Iraq news coverage

[Squink]

@Mr. Moto

That hardly proves that medal winners are getting the recognition they deserve.

It easily disproves your claim that “nearly every mention of military medals in print or television media concerned the Kerry campaign.”
Do you watch CBS evening news? They run a piece on our fallen heroes each and every weeknight.

[Mr.Moto]

@Squink

Do you watch CBS evening news? They run a piece on our fallen heroes each and every weeknight.

Do I look like the sort of guy who watches CBS News?

Actually, I don’t watch any network news shows, as that’s right smack dab in the middle of dinner, bath, and bedtime for my kids.

[rjung]

@Mr. Moto

Do I look like the sort of guy who watches CBS News?

<Insert joke here>

[Sevastopol]

@magellan01

Abu Ghraib was a big deal. Absolutely. And I condemn anyone and everyone who is responsible for those ugly, mindless crimes.

Yet you decline to identify the perpetrators and their superiors as the mindless fucking animal filth they are, a term you use freely to describe Iraqis who killed Americans who were, I remind you * violating their homeland* with their univinvited presence. Why, pray tell is that?

[tagos]

CBS

NBC

Washington Post

ABC

CNN

Time Magazine

Where Are the War Heroes? NY Times

Their names are Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta. If you have never heard of them, even in a week when more than 20 marines were killed in Iraq by insurgents, that might be because the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II.

Collectively, say military historians, war correspondents and retired senior officers, the country seems to have concluded that war heroes pack a political punch that requires caution. They have become not just symbols of bravery but also reminders of the war’s thorniest questions. “No one wants to call the attention of the public to bloodletting and heroism and the horrifying character of combat,” said Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina. “What situation can be imagined that would promote the war and not remind people of its ambivalence?”

An argument supported by the fact that.

The DoD site has no publicity about medal winners. You have to do a search to turn up the info but once you have names there are plenty of references in mainstream media.

The DoD Press Resources page has no section on medal winners. Neither does the whitehouse. A further search reveals a grand total of 28 press briefings that mention medals of any kind since 2001.

Neither organisation have web sections highlighting the bravery of named medal winners.

So to me it looks like the media are doing damn sight more than the Govt to honour medal winners nationally. They certainly aren’t going out of their way so Mot can take his beef up with them IMHO.

[tagos]

War Medals: Tell it to the Marines

A columnist, I know, but I assume the numbers are correct.

In the current conflict in Iraq, medal inflation has again emerged as an issue, with considerable criticism of most military branches for lowering the requisites for awarding medals, demeaning their value for everyone.

Hackworth calls it “a sick, out-of-control system that desperately needs overhauling.”

Scripps Howard News Service reported that among the current crop of Bronze Star recipients are “an Army captain … who supervised the distribution of 3,500 maps to his battalion”; “five submarine commanders, whose sailors lobbed cruise missiles at Iraqi targets hundreds of miles away”; and “a senior chaplain who produced 236 worship services at three locations, passed out hundreds of Bibles and rebuilt a park for Iraqi children.”

By February of this year, according to MSNBC, the Air Force had given out “more than 69,000 awards and other honors,” including 1,900 Bronze Stars, and the Army some 40,000 medals, including more than 13,000 Bronze Stars.

“In the latter days of the Korean War and in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm and Somalia, such abuses of military honors increased with each battle,” he writes, adding that “in Grenada, more medals were awarded than there were soldiers on that tiny island.”

One branch of the military, however, seems immune from medal inflation: the United States Marine Corps.

By February, according to MSNBC, the Marines had awarded just a little more than 1,000 medals, including 200 Bronze Stars, although they also had “a good number of medals in the pipeline.”

…
The Marines do it the hard way, even when it comes to medals.

[RedFury]

@magellan01

Red Furry: Have you no pride, man? You would think someone who makes a statement like that had contributed mightily.

Ad Hominens in lieu of a factual response yet again.

If you have facts to back up your assertion (or rather, WAG), let’s see them. Otherwise retract.

That’s how a debate works. I know, I know, what a concept!

But here’s your ENTIRE contribution to this thread up to now:

@Red

Cite? Besides the glaringly obvious fact that if you “should endeavor to stay out of war altogther,” backing an aggressive war of choice, based on outright lies and deceptions, is rather incongruent.

Even if what you’re saying were true – and it isn’t as it’s obvious to anyone reading this thread – I’ll note that you’ve also refused to address the glaring inconsistency noted in the above-quoted segment.

THAT"S IT!!! But most recently there was this little gem below:

Well then, that’s obviously not it, is it? Tell me, do you enjoy contradicting yourself?

Ooooh, Furry, you used a baaad word. Thomas is not going to liiike thaaaat.

Rather the opposite happened. It’s your fiddling with user names that’s not kosher on this Board.

Tell me, do you ever tire of being wrong? Rethorical query in case it isn’t clear.

And not only do you run around: “here, read this link”, “read that link”, “cite”, and then talk tough, in the meantime you don’t even contribute what the heck your own position is? That’s so lame there should be a telethon for it.

I guesstimate that roughly 50% of my whole post count on this message board address what “my position is” with regards to Neocon ideology and, more precisely, the murderous Iraqi clusterfuck.

What’s worthy of a telethon is your inability to extract that very sentiment from the few posts I’ve made to this thread --not like I’m posting in code.

Come on, show me you can do something other than follow me around and nip at my heels.

Pardon me, but who are you again? Don’t recall ever trading posts with you before, doubt I’ll bother to in the future. As much as I enjoy fighting ignorance, a masochist, I am not.

I’m putting my ideas out there, others are doing the same. It’s called engaging in a debate. Try it, you might like it.

And you’d know this how? Surely not from your participation here.

By the way, do you even know what kind of cite you were asking for. I asked for clarification on what I thought was a ridiculous request and got nothing but big-dog attitude.

The other way around, actually. The Big Dog school of foreign policy is what you spouse. And my request for a cite remains just that: show us what you have and stop blustering.

Have yourself another wonderful, fantasy-filled day.

[tomndebb]

This discussion is not carried forward by anyone simply criticizing other posters’ styles or presentations. If you have an opinion about the topic, (most preferably supported by evidence), feel free to post it. If your primary contribution is to point out the inadequacy of another poster’s contributions, then just let us all figure that out for ourselves.

[ /Moderator Mode ]

[jshore]

@rjung

Someone once claimed to have done a Lexis-Nexis search to prove that Clinton’s LAX haircut got more coverage than the Downing Street Memo. :eek: Wish I had saved the reference…

Sounds quite believable to me. It is hard to imagine that story having gotten less media attention than the Downing Street memo has received!

In my opinion the media is probably not doing their job because they are showing way too few graphic pictures of casualties (especially American casualties)…In fact, the print version of Extra! has an article on this. These pictures need to be shown so the public understands just how horrible war is. Then maybe the public will demand that our President truly consider it only as the last option and never again as the first (and only) option.

[Mr.Moto]

@jshore

In my opinion the media is probably not doing their job because they are showing way too few graphic pictures of casualties (especially American casualties)…In fact, the print version of Extra! has an article on this. These pictures need to be shown so the public understands just how horrible war is.

Would you demand that graphic photos of rape victims be printed, so we all get to know how terrible that crime is? Or is this somehow understood, without having the general public lose their lunch?

[rjung]

Last I checked, rape was conducted by individuals, not by leaders acting on behalf of the people of a nation.

[RedFury]

@rjung

Last I checked, rape was conducted by individuals, not by leaders acting on behalf of the people of a nation.

Oh, I don’t know. Seems to me there’s plenty of raping going on in Iraq.

Ironically, it’s not just the Iraqis getting raped, but plenty of Americans as well:

By even the most charitable standard, the effort to rebuild Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster. A cornucopia of waste, fraud, ineptitude, cronyism, secret no-bid contracts, and profiteering cloaked in patriotism. There is the $9 billion the U.S.-led occupation government can’t account for; the over 70 investigations into potential criminal cases involving U.S.-funded projects; the ongoing billing disputes with Halliburton, which despite having repeatedly ripped off taxpayers, continues to receive billion-dollar contracts; the $20 billion in Iraqi oil money kept track of by a single accountant; the study showing that up to 30 percent of reconstruction funds are being lost to fraud and corporate malfeasance. Whether you are passionately in favor of the war or passionately against it, don’t you want to know exactly where our money is going and how we can stop the corruption?

On top of the corruption is the fact that, because so little of the $24 billion in taxpayer money that Congress has earmarked for reconstruction is reaching ordinary Iraqis, two years after we cakewalked over Saddam, the Iraqi people are still facing massive food shortages, energy shortages, and woefully inadequate water and sewage systems. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, only 27 cents of every dollar spent on rebuilding Iraq has gone to actually improving the lives of its people, with the rest going to security, waste, overhead and fattening the bottom line of big U.S. corporations.

Oooops! So sorry. Didn’t mean to hamper the war effort.