A sobering email from our friend Michael Yon that is worth posting in its entirety.
Greetings:
Pajamas Media recently reported that there are only 9 embedded reporters in Iraq. Many are blaming this on the media, and while I can never be called an apologist for mainstream media, I can say with certainty that the United States military is censoring.
It remains unclear if this is a general policy, though there are recent inquiries to the office of the Secretary of Defense. I await response. Or, perhaps, the censorship is merely the policy of LTC Barry Johnson who is responsible for operations involving embeds. Barry Johnson is said to be the most quoted man in Iraq . I’ve learned to trust nothing he says. I do know for a fact that Johnson has been untruthful with the media. If Johnson calls me on this, I’ll take the time to prove it.
While sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers and friends, fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military apparently is preventing journalists from telling the story. They attempt to deflect accusations of censorship by allowing in just enough reporters to appear transparent.
I’ll post updates on the website as the situation unfolds.
Meanwhile, we have several new dispatches on the site from Walt Gaya who traveled to Iraq. Gaya earned two Purple Hearts last year, but LTC Barry Johnson denied his request for an embed despite having direct invitations from the 4th Infantry Division and from Brigadier General Dana Pittard. Walt Gaya entered Iraq without US forces.
My final dispatch from Afghanistan, The Perfect Evil was originally published on National Review Online, picked up by CBS and the Council for Foreign Relations. Part One of the three-part series is posted on the site, with extensive supporting material. At this critical time in Afghanistan itâ??s important to keep this mission on the front page because the window for change is closing fast.
Most people know this site runs entirely on support from readers, and sales of books and photos. Accordingly, reader patronage is greatly appreciated and essential. I’ll keep the dispatches coming: Good, bad and ugly.
Very Respectfully,
Michael
Today, Dean Esmay has a strong post about conservatives who are making the claim that Islamic countries can never become democricies. He is calling out Michelle Malkin in particular.
Does the Conscience of a Conservative Still Exist?
This very statement–that Islam is incompatible with democracy–is why I fight so hard with many of my friends on the Right: accepting that statement means we have to declare war on the entire Muslim world if we’re to hope for human freedom to survive.
To me it would be akin to, in World War II, declaring ourselves at war with “Germanic People,” “Latin People,” and “Southeast Asians.” Not Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and Tojo’s Japan. No, we would have declared that we were at war with anyone of Germanic or Latin descent, and anyone who happened to be short, yellow, and slant-eyed (to put it rudely and crassly).
There are some on the Right who believe this. But I think they’re badly hurting our efforts. I think such people on the Right are hurting the war effort and not helping it.
This is a very similar arguement to the one we recently discussed on the radio show between Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer,
Peters’ Assumption #1: the Islam of moderate Muslims is the genuine Islam, and all they need to do is “recapture” their faith. In fact it is not for Peters or any other non-Muslim to say what genuine Islam consists of, and there is no Pope of Islam to rule on what is Islamic orthodoxy and what isn’t. What we can do is look at the teachings of the various sects and schools of law — which I have done, and have found that all mainstream Sunni and Shi’ite sects and madhahib (schools of jurisprudence) teach that it is the responsibility of the umma to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Sharia.
and Ralph Peters,
But a rotten core of American extremists is out to make it harder for them.
The most repugnant trend in the American shouting match that passes for a debate on the struggle with Islamist terrorism isn’t the irresponsible nonsense on the left – destructive though that is. The really ugly “domestic insurgency” is among right-wing extremists bent on discrediting honorable conservatism.
How? By insisting that Islam can never reform, that the violent conquest and subjugation of unbelievers is the faith’s primary agenda – and, when you read between the lines, that all Muslims are evil and subhuman.
I sympathize and understand with those who think Islam is simply incompatible with democracy. Just look around. When Islamic radicals slaughter innocents in the name of Allah, there is hardly a word of condemnation. When someone draws a cartoon of Mohammed or the Pope utters a benign statement of advancing religion through dialogue, the Muslim â??streetâ? leaps into action, has rallies in their capitals around the world and sets out to intimidate those who even question them.
However, as Dean points out, look at Afghanistan. Listen to what Harmid Karzi said this week. Wanting freedom and autonomy over oneâ??s live is a basic human desire. Democracy, maybe not as we know it, can work in Iraq, and elsewhere. I believe that. Given my relentless defense of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, count me in with Ralph, and Dean. Your thoughts?
As for that leaked, classified NIE report, the Dems and the NY Times have swung and missed yet again. And how about the hypocrisy of our own Ted Kennedy, from our friends at Powerline,
Ted Kennedy weighed in with the most surreal attack:
“The American people deserve the full story, not those parts of it that the Bush administration selects,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
That would be hilarious, if it were not so contemptible. When Democrats in the bureaucracy illegally leaked misleading portions of the NIE’s “key judgments” in hopes of influencing the election, that was fine with Kennedy. But when the administration declassified the entire “judgments” section so that the American people can read it all and judge for themselves, now Kennedy complains that the voters aren’t getting “the full story.” Absolutely outrageous, but typical of the Democrats’ ever more hysterical campaign.
Captain Ed has a great post on the real news in the NIE,
As the NIE concludes, a victory in Iraq would seriously damage the radical Islamist movement, perhaps even mortally. We have no chance to strike a blow against them by retreating. Democrats have badly misrepresented this report and offer the one solution guaranteed to result in making the problem worse — as the NIE also concludes.
President Bush and Afghanistan’s Harmid Karzi had a press conference yesterday and talked about the terrorist threat in relation to the NIE. Bush went off on the politically motivated leak of the report and the obvious media spin designed to misrepresent the news.It is well worth watching.
More bad news for the cut and run crowd. A letter from the President of Iraq to the American people,
…In order to rid Iraq of the constant threat of violence, we still need your help. As long as we are determent to outlast and outsmart our enemy, we shall reach our common goals.
Iraq is slowly gaining the ability to fight this war with its own soldiers, evidenced recently by the relinquishing of complete control of coalition forces to the Iraqi government. The coalition now employs more soldiers from Iraq than any other nation. Slowly but surely, Iraq will be able to protect itself on its own.
The stakes of Iraq are enormous, world-shifting even. This is why our country should be a point of concern for every democratic country of the world. I can assure you that the immediate departure of coalition forces would only unleash tensions between different communities, the prospect of a safe Iraq wou ld be completely lost, and the previous descriptions of a civil war would seem insufficient and tame compared to the bloodshed of an Iraq that loses its international support.
And although I cannot promise when or how the American presence will completely end in Iraq, I can promise that American soldiers do not fight in vain. We in Iraq recognize that an incredible amount of American resources have been offered to us. And we understand that many Americans are frustrated with the course of the war, and we understand that doubt naturally coincides with difficulty. I realize that many Americans were apprehensive about the decision to go to war. But I ask that you put this behind you in favor of supporting a democratic and free Iraq, and a future for Iraqis that excludes the threat of violence and extremism. I ask that you consider what the terms of failure in Iraq would actually look like, and what they would mean for Iraq, the United States and the international community.
I would venture to say that the interest of Iraq and the United States are one in this matter. The United States carries a heavy responsibility in helping us. As complicated as the relationship may be, America and Iraq are now siblings in the world.
Take a few minutes to read the whole letter.
from James Taranto’s Best of the Web,
Special note: James Taranto will be our guest Sunday evening in the 8pm EST hour on Pundit Review Radio.
Something odd is afoot in America’s elite media–increasingly, journalists are unabashed about admitting their liberal bias. Another example is Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, who talked to radio host Hugh Hewitt yesterday:
Hewitt: What [the Washington Post’s Thomas] Edsall admitted, which was so damning, is that the people who drive the news are the reporters, and the reporters are, by 15-25 to 1 leftists.
Alter: OK. All right. Now I’m not sure that ratio is wrong. I mean, I don’t think anybody has a good study of it, but–
Hewitt: But it feels right.
Alter: –it’s overwhelmingly, the question, though, the threshold question that you have to look at is how much does that affect their coverage? Now I think some. I think liberals who say well, that doesn’t affect their coverage at all are wrong. Obviously, people’s worldviews will affect their coverage to a certain extent.
And then there is this, also from Taranto, The Pope is Catholic, the Media is Liberal
Back in June, Linda Greenhouse, Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times, gave a politically charged speech at the Radcliffe Institute. It was standard liberal baby-boomer sanctimony, as we noted in July:
Linda Greenhouse ’68 went to a Simon and Garfunkel concert soon after the war in Iraq began, and in the middle of the concert she had a crying jag. . . . “Thinking back to my college days in those troubled and tumultuous late 1960s, there were many things that divided my generation. . . . [Yet] we were absolutely united in one conviction: the belief that in future decades, if the world lasted that long, when our turn came to run the country, we wouldn’t make the same mistakes. . . . I cried that night . . . out of the realization that my faith had been misplaced. . . . We were the problem.”
For some reason this speech is getting attention again now, notably a segment on NPR’s “All Things Considered” yesterday titled “Critics Question Reporter’s Airing of Personal Views.” It’s what you’d expect, too, but this passage is telling:
Jack Nelson, former Washington bureau chief for The Los Angeles Times, blanches at hearing of Greenhouse’s remarks, but agrees with her tough critique of the White House.
“If I was the Washington bureau chief and she was my Supreme Court reporter, I might have to answer to the editors in L.A. for that,” Nelson says.
Law creates searchable database of federal contracts, grants
The federal government will establish an easily searchable Internet database of contracts and grants as a result of legislation passed by Congress.
The idea, pushed by both liberal and conservative groups, is to bring more transparency to how the government is spending taxpayers’ money. The federal government awarded more than $380 billion in contracts last year and gave away another $300 billion in grants.
The government’s current contracting database is hard to use and often contains inaccurate or incomplete information. The Office of Management and Budget promised to fix the data problems by January 2008, when the new search engine is scheduled to be launched.
The text of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) is available at thomas.loc.gov
My favorite part. He stood up, clapped his hands together and said, “You’re dismissed,” with a big smile. He breezed out of the room, waved to various sections, head-nodded in general directions, and thanked the crowd, but only Ace got the coveted handshake. The end seat served him well. After that, we had a briefing with Clay Johnson of OMB about the nitty-gritty of implementing the bill. I was encouraged to see that there are deadlines in place for making it happen and that OMB is aggressively seeking blogger and public input on what the new site should do.
The whole thing was a thrill for me, a great recognition of what blogging can do, and a move toward making government more transparent and accountable to the public. All around, a very good day.
From Senator Bill Frist,
This morning President Bush will sign into law the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, legislation authored by Senators Coburn and Obama of which I’m a proud co-sponsor. This law creates a single, easily searchable database capable of tracking approximately $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and loans … a veritable Google for pork.
As I said when this legislation passed the Senate, this law represents a triumph for transparency in government, for fiscal discipline, and for the bipartisan citizen journalism of the blogosphere.
To learn more about Porkbusters, click here.
South Boston legend, Marine and Vietnam war hero Tom Lyons joined us on Pundit Review Radio to give us a preview of The Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s annual convention which will be held in Boston from September 26th through October 1st, 2006.
The Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, will be in attendance, along with 78 out of the 111 living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
What is Pundit Review Radio?
Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week Kevin and Gregg give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called “Groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to your radio every Sunday evening from 7-10pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.
UPDATE: Boston Herald: A tearful tribute to a �??genuine American hero�??
Matt from Blackfive was unable to join us this weekend, but we went ahead and did a special, local edition of Someone You Should Know. We honored the memory of Massachusetts native Jared Raymond who died this month in Iraq.
Salem News, September 23
Swampscott loses one of its own in Iraq
He was a member of the 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team based at Ford Hood, Texas. He was remembered yesterday in Swampscott as a sweet, respectful and well-liked kid who grew into a man after joining the Army.
“He loved what he was doing. He loved the Army. He loved his country,” said Dunnigan, a classmate of Raymond’s who is himself a Navy veteran of the Iraq war.
What is Pundit Review Radio?
Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week Kevin and Gregg give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called “Groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to your radio every Sunday evening from 7-10pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.