How Basra Slipped Out of Control: by Gareth Porter by Howard

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

How Basra Slipped Out of Control: by Gareth Porter

POSTED BY: HOWARD
UPDATED: Thursday, October 27, 2005 05:21
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Thursday, October 27, 2005 2:06 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Tweek128:
Regarding Foxnews, if you look at their actual news reporting--not their opinion or "analysis" pieces--they stand up to cnn or msnbc. Have you actually read Foxnews' work, or do you simply accept what their competitors and detractors say regarding them and find no evidence to the contrary? Now this may seem like a foolish question, but the core of it is, do you know they are "tabloid" news because you know firsthand, or because that's the conventional wisdom of what you've read?

Yes, I have, and I stand by my criticism of American mainstream media. There’s a big difference between saying "The police believe X" and Noddy nobody the Anchor Man saying "Well it's defiantly Y!".
The first is reporting the facts of the incident, the second, as I said, is sensationalist, rating grabbing and has no place in real news reporting.
To put it simply I don’t give a flying

what Noddy nobody the Anchor Man thinks. Let me make up my own mind.
I guess it's another agree to disagree moment.

Quote:
The difference is that we have not had situations in other cities as you had in Basra, with the detention of British servicemen.

I alluded to it in an earlier post. The British are performing undercover operations that has twice brought them into conflict with the police. The police the first time round released them to the British forces. This time around they ignored the order from the Iraqi administration to release them and apparently handed them over to 'insurgents'.
You're trying to compartmentalise Iraq into 'British' and 'American' areas. You simply can't do that, because what happens in American areas affects what happens in British and vice versa.
The fact is American personnel are operating as armed military groups, and if any police element wanted to arrest them, they couldn't.
Can you imagine the scene? A couple of Iraqi police walking up to a group of Americans, backed by tanks and Humvees, with an open line to air support, dropping their hands on shoulders and saying “Your nicked me old china!”.
Two guys in a car, even if they are Special Forces, are a much 'softer' target.
Far from not acknowledging it I am, but it's due to the different operations of the American's, rather than different problems.

Quote:
Further, open warfare is different from terrorism. While open warfare may be unleashed upon buses, police stations, schools, and children, that does not change the fact that they are not conducting open warfare. They are conducting terrorist operations. Suicide bombers in cars, roadside ieds, and random attacks on soft targets is not open warfare.
If insurgents conduct themselves as terrorists, they are terrorists. How can you say otherwise? Would you disagree with my definition in the earlier post regarding targetting innocent civilians?

Be careful. Your point requires a rather blinkered view of warfare.
Who were the targets for the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
Civilians.
So was the American military at the time a military or a Terrorist organisation?
Is the American Military Terrorists when they put a missile through a medicine factory, or a hospital or any other number of countless civilian targets?
Were the North Vietnamese Terrorists or an Army during the Vietnam war?
Targeting civilians is something that happens in modern warfare.
No offence is meant but your assertion regarding Terrorists/Insurgents shows a lack of knowledge of military tactics and how these things work. The insurgents in Iraq are low-tech. They have cars, trucks, bombs and cheap low-tech assault rifles (AK-47/74 etc). Their foe (largely the American military) is high tech, they have tanks, planes, missiles and all manor of high-tech gear.
The Insurgents are thus doing exactly what the Vietnamese did in the 60's/70's, by turning their foes strengths against them. It's called guerrilla warfare.
The Insurgents can't perform a precision aerial strike on an entrenched American position, but they can drive a car packed out with explosives at it.
Suicide bombings etc may be a terrorist’s weapon but it is not a tactic limited to terrorism.
Neither is targeting civilian populations.
All Terrorists use terror tactics, but not all those who use terror tactics are, in fact, terrorists.

Quote:
Regarding the articles on the Iraqi police, I find it interesing that the dateline is from, strangely enough, Basra. From the WaPo article:

The text you quoted doesn't appear in my sources, does it?
I don't think it supports your points at all. You essentially said that there is infiltration of police in British controlled areas, but not in American, that is simply not the case.

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But the bottom line is, you trust them more than I do, so would you agree it's pointless to discuss them much further?

Yes.

EDIT:

Quote:
As for David Kelly, he was an example where what he said was taken out of context and against the meaning of how he had intended it. The reporter shaped what he heard to suit the story he wanted to write, and to me that is a black mark on their credibility.

Now your stating accusations as fact. That is not held up. Hey to use your own argument, the assertions of the story written by Andrew Gilligan turned out to be true. Iraq couldn't launch WMD within 45 minutes, they didn't even have any.
But as my absolute last word on the subject (scouts honor m'lord) why I think the BBC is right up there, here's an article (about the Hutton report) that reports Hutton's accusations against the BBC.
I've yet to see anything of that nature from mainstream American Media.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3437471.stm

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
Even though I might, even though I try,
I can't

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Thursday, October 27, 2005 5:21 AM

TWEEK128

Then the BBC knows how to respond better once the facts are out. The press here's too arrogant to believe that they have to yield to contrary facts so long as they believe they're right. (This may seem to feed into your comments regarding the American media, but I'll address why that's not the case below.) A good case in point is the false Texas Air National Guard "documents" on Bush that Rather was pimping. Don't know if you know the story behind it, but bloggers that were able to find copies of the documents online compared the font of the docs to what was possible at the time. Further, typewriter experts were contacted and all the ones contacted were almost positive that they were forgeries. More basic comparisons showed that the docs looked like they were typed on MS Word, and a recent version at that.

Gotta go. More later.

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