by Yerusalyim 117 Replies latest social current
I'll prefer to get my information from a mix of sources and stick to reporters who send back footage for now.
And that in itself seems to be a problem. Apparently what is being reported from the field is sometimes getting changed when it gets back to the BBC. The powers to be at the BBC seem to want to put their own spin on it to the disappointed of the field reporters. Several reporters came home complaining of facts being distorted or misinformed.
simon-
i think you know what i meant, but ill elaborate anyhow......first off, let me preface this by saying that i highly doubt 90% of all the damage in iraq was done by iraqis......and i also doubt that the author of the letter meant it as a literal number........but i do fully understand the point he was making, which was: there was very minimal damage done outside of specific targets. thats what precision means....it means that our current capabilities are more error proof than any in the history of the world, and that buildings that werent targeted were very rarely damaged. i have no doubt (and anyone with a brain shouldnt) that the iraqis intentionally killed their own civilians in an attempt to win the media war. hell, they even stole thousands of u.s. and u.k. uniforms for that very reason. is it out of the question that they intentionally destroyed parts of their own infrastructure? anyone who knows a lick about the regimes history would have to answer no. and what about accidental fire? whose mistakes are likely to be larger....those of the coalition armies, or those of the iraqi army?
aa
That's why it's important to have a mix of reports from different sources and not rely on a single source for anything.
Imagine if we only listened to the government or military? We might end up believing anything! (WMD ... Jessica Lynch ... etc ...)
dubla. These exact same claims have been made about many other wars and conflicts and AFAIK have always turned out to be bogus propaganda.
The image being painted is of a non-working country that was bombed to oblivion (what was it? ... "Back to the stone age"?) and yet somehow, hardly anything important was damaged and after it, more is working than before!?!
c'mon ... I don't buy that. You can if you want but I don't think it's at all credible or realistic.
Yeru,
Your major friend shoud subscribe to Time magazine...
Grounding Planes the Wrong Way Coalition troops looted and vandalized the Iraqi airport that now must be rebuilt
By SIMON ROBINSON/BAGHDAD
Much has been written about how Iraqis complicated the task of rebuilding their country by looting it after Saddam Hussein's regime fell. In the case of the international airport outside Baghdad, however, the theft and vandalism were conducted largely by victorious American troops, according to U.S. officials, Iraqi Airways staff members and other airport workers. The troops, they say, stole duty-free items, needlessly shot up the airport and trashed five serviceable Boeing airplanes. "I don't want to detract from all the great work that's going into getting the airport running again," says Lieut. John Welsh, the Army civil-affairs officer charged with bringing the airport back into operation. "But you've got to ask, If this could have been avoided, did we shoot ourselves in the foot here?"
What was then called Saddam International Airport fell to soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division on April 3. For the next two weeks, airport workers say, soldiers sleeping in the airport's main terminal helped themselves to items in the duty-free shop, including alcohol, cassettes, perfume, cigarettes and expensive watches. Welsh, who arrived in Iraq in late April, was so alarmed by the thievery that he rounded up a group of Iraqi airport employees to help him clean out the shop and its storage area. He locked everything in two containers and turned them over to the shop's owner.
"The man had tears in his eyes when I showed him what we had saved," says Welsh. "He thought he'd lost everything."
Coalition soldiers also vandalized the airport, American sources say. A boardroom table that Welsh and Iraqi civil-aviation authority officials sat around in early May was, a week later, a pile of glass and splintered wood. Terminal windows were smashed, and almost every door in the building was broken, says Welsh. A TIME photographer who flew out of the airport on April 12 saw wrecked furniture and English-language graffiti throughout the airport office building as well as a sign warning that soldiers caught vandalizing or looting would be court-martialed. "There was no chance this was done by Iraqis" before the airport fell, says a senior Pentagon official. "The airport was secure when this was done." Iraqi airport staff concede that some of the damage was inflicted by Iraqi exiles attached to the Army, but these Iraqis too were under American control.
The airplanes suffered the greatest damage. Of the 10 Iraqi Airways jets on the tarmac when the airport fell, a U.S. inspection in early May found that five were serviceable: three 727s, a 747 and a 737. Over the next few weeks, U.S. soldiers looking for comfortable seats and souvenirs ripped out many of the planes' fittings, slashed seats, damaged cockpit equipment and popped out every windshield. "It's unlikely any of the planes will fly again," says Welsh, a reservist who works for the aviation firm Pratt & Whitney as a quality-control liaison officer to Boeing.
U.S. estimates of the cost of the damage and theft begin at a few million dollars and go as high as $100 million. Airport workers say even now air conditioners and other equipment are regularly stolen. "Soldiers do this stuff all the time, everywhere. It's warfare," says a U.S. military official. "But the conflict was over when this was done. These are just bored soldiers." Says Welsh: "If we're here to rebuild the country, then anything we break we have to fix. We need to train these guys to go from shoot-it-up to securing infrastructure. Otherwise we're just making more work for ourselves. And we have to pay for it."
From the Jul. 14, 2003 issue of TIME magazine
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tj~ who's glad he finally found a thread that "meant something"
Simon,
You said,
I'll prefer to get my information from a mix of sources and stick to reporters who send back footage for now. Letters from friends in the military are "nice" I'm sure but hardly objective, independant, unbiased or even extensive.Reporters often have agendas and show you what they WANT you to see. What the major has in his favor is this is countering what we see in the media. He sees what's on CNN and the like and is saying, "Hey, it ain't as bleak as they make it out to be...I'm on the ground here seeing it for myself."
One last point Simon, remember, the Major isn't a reporter, he's writing about what he sees in generic terms, 90% read as A LOT, 0 read as NOT MUCH, etc. The points he raises are valid.
Excellent post.
God bless America. I am so pleased Tony Blair decided to stand firm and side by side with George Bush on this issue. As much as the two have their critics, I am sure history will, as Tony Blair said, 'forgive' the war on Iraq.
America is such a kind, loving nation. The Coalition really didn't need to rid the world of an evil dictator ; but they did so out the goodness of their hearts. The American people are good people who base their lives upon Jesus Christ ; and so do their government. The people are fed lies by non believers that the Coalition are simply after the oil of Iraq, but that simply isn't true. Thank God for America, it has helped the world so much and as much bad press as they get, the American leaders can surely do no wrong.
Tony Blair is a true leader. He speaks and represents the United Kingdom with courage and honesty. He has the guts to stand up to these opposers to freedom ! The terrorists shall not win with these wonderful people in power.
I am pleased that so many patriotic people are just like me ; blind.
I'm not a believer and I don't think this war was just to gain control of oil. Some people's agendas are pitifully transparent.
rem
