to show such footage unless their aim is deception and setting Bush up for a fall.
Or they could just be guillible to being manipulated by Rather documents and footage, that’s always available.

There is no depth the media will not sink to. There is no enemy so heinous that the media will not help. You do not accept this, Mitsu, which is why you believe everything the networks show you to be as they state it.

It doesn’t matter what sources you or Gray uses, that is totally beside the point. Given your fundamental differences in philosophical belief, Mitsu, you believe what you are espousing is not enemy propaganda, that it is accurate because there are more than one “report”. SUch things are not good reasons for Gray to discard his beliefs or his philosophy.

Did I not just say that you believe media reports to be as stated? You obviously think that if you believe more than one report from the media, that this suddenly makes things better. Similar to the belief that causes you to think that with more buddies around, a single individual will naturally act calmer and more disciplined in war. Your theories about human conduct and behavior are grossly distorted and mistaken. Everything else follows from that, including your opinions about Blackwater. This is not an argument about reports or their accuracy, because even if all the reports you use are accurate, you would not be able to derive the correct conclusions from those reports given your personal beliefs, Mitsu.

This subject is about as useful to discuss as whether you think you are pragmatic or utilitarian. The consequences are the same in the end.
One of the soldiers who came on the scene after the shooting described the fact that there were no casings whatsoever from the supposed fire the Blackwater guards said they took.

That is the exact same thing they said about Haditha. These are propaganda operations. What confuses you about that statement, exactly? Whether an enemy shoots and misses or shoots and kills, that still makes them the enemy. What is so philosophically complex and pragmatically impossible about that situation that makes you refuse to understand, Mitsu?
You neither accept nor understand propaganda, allied or enemy, Mitsu. The answer to whether Fox News is engaging or helping along operations of such a nature will do you absolutely no good. Stick to issues of pragmatism rather than filghts of fancy.

I don’t think the MSM shoud be viewed with skepticism, so thus you cannot act like you are agreeing with me when you say you view the MSM with skepticism. That is an easy logic chain to grasp, I hope.
After numerous posts from me in reply to your probes, Mitsu, the best you can do is to imply that I view the MSM with skepticism? Come on.
Propaganda operations are not always “fabricated” just for you or me. You don’t understand the nature of propaganda, so how do you think you can tell whether a report is part of a propaganda operation or not? If you want a direct statement about where I disagree, it is that propaganda doesn’t need to fabricate any reports. Propaganda can use 100% of the absolute truth in order to deceive 95% of the total target population. In this case, the details concerning Blackwater are so much a carbon copy of Afghanistan’s deathblossom and Haditha’s deathblossom that it would be obvious that once Haditha ran down and lost its propaganda value, that our enemies would seek to renew their offensive with another, seemingly unrelated, incident.
Obviously YOU don’t keep track of what is going on in Iraq, but I actually do

You are keeping track of what our domestic insurgency and our foreign enemies want you to keep track of. Do you honestly think that propaganda operations start with one source in the media and try to convince the target based upon one source? No they use multiple sources, in order to confer legitimacy based upon the fact that people, like you Mitsu, will believe 5 people saying the same thing more than you would one person saying it.

One of the soldiers interviewed wouldn’t happen to be named someone Thomas Scott would he?

PENHAUL: We have been around to one of these city hospitals, a general hospital in Fallujah. A duty doctor there said he counted six dead in his hospital last night, more than 20 wounded that he treated personally.

Dr. Ahmed Ghandim al-Ali, director of Fallujah’s general hospital, said the clash killed 13 Iraqis and injured about 75. The dead included three boys ages 8 to 10, he said.”

He’s the only source of the casualty information and he’s lying. It’s not clear from any of your other sources that there were any casualties at all!

Can’t you read anything critically?

Obviously YOU don’t keep track of what is going on in Iraq, but I actually do.

I’m in the National Guard, I’ve been in the military for 16 years. I was a Military Intelligence officer. I rabidly consume any and all information about “what’s going on”.

The difference is that I have a functioning bullshit detector, and unlike you, I don’t believe every negative thing said about our “trigger happy boys”.

It’s enemy propaganda and you are dutifully reporting it.

Simply wrong.

>It was not widely reported anywhere.

The funny thing is, Gray, you seem to assume that just because you post things without doing any research or knowing what you’re talking about, you think everyone else does the same thing. Obviously YOU don’t keep track of what is going on in Iraq, but I actually do. Reports came from multiple news agencies who sent independent reporters to the scene, interviewing both victims and soldiers, as well as Army officials making comments about the incident. It was reported on network news, etc., and frequently referred to as one of the major turning points in relations with Fallujah residents prior to the Fallujah offensive. It’s pretty amazing that you missed it since it was major news at the time and has been referred to many times since then.

A sample of some of the accounts of the incident:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/29/otsc.penhaul/index.html

“We have been around to one of these city hospitals, a general hospital in Fallujah. A duty doctor there said he counted six dead in his hospital last night, more than 20 wounded that he treated personally. Other wounded came through the hospital doors that he didn’t have time to treat….”

“From what we understand, the U.S. military has said it will withdraw from the school. That could be later in the day. It could be tomorrow. We also understand that they have been talking, saying they may send in a tank unit to try to keep some kind of order here. They may withdraw altogether from this sector.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2989923.stm

‘Magid lives across the street from a school in Falluja where just after 8 pm local time US forces fired on a demonstration.

American soldiers say that Iraqis in the crowd shot at them. Magid says that’s not the case.

“We didn’t use any weapons but they shot at us,” he said.

“We were just saying slogans, No to Saddam, No to Bush, Yes to Islam.”

Magid says demonstrators did throw stones at the soldiers, and that the Americans were saying over loudspeakers that Iraqis should not use weapons.’

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june03/incident_04-29.html

“MARGARET WARNER: John Burns, welcome. There’s been tremendous confusion about what happened in Fallujah last night. What can you tell us about how this entire episode unfolded?

JOHN BURNS: Well, I think the reporters, including one of ours, who were at the site would say that it’s too early to tell. It’s a complicated story. You have the account given by the U.S. forces there, and you have the conflicting accounts given by some of the people who were in the crowd.”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,85443,00.html

“Americans and Iraqis gave sharply differing accounts of Monday night’s shooting. U.S. forces insisted they opened fire only upon armed men — infiltrators among the protest crowd, according to Col. Arnold Bray, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 325 Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division (search), whose troops were involved in the shooting.

….Protesters insisted their demonstration was unarmed and peaceful.

Dr. Ahmed Ghandim al-Ali, director of Fallujah’s general hospital, said the clash killed 13 Iraqis and injured about 75. The dead included three boys ages 8 to 10, he said.”

As I said, there is controversy about why it happened, but no controversy over whether it happened. Just because you write things without bothering to check your facts, Gray, doesn’t mean all of us do that.