Blaming the U.S. (NY Times joins Alger)

[B-Man]

John Podhoretz:

May 14, 2004 -- A MAN has his head cut off by al Qaeda in Iraq, and The New York Times aggressively markets the idea - on its front page yesterday - that his death is somehow the fault of the United States.
"The family of Nicholas E. Berg challenged American military officials on Wednesday," according to lead paragraph in the Times' story, "insisting that the man beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Iraq had earlier been in the custody of federal officials who should have done more to protect him."

Whatever the circumstances of Nick Berg's detention in Iraq and his family's torment at his unspeakable murder, the Times' decision to offer this angle as its main story in the matter of his beheading is a very telling fact about that newspaper, the mainstream media and the politics of 2004.

No matter what happens in the war with Iraq, no matter what the evildoers do, the Times wants to bring it back to high-level American misconduct - misconduct so severe that it supposedly calls the entire mission in Iraq into question. To blame the United States for Berg's beheading might be acceptable for Berg's own grief-deranged kin. But it is not acceptable for The New York Times or anyone else.

The Times is leading the mainstream media in turning the United States into the bad guys in Iraq. But it is far from alone.

Take a look at Time magazine's cover this week. It features an artist's rendering of one of the photographs from Abu Ghraib with the line: "Iraq: How Did It Come to This?"

"It" didn't come to "this." "It" is a war to liberate 25 million people and rout Islamic extremists, terrorists and those who thirst for the mass murder of Americans. "This" was an aberrancy that was stopped almost five months ago, when the revelations at Abu Ghraib led to investigations, arrests and the wholesale reinvention of the Iraq prison system.



Time's cover line is a vile and grotesque slander against every American in uniform in Iraq. It remains the case, more than two weeks after the public exposure of the Abu Ghraib photographs, that not a single digital photo showing mistreatment has emerged from another cellblock at that self-same prison, or from any of the other 24 prisons in Iraq.

Indeed, every photograph shown to U.S. senators yesterday is part of the same set of pictures featuring the same eight dirtbags.

The scandal isn't widening. If anything, it's contracting. The focus continues to zoom in on the actual people in the pictures and their disgusting conduct in them. And yet Teddy Kennedy, a man who once let a woman die, feels free to speak the following unspeakable words: "We now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management."

The United States is, according to the man in whose car Mary Jo Kopechne drowned, no better than the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Teddy Kennedy isn't just some outlier. Teddy Kennedy is the chief surrogate of the Democratic candidate for president of the United States and a lionized figure - so lionized that a worshipful profile of him published in Boston magazine won a major journalism award last year.

So let's be clear what's going on here. As we speak, 138,000 Americans are serving under dangerous conditions in Iraq. And our forces in Karbala are fighting against the goons and thugs of Muqtada al-Sadr with some success. They're risking their lives for freedom and honor and duty and love of country.

And conventional liberal opinion wants them to lose.

Conventional liberal opinion believes that the Abu Ghraib photos are the true meaning of the war, and that Nick Berg is just another victim of callous U.S. policy.

Conventional liberal opinion is actively seeking the humiliation and defeat of the United States in Iraq.

[paland]

[ QUOTE ]
"It" didn't come to "this." "It" is a war to liberate 25 million people and rout Islamic extremists, terrorists and those who thirst for the mass murder of Americans.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem with your arguement is that you repeat propaganda lines. We are not there to "liberate" anymore than we are interested in helping the homeless. And "we" started this war, not them. The administration abandoned the war against Terrorists so that they could fight Saddam. The terrorists are now getting stronger and we can thank Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.. for this. They have made our lives miserable. Thanks guys.

[sam h]

John Podhoretz is a bloated windbag who only has a job because of his dad.

The level of denial from conservatives about Iraq is truly amazing. All of this going on the offensive - The New York Times blah, blah, blah, Mary Jo Kopechne blah, blah, blah, Rene Gonzalez blah, blah, blah, John Kerry threw away his medals blah, blah, blah - is just noise to drown out the unavoidable fact that the Iraq mission has been mainly a disaster and that the people in charge have demonstrated astounding levels of incompetence and deceit throughout.

[elwoodblues]

Typical blame the media first response.

You are blaming the NYT for "aggressively marketing" the idea that the US is to blam for Berg's death. All they are doing is reporting Berg's father's belief. Just yesterday, people were whining that there isn't enough coverage of the Berg killing. There has been very little new info about the killing except for the fact that Berg's father is blaming the government for the death. What would you expect them to run with. If they had put the article about Berg later in the paper and, god forbid, ran a front page story about the prisoner scandal we'd be hearing that they were biased.

You are the editor of the NYT. What are your front page stories today?

[Michael Davis]

They have undoubtedly made the world a worse place, but "they have made our lives miserable" is a gross hyperbole.

-Michael

[andyfox]

In the 1940s, when Truman needed to rally the isolationist Republican conservative to support military aid for Greece and Turkey, he was advised to scare the hell out of the public and the Republicans, in order to make opposition to his policies seem unpatriotic.

We're at a similar crossroads in American foreign policy now. The Bush administration, while having many of the same attitudes and viewpoints as the prior Clinton and Bush administrations, is much more activist. It is therefore natural that the administration, and its allies in the press, will make a concerted effort to question the patriotism of those who oppose its policies.

"Conventional liberals" thus, in their eyes, want us to lose.

But the conservative movement has really gone overboard. Note the titles and subtitles of their books. ["Treason"; "Useful Idiots"; Hannity's new book's subtitle equates liberalism with evil] Kerry is regularly called "stupid" on many of the radio talk shows.

The Berg story was a big one. The unfortunate man's father's statements were news. The New York Times did not "aggressively market" the idea that his death was the United States' fault, it reported what the man's father said.

The President and Secretary of Defense have condemned the actions in the prison in no uncertain terms. They're the ones who have been most outspoken on this issue, and, IMO, rightly so. They have been the most critical public figures of the actions taken by Americans there.

Kennedy did not say that we're no better than the regime of Saddam Hussein.

If there is humiliation in what happened in the prison, it is because of what happened, not because of the media reporting it.

[trippin bily]

paland, we didnt start the war..you know better. when they flew those planes into the towers they stared the war. People like you just refuse to acknowledge that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terrorism. Why it can honestly be said that there has not been a proven connection betwwen saddam and 911... it is clear that saddam had ties with terrorist throughout the world. including the animal that beheaded mr. berg. in iraq by the way. He had been there many times before the war. Once to seek medical treatment from saddams personnal doctor. the other trips i'm sure were for vacation only.
since we have gone to iraq libya has ceased to be a terrorist regime. they dismantled nuclear weapons and plants and put them on u. s . ships. didn't get much press coverage. didn't make america look bad or the current administation. libya will no longer sell weapons to iran, north korea, syria. didn't get much press coverage..didnt make america look bad or the current administration.
as for the terrorist getting stronger ha!
we have had them come from all over the world to fight our highly trained volunteer soldiers. who are killing them daily.
seems brilliant to me..we got the animals to come out of their holes and fight soldiers instead of killing innocent woman and children with planes.thast angle doesn't get much press coverage.. you know why. the terrorist are however blowing up many innocent iraqis. not sure why. i guess they must have had cameras.

[andyfox]

The people who flew the planes into the buildings in New York and Washington D.C. were from Saudi Arabia. The administration determined that they were Al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, given aid and comfort by the Taliban. It therefore attacked Afghanistan to go after Al-Qaeda and get rid of the Taliban.

The war in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The detente with Libya had nothing to do with the war in Iraq. It had been in the works for years, with only the details needed to be worked out. The claim that Kaddafi came to his sense because of the war in Iraq is false. As is your claim that it didn't get much press coverage.

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
The war in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree. The war in Iraq has a lot to do with 9/11 (insofar as 9/11 was the catylyst with which Americans could have been talked into bombing the Vatican because of its ties to terrorists). Unfortunately, Iraq itself had nothing to do with 9/11.

[andyfox]

Bad language skills, I agree. 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. Indeed, it was crucial to the justification for war in Iraq.