Please Freepmail me to be added to the Ollie North ping list.
Posted on 03/27/2008 9:07:38 PM PDT by jazusamo
MIAMI -- I made a major mistake in a hotel room this week. Not the Eliot Spitzer kind of mistake -- but with a television remote. While changing for a late dinner, I tried to tune in to Fox News Channel, but the electronic device took me instead to MTV and some kind of "reality show." For a few minutes as I dressed, I was treated to several attractive young American women discussing their relationships. The most oft repeated sound in this conversation was "Duh!" -- a word that does not appear in my dictionary. But now I know what it means.
After conferring with several young people at our New York bureau, I was informed that "Duh!" is simply modern shorthand for "No! Really?" or "You just figured that out?" Well, if that's the case, this week should be giving the masters of the mainstream media plenty of "Duh!" moments about the campaign in Iraq.
On Monday, the potentates of the press finally discovered a study completed last month by Harvard University researchers about what we have been saying for years: There is a direct connection between adverse U.S. news coverage about Operation Iraqi Freedom and intensified attacks on civilians and coalition forces in Iraq. "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq" shows that negative media coverage and adverse commentary by U.S. political luminaries produce a statistically measurable increase in enemy activity.
To produce the study, analysts researched the number of insurgent attacks and fatalities per week from the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003 until January 2008. They also examined the number of "anti-resolve statements" per week by U.S. politicians from November 2004 to January 2008 and American public opinion polls on the war from November 2004 to January 2008.
The researchers found "a positive correlation" between spikes in war-critical statements in the media and the number of attacks and fatalities. They also showed that attacks increased between 7 and 10 percent following a spate of anti-resolve statements by leading political figures.
The authors of the study, Radha Iyengar and Jonathan Monten, baldly state, "We find that in periods immediately after a spike in anti-resolve statements, the level of insurgent attacks increases." Well, Duh!
This carefully researched study verifies what many of us who have spent months in the field concluded long ago: The drumbeat of negative news coverage about events in Iraq and the careless commentary from the political left in Washington have increased the danger for U.S. troops and our allies.
The riots and murders precipitated by a fictitious May 9, 2005, article in Newsweek magazine -- describing how a Quran had been flushed down a toilet in Guantanamo -- certainly validated how quickly bad news is spread, not just in Iraq but throughout the Muslim world. When a U.S. senator likens American troops to those who served Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot, it not only disheartens our sons and daughters in uniform but also encourages our adversaries, as well. When the senior U.S. commander in Iraq is depicted as "General Betray Us" in the pages of The New York Times, those who hate us are exultant.
The Harvard study also confirms that our adversary in Iraq is very media savvy. They pay close attention to U.S. news and use it to exhort attacks and recruit new supporters to their jihad. To believe that they are not paying attention to the current U.S. presidential campaign is to deny reality.
The message in this study is not just a cry for responsible reporting -- but a charge for American political elites. It's also very likely that this study is a prediction of the next nine months on the ground in Iraq.
In the aftermath of this study -- and this week's spike in violence in Iraq -- how can there be any doubt that the Iranians and al-Qaida will do all they can to ensure that the next occupant of the Oval Office is a person pledged to "get us out of Iraq starting on Day One." Duh!
Oliver North is the founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance and author of The Assassins .
Please Freepmail me to be added to the Ollie North ping list.
Thanks for posting this.
The RATS in this country want us to be defeated and they know exactly what they are doing.
Yes, and sadly the Rats have the enemedia on their side.
What a fine Senator Ollie would have made.
No thanks to Senator RINO-Warner, good riddance you bum.
Dick Durbin lied, men died.
John Murtha lied, men died.
Hillary Clinton lied, men died.
Although RINO Warner contributed, I believe that it was Nancy Reagan herself who sunk Ollie’s campaign. When she came out and said that Ollie lied about her husband it was all downhill from there. What the hell California Nancy has to do with a Senate seat in Virginia is beyond me.
And Dingy Harry, (the war is lost).
Who can believe anything those airheads at Harvard come up with? Talk about a bunch of pointy-headed nerds. Where do you think the New York Times gets its reporters?
One question quickly comes to mind: If negative public statements lead to increased attacks, how could the surge have been so successful in reducing attacks in the face of overwhelmingly bad press?
Trust the Harvard snobs to get this wrong, like everything else.
Good point, the surge was successful in spite of the bad press and because insurgents died at an ever increasing rate for those who didn’t join us and the Iraqi Army.
God Bless Ollie...
Ollie, you’re so hep! Sure that episode wasn’t from 1990 or so?
“Oliver North—he was just POURED into that uniform.”—Homer Simpson
Your post is truth. Those traitors actually did cause the death of soldiers, Marines, and a whole lot of innocent bystanders. It’s no joke. In fact it makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
” I tried to tune in to Fox News Channel, but [....] For a few minutes as I dressed, I was treated to several attractive young American women discussing their relationships. The most oft repeated sound in this conversation was “Duh!” “
Actually Mr. North did, indeed, find the Fox ‘News’ Channel — it’s become increasingly unwatchable over the past year exactly because of the kind of programming described....
“Enemedia”
What a great word. You should of patented it. It will be part of my vocab now. Thanks!
To this day I do not understand why the Office of the Censor is not active in the US during this time of war, as it was in World War II.
Free Speech is fine, and it is a very nice thing to have. So is the Public’s Right To Know. But first you need to be Free in order to enjoy these things. And in a time of war they are almost luxuries.
The enemy is leveraging yourself against yourself. Everything that makes America good and noble is being used by the enemy to protect itself and attack you.
This is madness. It is as though only the US military is at war: all else in the country is “business as usual.”
If a country is going to be at war then it might as well be serious about it. All should suffer and all should contribute, rather than leaving the entire burden to be borne solely on the families and personnel of the military.
In Churchill’s book “Their Finest Hour” he set down the measures he put in place upon becoming Prime Minister in the UK after Chamberlain’s demise. Things like establishing a Home Guard and an Office of the Censor. And a 100% tax on profits for all businesses. Rationing...
...now *that* was a wartime leader who understood his business and took it seriously. Nothing but winning the war mattered: all other considerations were set aside until that job was done. Winning enabled all of the nice things, and losing could not be an option.
Why is the WOT different? Doesn’t America and the rest of the Free World need to with this one?
I don’t understand.
DUH!
It is a great word and so descriptive. I wish I would have come up with it but the credit for it goes to Just A Nobody, a fine lady and great FReeper.
You’re correct and I don’t understand it either.
Too many people have forgotten 9/11 and how people were jumping to their deaths from the Twin Towers to avoid being burned to death.
Too many people don’t realize that radical muslims want to kill as many of us and citizens of other Western countries as they can.
Too many people think they can save the world and everyone in it by talking to these radicals and making them see we should all live together as one and be free to live as we choose. These people can’t be talked to, they want us to live by their rules or not live at all.
These people had better wake up to reality for they will be the first to be murdered by radical extremists should they prevail for these extremists don’t believe in free speech or the right to protest.
I don’t believe many will wake up thus the patriots will have to save them, again.
And a major problem of that mindset was having a f’in chucklehead like George W. Bush standing up in front of America and the world and spewing that ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ horse manure, when even HE ought to understand that while not ALL Muslims are terrorists, on 9/11, EVERY G*D@MNED TERRORIST WAS A MUSLIM!
How hard is that to understand people?
You’re correct...Though I’ve supported President Bush on most things I’m more than disappointed with him calling Islam a religion of peace, it isn’t true now nor has it ever been.
I guess he says it because of our supposed Muslim allies but I see that as a huge mistake.
For President I say.
Free Speech is fine, and it is a very nice thing to have. So is the Public’s Right To Know. But first you need to be Free in order to enjoy these things. And in a time of war they are almost luxuries.
The enemy is leveraging yourself against yourself. Everything that makes America good and noble is being used by the enemy to protect itself and attack you.
I share your contempt for Big Journalism's propaganda. However, it is not necessary to throw out the First Amendment baby with the bath water. What is necessary instead is to understand that journalism is not "the press." Journalism as we know it did not exist in the founding era. What they called "newspapers" back then had no "news" in them which was not in principle available to society generally in each newspaper's locale. Lacking such a source of news, "newspapers were typically weeklies, not dailies - and some had no deadline at all but went to press whenever the printer was good and ready.Furthermore, newspapers were idiosyncratic, opinionated and independent of each other. Printers didn't presume to claim to be objective because they didn't have cover from their competitors required to get away with such a blatant, arrogant fraud.
What changed to make newspapers, then radio news, and now TV journalism "objective?" It was the telegraph and, especially, the Associated Press. The Associated Press aggressively monopolized the transmission of news over the telegraph. It did so by cutting exclusive deals with the telegraph companies, and by undercutting the business model of any newspaper which did not join up with it. Suddenly newspapers which were part of the AP had an endless source of fresh news to which the public at large was not privy. And newspapers were either in the AP or they were not in the news business.
This was too obviously a concentration of propaganda power into a monopoly to escape critical notice - but the AP had rationale for a defense. All the newspapers which were members of the AP had famous reputations for sharp disagreements, and the AP appealed to those reputations and asserted that the AP did not adhere to a single paper's viewpoint; the AP was objective. And that seems to be the origin of that canard. Ironically, of course, the AP homogenized the news coverage of the newspapers nationwide - thus mooting its own argument. Continued contrasting opinions on the editorial pages notwithstanding, the AP transmitted one overarching message to the nation through its member news outlets - the idea of the significance of the superficial information stream known as "the news." All protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, that is a novel, idiosyncratic and self-serving perspective.
The effect of the AP with its presumption of its own objectivity is that all its members are necessarily also "objective" according to that logic. So although we have a multiplicity of journalism outlets in America, as members of the Associated Press they are all fundamentally alike. And they project the idea of their own importance, although they neither sew nor spin, but only criticize those who do. Consequently they are cynical and anticonservative, and in a de facto alliance with every other complaining profession such as union organizer, plaintiff lawyer, or "liberal" politician.
> I share your contempt for Big Journalism’s propaganda. However, it is not necessary to throw out the First Amendment baby with the bath water.
Censorship does nothing to the First Amendment. No harm at all. It merely ensures that people exercising their First Amendment rights do not aid and abet the enemy by doing so.
You can still print what you like, but the censor is going to edit it out before it gets published.
You can still broadcast what you like, but the censor is going to bleep it out so the enemy cannot hear it.
You can still take what photographs and video you like, but the censor is going to black them out so that the enemy cannot see it.
And your patriotic friends and you will be reminded by the government that “Loose Lips Sink Ships”, and the patriots amongst you will ensure that peer pressure keeps the rest in line, and the national interest is upheld.
So you can still say whatever you like, in the coffee shop or at the bar, or on the street corner on a soapp-box. Your patriotic friends will self-censor you, by force if necessary.
Western society has come to expect that everything that can be said should be said, loudly and everywhere and always. Howard Stern is a classic example. In a time of war, some restraint is not only beneficial but necessary.
If Churchill were your president, on 9/12 I would have nationalized all major media outlets without compensation, and replaced their boards with members of the War Department, for the duration of the war. The Office of the Censor would be placed over all communications — including the Internet, telecommunications and the Post. Rationing would go in place, as would a 100% tax on business profit. And all armed citizens would be indentured into a Home Guard. It would happen just like that.
America at war — when the Nation of America is at war — is a terrible thing indeed to behold. The problem is, only the American Military is at war: the rest of America appears to be at the mall or asleep, and some of them even appear to be undermining the system and helping the enemy.
I still don’t understand it!
Warner did it all with his getting Cold Coleman to run and split the vote. Along with all of Warner's defense contractor friends and country-club RHINOs, he put us in a downward spiral finished off with Allen's diarria of the mouth. No one took Nancy seriously, she was only acting on her horoscope. Semper Fi
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