sheldon101

Stupid, Ignorant bin Laden Doesn't Know He's Helping Bush

2004-10-30T22:56:00.000-07:00

There are only three possible reasons that Osama bin Laden had for releasing a video tape, directed to the American public, so close to election day.

They are:

1. bin Laden thinks that releasing the video will turn American voters away from Bush and thereby help Kerry win. So Kerry is Osama's candidate.

2. bin Laden thinks that releasing the video will result in a backlash that will help Bush. As well, the more Americans think about terrorism, the more likely they are to vote for Bush. So Bush is Osama's candidate.

3. bin Laden doesn't really care who wins the American election. He released the tape when he did to get maximum publicity and to get his message out to the American public. So both Bush and Kerry are Osama's candidates.

These are the only 3 possible ways bin Laden could intend to effect the American election. And it doesn't matter what bin Laden said. There would still be only 3 possibilities if the video showed bin Laden repeating the Pledge of Allegiance over and over again.

Here's where it gets interesting. Almost everyone says that (1) bin Laden intends the first possibility, helping Kerry and (2) the video will end up helping Bush.

In this view, bin Laden thinks Americans will react as Spaniard's are supposed to have reacted to the Madrid train bombings; they will vote for a government softer on terror. Except, almost everyone believes that Americans would react differently. Americans certainly reacted differently after 9/11. If al Qaeda attacks the United States or bin Laden releases a tape just before the election, then Americans are expected to rally round the flag and their president and vote for Bush.

The implicit assumption is that bin Laden is stupid and ignorant. He isn't. Read the 1998 interviews at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html.
Moreover, with satellite TV and the internet, it would be impossible for bin Laden not to know that releasing a tape so close to election day is expected to help Bush win.

If bin Laden wanted to get the benefits of having his message get out and at the same time minimize the damage to Kerry, he could have put this tape out 6 months ago. It would have gotten a lot of publicity would have hurt Kerry. But by election day, it would have lost it's impact.

Or he could have waited until after the election. His video would have still gotten a lot of play, but it wouldn't have hurt Kerry's chance of winning.

So why did Bin Laden release this tape so close to election day? The logical conclusion is that either bin Laden doesn't care who wins or he's doing his very best, short of attacking the United States, to help George W. Bush win. Take your pick.

But there's no logical reason for bin Laden to have released this video when he did, if he wanted Kerry to win.

President Cheney?

2004-10-17T23:08:00.000-07:00

Does a Bush win, also elect President Richard Cheney? Pictures of the box under the back of Bush's suit jacket in all 3 debates closely match diagrams of wearable cardiac defibrillators. Bush, himself, must answer whether the box is part of a cardiac defibrillator or other medical device.

If it is, voters must know as soon as possible. Many people trust Bush and his faith in god. A lot less trust Cheney. This isn't 1944. It is a fraud on voters to have them vote for Bush, if they don't know that he is unlikely to finish his second term.

To date, the White House has not responded to questions. And the media have either laughed at or ignored this story. It is time for the independent 527 committees to run a TV commercial raising this issue. This story has more validity than the issues raised by O'Neill's group. See bottom of:
http://www.bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3759

Writing An Apology without Checking All The Facts

2004-10-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

Tim Chavez of The Tennessean writes a story correcting an error in an earlier story. Neither he nor The Tennessean bothered to spend the few minutes needed to check the accuracy of the rest of the story. As a result, Chavez needs a write a second correction. And since this error is much more serious, he needs to write an apology to everyone the earlier, uncorrected error, falsely insulted. The Tennessean needs to explain how and why this happened.

And maybe CBS should be cut some slack for their failing to properly verify the Bush Texas Air National Guard memos. CBS tried to do the right thing. Based on the evidence here, neither Chavez or The Tennessean even bothered to do the right thing.

On September 29, 2004, Tim Chavez wrote a local editorial in The Tennessean titled, "Iraq missions that work out are missing from mainstream media."

The story had many problems. Chavez acknowledges one problem in Mea culpa: I was wrong when I wrote of Samarra success.

Believe it or not, neither Chavez or the Tennessean spent the few minutes needed to check for additional errors in the earlier story.

That's why they missed the worst error in the earlier story. It was a total falsehood to claim there was a massacre of women and children in Najaf by Sadr's forces, in the Shrine of Ali , with the intention of blaming the Americans for their deaths AND this story was not reported by the mainstream press.

Read the last paragraph over a couple of times. Does this story make sense? Yes, it might be true, but doesn't it sound far fetched. Doesn't this claim smell bad?

This claim is totally false. See False Claim of Media Bias in Iraq - Massacre Example Repeated by WSJ Best of the Web in this blog.

Alex Berenson of the New York Times knows the massacre claim is false. He was there. See False Claims for link. Chavez and the Tennessean owe Berenson and all the journalists who risked their lives to be in Najaf that day an apology.

How long will it take?

False Claim of Media Bias in Iraq - Massacre Example Repeated by WSJ Best of the Web

2004-10-03T01:04:00.000-07:00

[Revised Sunday October 3, 2004]

The Tennessean of September 29th, 2004, in a local editorial written by Tim Chavez, sets out to prove, with general claims and two specific examples, that media reporting on Iraq has been one-sided and politically motivated to benefit Senator Kerry.

The most important specific claim is of an unreported massacre in Najaf. This claim and the claim of media bias was repeated by James Taranto in the Best of the Web Today in The Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal. This claim is completely false. It is a blockbuster and comes close to being a blood libel.

The other specific example is a claim against NBC. Chavez supplies insufficient details of the claim and did not report any attempt to get comments on the claim from NBC.

Both The Tennessean and the WSJ Best of the Web exhibit journalistic standards that fell well below those used by CBS in deciding to use the apparently forged Bush Texas Air National Guard memos. And do so while complaining of media bias. CBS made some attempt to verify the accuracy of its story. Quite obviously, neither the WSJ Opinion Journal nor The Tennessean made any attempt to verify the accuracy of the specific claims in Chavez's article.

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On September 29, 2004, Tim Chavez wrote a local editorial in The Tennessean titled, "Iraq missions that work out are missing from mainstream media."

Chavez writes: "The moral of this column is not about one side prevailing in news coverage on the war on terror. It's simply about fairness — about Americans getting both sides with the same prominence. They're not. And media emphasis on Iraq being in chaos has coincided with John Kerry making the same pitch to voters. It makes you wonder, just as we did on the authenticity of Dan Rather's reporting. And now America knows about Rather's ruse."

Chavez makes a number of general claims that things are much better in Iraq than the mainstream media are reporting. This article does not deal with these general claims, except to note that Chavez has retracted some of these claims in a later article.

There are two specific claims in Chavez's article. Both are presented as direct quotations from Lt. Col Jim Rose, a Tennessee Marine in Iraq.

In one claim, NBC's Today showed damage from American bombing and then footage of children being carried into a hospital. Rose says there were no children hurt in the American bombing or "If there were kids in there, they were toting weapons or the terrorists used them as human shields" …" His intelligence guys, [t]hey said the whole thing was staged and probably old footage."

Is Rose correct? There's no date or location of the bombing, the hospital or when the footage was shown on NBC. Chavez doesn't even have a "no comments" from NBC. Presumably, Chavez believes Rose's word alone is sufficient confirmation of a claim of media error and bias; no fact checking is necessary.

The other specific claim in the article is much, much worse. It is a blockbuster of a claim. Rose claims that in late August, 2004, Sadr's army executed hundreds of woman and children in the Ali Shrine. And they were murdered to use as anti-American propaganda by blaming the Americans for the crime. And, since the Americans didn't enter the Shrine, the propaganda ploy failed. And the media haven't covered this story.

There isn't a word of truth in this claim.

This blockbuster claim is contained in the next short paragraph from Chavez's article, quoted in full by James Taranto in Best of the Web Today in The Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal under the headline Muqtada's Massacre .

"Rose writes: "The Najaf shrine — HUNDREDS of dead women and children were brought out after Sadr left. They (Sadr's supporters) rounded them up during the battle and brought them in to be executed. Why? Because they anticipated the Americans would eventually enter the shrine and walk into a media ambush. We never went in. The people of Najaf love us right now because of that. They hate Sadr and want him dead."

Rose continues, ''Have you heard that one yet (in the media)?''"

WSJ is on the hook for the media bias claim as well as the massacre claim. They quote the massacre paragraph and then quote the next line, ''Have you heard that one yet (in the media)?''

Chavez ends his article with "No we haven't. We just get one side. That's bad journalism — by a news media acting in concert with Kerry."

CBS was fooled by the Bush memos because they fit exactly or slightly stretched what was known from other sources. It was reasonable to believe that they were true.

The massacre story doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that hundreds of women and children would be executed in the Shrine of Ali, the holiest shrine of Shia Islam AND that the story would not be widely carried in the news media. And anyway, why would Sadr's army think the Americans would enter the Shrine? The Americans had been saying over and over and over again, they weren't going to enter the shrine.

When I read this claim, I immediately knew it almost certainly was wrong. The claim defied common sense. It had the feel of a rumor, of an urban legend. Why didn't Chavez or Taranto or any of their editors realize this? They're journalists, seeking the truth, right?

In only two tries and a minute of time, a Google search on "najaf shrine dead executed" found 6,260 web pages and what really happened in Najaf.

At the end of this posting, you'll find excerpts of three reports of the claim of executed bodies found. A final excerpt from another report puts the issue of executions in Najaf in context.

In all three reports, the bodies were found in the basement of a building in Najaf, outside the Shrine, used as a religious court set up by Sadr. The issue raised in all reports was the treatment of the people of Najaf by Sadr's religious courts during the time Sadr's Army occupied the city, not the execution of women and children for propaganda purposes.

No report says the bodies were found in the Shrine of Ali. None report anyone brought to the Shrine alive and then executed, let alone executed to put blame on the Americans. None mention children. The number of bodies found range from 10 to more than 25 and not hundreds.

There are two explanations for the bodies. Policemen say they were executed on the order of Sadr's religious courts. Sadr's people say they were killed in the fighting and their bodies brought to the courthouse. In one report, Agence France Press photographers "saw militiamen carry blanket-clad bodies from Tussi and Sadek streets - where the frontline had been just a day earlier - to the courthouse in the Old City. But a few hours later, police told journalists the bodies had been discovered in the basement of Sadr's religious court in the Old City before being brought up to the courtyard by police and national guardsmen."

After I wrote the first version of this article to my blog, I came across the criticisms of Chavez's article in emails to the journalist's web site, www.poynter.org. The most poignant and angry email came from a reporter who was in Najaf at the time, Alex Berenson of the New York Times. He's furious with Chavez.

Bereneson writes: I covered the battle of Najaf for the New York Times. I was embedded at a Marine base in Najaf and saw the battle from its third day to its finish. I was at the shrine the day the battle ended and a ceasefire was declared. I can tell you firsthand that the report Tim Chavez supposedly received from a Marine lieutenant colonel claiming that "HUNDREDS of dead women and children were brought out after Sadr left" the shrine of Imam Ali is entirely false. Does he really think that the correspondents on the scene would have covered that up, or that the Iraqi government and the American military would not have broadcast that fact around the world?"

Find the rest of Berenson's email at http://poynter.org, a journalist's web site. Select forums and scroll down. If that doesn't work, try this search . Berenson's email is well worth reading.

CBS screwed up when they used the Bush memos. They got greedy and sloppy. Whatever CBS's sins, their error was a reasonable one to make. Bush ducked a required physical. It wasn't much of a stretch for CBS to believe that the memos were most likely true. CBS's error was rushing a story to error without enough fact checking.

Rose is wrong about the executions. But he's in Iraq, in the thick of the fighting and dying. There are rumors everywhere. He's trained to fight, not to carefully examine the truth of every story he hears. It's very easy for soldiers to believe stories and rumors that demonize the enemy and show how badly the enemy treats civilians, especially women and children.

So Rose is wrong, but he isn't to blame for this terrible reporting. Chavez and Taranto don't have Rose's excuses. They didn't realize the claim, on the face of it, didn't make much sense. And in any case, they failed to make the slightest effort to verify the massacre claim. And The Tennessean and WSJ Opinion Journal accepted and published this ridiculous claim with spending the minute or two needed to disprove this prepostorous claim.

The massacre claim comes close to being a blood libel against Sadr's own people. Over the centuries many Jews were murdered, attacked and ostracized because they were falsely accused of The Blood Libel, of killing non-Jewish children to use their blood in the Jewish Passover.

In the Najaf massacre story, political/religious leaders of Shia Islam deliberately murder hundreds of their own women and children, in their holiest shrine, to falsely blame their deaths on the United States. How much further is it possible to demonize the enemy?

Thanks to the WSJ Best of the Web quoting Chavez's article, a Google search on "chavez rose executed hundreds shrine" on October 2, 2004, found 1040 web pages, most of them accepting the massacre story in full.

Should we now start a Chavez watch, a WSJ Best of the Web watch to see how long it takes for them to apologize?

When will Chavez resign? When will James Taranto resign? Should there be a congressional investigation of Chavez and his bias? Should their be a congressional investigation of the Wall Street Journal?

CBS screwed up. But even in screwing up, its standards are much better than those of the Tennessean and the Opinion Journal of the Wall Street Journal .

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Excerpts from three reports of what really happened in Najaf
From the Daily Times of Pakistan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_28-8-2004_pg1_4
"The discovery of at least 25 charred and bloated bodies in the basement of Sadr’s religious court later Friday cast a pall over the tentative peace deal. Police commanders charged that the dead had been executed by Sadr’s men but aides of the cleric said they were casualties of the ferocious fighting of recent days. The Health Ministry said 110 people were killed and 501 wounded in mortar and shooting attacks in Najaf and nearby Kufa on Thursday."

The Associated Press of August 27, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1292191,00.html
After the withdrawal of the militia, Iraqi police discovered at least 10 bodies in a building housing a religious court run by Mr Sadr's followers. Police sources said the dead - including an elderly woman - were summarily executed as a result of rulings by the court, which ordered arrests and meted out punishments outside of the mainstream religious and legal authorities. But a court official, who identified himself only as Hashim, told the Associated Press the corpses belonged to militants killed in the recent fighting in the city."

The Sun-Herald of Australia of August 29,
2004
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/28/1093518166949.html?from=moreStories&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;oneclick=true
At least 25 charred and bloated bodies were discovered on Friday in the basement of a religious court set up by rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf, but confusion reigns over how they died and why. Police said they were executed by militiamen, but Sadr officials said they were Mehdi Army "martyrs" killed during the past three weeks of combat and taken to the court for safekeeping before burial. In the morning, two AFP photographers saw militiamen carry blanket-clad bodies from Tussi and Sadek streets - where the frontline had been just a day earlier - to the courthouse in the Old City.

But a few hours later, police told journalists the bodies had been discovered in the basement of Sadr's religious court in the Old City before being brought up to the courtyard by police and national guardsmen. A horrific odour of death hung over the remains.

---- end of three versions------

The last article took a little longer to find. This article is dated August 21, 2004, before the supporters of the rebel Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr left the shrine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1287763,00.html
The Guardian
'Death after death, blood after blood'
Killing goes on despite claims that siege is over
Luke Harding inside the Imam Ali shrine, Najaf
Saturday August 21, 2004

...
"Where the Mahdi army has been newly turfed out, there is little sympathy for Mr Sadr, or for his militia, many of whose corpses lie unburied to the north of the shrine, in Najaf's vast cemetery.

"They are looters, murderers and Ba'athists," a shopkeeper, Abdul Amir, said. His troubles started six months ago, he said, when an American soldier bought one of his fridges.

"A month later the Mahdi army took me to the cemetery, accused me of being an American agent, and beat me up. After that I had to appear before Moqtada'sSharia court. Dozens of people have been tortured or disappeared. Moqtada has a secret underground jail. His followers have executed at least 300 people," he claimed.

It is not a claim that can be easily verified. But what is clear is that in the battle for Najaf, civilians are dying.

Forty six people were injured and 11 killed in the past two days of fighting, the director of Najaf's hospital, Falah Almahana, said yesterday.

A short stroll from his office was the evidence. The newly dead were stored in a makeshift truck, next to a German refrigerating unit that did not work. In it, the bodies were too numerous to count."....

Mending broken bodies, repairing shattered lives

2004-09-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

Toronto Star September 26
Sandro Contenta, European Bureau

LANDSTUHL, Germany—At the U.S. military hospital on a wooded hilltop here, the cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs, shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives.

They're the seriously wounded U.S. soldiers who arrive daily at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a growing human toll that belies American election talk of improving times in Iraq.

They're the maimed and the scarred that hospital staff believe are largely invisible to an American public ignorant of their suffering.

"They have no idea what's going on here, none whatsoever," says Col. Earl Hecker, a critical care doctor who trained at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital.

The broken bodies move some of the hospital's military staff to question a war producing the most American casualties since Vietnam.

And they reduce the chief surgeon to tears."It breaks your heart," says Lt.-Col. Ronald Place.

"There's nothing more rewarding than to take care of these guys. Not money, not anything," he adds, crying.

From their hospital beds, solidarity with the men and women in the platoons they've left behind has wounded soldiers expressing an amazing desire to return to Iraq.

But few feel they need to hurry. They're convinced U.S. soldiers will be fighting, dying and getting maimed in Iraq for many years to come.

Says Col. Rhonda Cornum, the hospital's commander: "Peace doesn't seem to be breaking out any time soon." The 50-year-old medical centre is where the U.S. military's sick and seriously wounded from Iraq are treated after being patched up on the battlefield.

Prior to the Iraq war, the hospital received no more than 10 injured U.S. soldiers a year from conflicts. Now, it usually handles between 30 and 55 a day from Iraq and Afghanistan alone.

Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began in March, 2003, almost 16,000 wounded, injured or sick soldiers from the conflict have been evacuated to Landstuhl. As of Friday, 1,042 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq — more than 900 of them since May 1, 2003, when U.S. President George W. Bush declared major combat over — and 7,400 were wounded in combat, according to the Pentagon. About 3,400 of the wounded returned to duty after 72 hours. Almost all the rest came to Landstuhl, in southwestern Germany, for treatment.

On Thursday, a medical flight from Iraq brought 27 injured soldiers, two of them fighting for their lives.

"He might not make it," says a member of the medical team as a 27-year-old soldier is lowered from an ambulance and rushed to the intensive care unit.

Plugged to a respirator, the soldier lies naked on a bed, his pelvic area covered by a towel. A roadside bomb 12 hours earlier left deep burns on 20 per cent of his body, a punctured lung and a broken leg. His chances of survival, a doctor says, are roughly 50-50.

His seared hands are sliced opened to prevent the need for amputation due to swelling. His dead skin is scraped off, a gel is spread thick to prevent infections, and his arms are wrapped in thick, white bandages.

"He's very unstable," says Hecker, 70.Hecker retired from the military years ago but recently left his lucrative private practice in Detroit to save lives at Landstuhl.

"I'm here for him — nobody else," he says, pointing to the soldier. "I didn't come here for my government."He pauses, then blurts out: "Bush is an idiot."

Immediately, he regrets having said that about the U.S. president, and makes clear he's been under enormous stress.

He describes taking a bullet out of the neck of an 18-year-old soldier six days ago, a wound that left the young man a quadriplegic."It's terrible, terrible, terrible," Hecker says. "When we talked to him, he just cried."

"If it was me, I'd tell them to take me off the machine," he says. He then considers his job and adds, "I'll never be the same mentally." What the hospital's chief psychologist calls "compassion fatigue" is a widespread syndrome among the medical staff.

"There's a great deal of hurt going on in the hospital," says Maj. Stephen Franco.

But Maj. Cathy Martin, the nurse in charge of the intensive care unit, prefers to deal with her stress by calling on Americans to consider the plight of the war wounded when making a choice in the Nov. 2 presidential election.

"People need to vote for the right people to be in office and they need to be empowered to influence change," she says.

Most combat wounds treated at the hospital are caused by rocket-propelled grenades or shrapnel from bombs, Place says.

About 160 U.S. soldiers from Iraq have had limbs amputated, and 200 have lost all or part of their sight from bomb blasts. Body armour has saved lives, but Place believes wounds that significantly disfigure are a greater advantage to insurgents than the rising body count.

"From a psychological warfare aspect, to maim many is better than to kill a few," he says.

Wounds that can't be seen are also taking their toll. About 1,400 U.S. soldiers have been treated exclusively for mental health problems caused by the trauma of war.

Hospital officials keep access to the wounded strictly limited. But they allow three soldiers to be interviewed, all in the hospital's orthopaedic wing, where two nurses steady a soldier learning to use a walker and dragging a lifeless right leg.

In one room is Marine Lance Cpl. Corey Dailey from San Diego. Dailey says he enlisted shortly after the war started because, "I'm 18-years-old, I wanted to go and get some."

"Combat is the ultimate adrenalin rush. It's scary as hell but when your adrenalin gets pumping, it's really awesome," he says.

Last Wednesday, a month after he got to Iraq, Dailey was at an observation post in Ramadi, part of the so-called Sunni triangle of insurgency, when a sniper's bullet shattered a bone in his right arm.

Now, Dailey doesn't think much of Iraq."The whole place sucks," he says. "The heat — that sucks, and the streets smell like crap."

Still, he's itching to go back."We can't win this fight without the Iraqis. They need to help us. They need to stand up" to the insurgents, he says.

In another room, 23-year-old Mark Romero from the army's Third Brigade is also nursing a broken arm. A mechanic who served 11 months in Iraq, he snapped a bone trying to stop a 230 kilogram metal door from falling on a fellow soldier.

Lodged in his back is a piece of shrapnel from mortars that rained through the roof of the gym at the U.S. base in Mosul, northern Iraq, while Romero was working out.

He says the question constantly asked by soldiers is: "What are we doing there?"

"Realistically, I think it's going to turn into Korea where we have troops that will always be stationed there," he says of the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

Sitting stiff with pain on his bed is Romero's roommate, Sgt. 1st Class Larry Daniels — "Big Daddy Daniels" to his men in Iraq. His arms are bandaged from just below the shoulders to the tip of his fingers and rods stick out of them like scaffolding. Shrapnel wounds cover the back of his body, from behind his right ear to his ankles.

"They got most of it out," he says about the shrapnel.

Doctors estimate it will take two years for Daniels to recover.

On Sept. 18 at 3:30 p.m., Daniels and his men were protecting Iraqi contractors repairing a chain-link fence on a bridge near the Baghdad airport.

"The traffic was going around us and this guy came out of nowhere," Daniels says, describing a car in the distinctive orange and white colours of local taxis.

"I took a step and I heard a pop, and in my head I thought I stepped on a land mine. At the same time my body went up in the air and I was upside down looking at the cars and the spot where I'd been. And then I hit the ground," he says.

Two of his soldiers in their early 20s lay dead. Daniels, 37, was patched up in a military hospital in Baghdad and arrived at Landstuhl last Monday.

A member of the 1st Cavalry, Bravo 4-5 ADA Company, Daniels traces his family's long military roots to a colonel in the American Civil War.

"I wish I was there instead of here," he says about Iraq.

"That's where I'm suppose to be. That's what I was trained to do. I wasn't trained to get hurt."

Suddenly being away from the 23 men in his platoon, Daniels says, "feels like a part of me is gone." He says the soldiers in his platoon never balked at the daily patrols, often working shifts from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m.

"Every day that we did something, we were one day closer to going home," he says. "The more missions we did, the sooner we got out of there.

"But no one in his platoon thinks U.S. soldiers will be pulling out of Iraq anytime soon."They say our kids might end up here," says Daniels, an Arkansas native.

"It's going to be a long one, because the enemy don't wear a uniform so you can't identify them. If you don't have a specific person to look for, you just have to wait for them to shoot at you."

If Americans understood what was really going on in Iraq, they'd pressure Bush to be clearer about "why we're really fighting," he says."The war on terror wasn't in Iraq till we went there," he says. "We initially went there to topple Saddam (Hussein) and then all these damn terrorists came in.

"As a soldier, he describes himself as "almost a political prisoner" in the sense that he can't express himself on whether he believes U.S. soldiers should stay in Iraq.

But his 33-year-old wife, Cheryl, has no qualms about speaking her mind.

"The army is not going to like what I have to say, but I think we have no business being there," she says about Iraq.

She too comes from a family with a long military tradition and works as a civilian at her husband's military base in Texas. She voted for Bush in 2000, but now says Democratic challenger John Kerry will get her support.

"I will definitely vote for Kerry, not because I prefer Kerry over Bush but because I don't want Bush back in office. I'm hoping that if Kerry takes office, we'll be pulling out" of Iraq, she says.

Cheryl believes Bush misled the country to war, arguing he diverted resources from far greater threats to U.S. interests, including the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Asked why Bush launched the war, she says: "I think he wanted to fill his dad's shoes. I think he felt he had something to prove.

"If the point of the war was to remove Saddam from power, then Bush's father, former president George Bush, should have done so in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which Daniels also fought.

Increasing Cheryl's anger is the fact the army did little to help her contact her wounded husband.She paid for her flight to Germany, and is staying at the Fisher House, a privately funded agency that offers virtually free accommodation in Landstuhl to the families of injured soldiers.
Infuriated by what she sees as a misleading president, an unnecessary war and a heartless military, Cheryl vows to break the Daniels' family tradition of serving their country. Her 12-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter are already talking of enlisting one day, but Cheryl won't hear of it.

"We've paid our dues," she says.

Wrong to Challenge Bush's Flip-Flop Charge

2004-09-25T21:45:00.000-07:00

The media story of the campaign is how almost every talking head on TV adopts the idea that Kerry is a terrible flip-flopper on everything, especially Iraq.

Just on Friday September 24th , I saw every talking head on PBS,CNBC and CNN assume that Kerry has been all over the map on Iraq. Every one.

If you haven't done so, read the SF Chronicle article of September 22nd which begins
Flip-flopping charge unsupported by facts

And check out The DailyHowler where he shows how the media can't or won't report a simple story on what Kerry actually said.

Bozell & Co. have a right-wing media "watchdog" site that looks out for liberal bias, the Media Research Center. They're upset about CBS suggesting that the flip-flop story might not be exactly as Bush proclaims it. There's no discussion of the accuracy of the stories. Rather, they seem to be upset about the existence of the stories.

Here's what he wrote

" Reacting to poll numbers which show more Americans think John Kerry than George W. Bush says what people want to hear and that many more see Bush over Kerry as decisive, CBS set out to prove that Bush is really just as much of a flip-flopper."

And even more evil by CBS:
[Web Update: Forgot about this when writing up this CyberAlert article: This wasn't the first time the CBS Evening News tried to undermine the Bush campaign's effort to paint Kerry as a flip-flopper on Iraq....

Shame, shame on CBS. I think I'll tell Bozell about the SF Chronicle story.

Bozell and Kincaid criticize media coverage as being too liberal. Except for the CBS debacle, I've rarely seen criticism that the news reports are inaccurate.

Media Matters and the Daily Howler don't spend a lot of time on the issue of bias. Instead, they spend their time pointing out factual inaccuracies.

Ok to Slack off on National Guard Duty?

2004-09-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Salon has a posting on September 11, 2004.

U.S. servicemen react to Bush Guard memos
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Elliott Minor

In it some National Guard membes make light of skipping NG duty for several months at a time. That may have been true for them. However...

If you're a pilot, then you have to fly the plane frequently. If you don't, your piloting skills go stale and you're not going to be an effective pilot.

Even a private pilot has to fly regularly. For example, my brother has a private pilots license. He rents a plane by the hour which is very common. I always flys out of the same airport. He has to fly once a month or he has to be checked out (in the air) with an instructor before they'll let him fly solo.

Of course, the Texas Air National Guard knew how important frequent flying was. And that's why they would or at least should treat vey seriously any absences by a pilot.

If you're a truck driver or a clerk or even in the infantry in the National Guard, missing a few months probably isn't a big deal. If you're a pilot, then missing a few weeks is a big deal.

Spinsanity and Kerry and Dangerous Duty and PBR

2004-09-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

So Kerry did volunteer for quite dangerous or very dangerous or dangerous duty.

Thanks to Steve Gilliard for giving my posting a home. On Steve's blog, the posting is here. I liked his blog so much, I've started my own.

Steve Gilliard chose the url, the headline and the first paragraph. I wrote the open letter.

Thursday, September 09, 2004
Spinnines pt 2

Our friends at Spinsanity got this wrong and won't admit it. Here is a long open letter explaining what they got wrong and how they got it wrong.

---- start of open letter -----

Expected Headline of New Spinsanity Posting
"Kerry knowingly volunteering for dangerous duty in Vietnam is NO myth"

Expected First two paragraphs of New Spinsanity Posting
"In February, 1968, Kerry knowingly volunteered for quite dangerous duty in Vietnam. Kerry requested Naval duty in Vietnam. His first preference, which he received was as officer on a Swift boat. At the time, Swift boat service was relatively safe. However, his second preference, as patrol officer in a PBR (Patrol Boat River) squadron was quite dangerous."

Spinsanity was not aware of Kerry's volunteering for PBR duty at the time for our August 5th post "Kerry's service record distorted" or our August 24th post "The myth of Kerry knowingly volunteering for dangerous duty lives on." The significance of Kerry's request for PBR duty has been missed by the media and most of Kerry's supporters. Spinsanity learned of this request for PBR duty in an August 29th email from a reader. While Kerry supporters distorted the dangers of Swift boat duty when Kerry volunteered, Kerry indeed volunteered for quite dangerous duty in Vietnam."
---------------

I wrote the August 29th email to Spinsanity. This headline and these first two paragraphs are roughly what I expected to see in a new article at pinsanity.org as a result of my email AND their agreement that PBR duty was quite dangerous when Kerry volunteered. They failed to do so. My email made two points. One, Spinsanity's posts while correct in their conclusion that Kerry's supporter exaggerated the dangers of Swift boat service in February, 1968, did not fairly describe the dangers of that service. Here's the account of a veteran of Swift boat service at that time describes the dangers. Spinsanity made no changes to its posts based on this evidence.

The second point was that Kerry's volunteering for PBR duty, changed the headline of Spinsanity's August 24th article from "The myth of Kerry knowingly volunteering for dangerous duty lives on" to "Kerry knowingly volunteering for dangerous duty is NO myth."

Rather than change the headline and write a new post, Spinsanity, on August 31st, made a minor addition at the end of their posts of August 8th and August 25th where very few readers would ever see it. They added:

"Update 8/31 8:49 AM EST: An alert reader points out that Kerry's second choice when volunteering for swift boat duty was for PBR (Patrol Boat River) duty, which was quite dangerous (124K PDF)."

This addition was not supplied to readers of Spinsanity's email list.

This minor update does a disservice to Spinsanity's website and to all who read it expecting fair and accurate information. Spinsanity should write a new posting and give it as much play as the articles of August 5th and 24th.

Kerry's supporters say that his behavior in Vietnam shows he would make a tough 'war time' president. For example, in an act of bravery, he knowingly volunteered for especially dangerous or very dangerous duty or one of the most dangerous duties in Vietnam.

Independent groups, such as Spinsanity, say that Swift boat duty was relatively safe when Kerry volunteered in February, 1968. Swift boat duty only became dangerous by the time Kerry commanded a Swift boat. So it's a myth to say that Kerry knowingly volunteered for dangerous duty in Vietnam.

But Kerry didn't only volunteer for Swift boat service in Vietnam. Rather he volunteered for service in Vietnam. His first choice was as officer on board a Swift boat. His second choice was as an officer on board a PBR (Patrol Boat, River). His February, 1968, letter to the Navy begins: " I request duty in Vietnam. My billet preference is "Swift" boats with a second choice of patrol officer in a PBR squadron."

Spinsanity agrees that duty as a patrol officer on a PBR (Patrol Boat, River) was quite dangerous when Kerry volunteered in February, 1968. It's easy to see why:
"The PBR (Patrol Boat River) formed the cornerstone of U.S. Navy strategy during the Vietnam War. At the height of the American involvement, over 290 of these remarkably versatile craft patrolled the intricate waterways of the Mekong Delta... Men of these units sustained some of the War's highest casualty rates and were also some of the most decorated. The National Vietnam War Museum's boat is a salute to the men of the Brown Water Navy."

and Veterans get piece of history sent to Little Creek ‘Brown water Navy’ gets its favorite boat from Washington BY JO2 JEAN ROSS

...Wahler is intimately familiar with this type of boat as he was a patrol officer with a PBR unit during the Vietnam War from 1970 to 1971. He was a member of Task Force 116, the Navy’s river patrol force that operated from 1966 to 1971 along the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam. Wahler is a member of the Gamewardens of Vietnam Association, Inc., the oldest Vietnam veterans association, established in 1968 by veterans of Task Force 116...Task Force 116 was the most highly decorated naval command of the war with two recipients of the Medal of Honor, 14 recipients of the Navy Cross and numerous recipients of Silver Stars, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts."

Spinsanity says PBR duty was quite dangerous at the time Kerry volunteered for it. Kerry volunteered for it. The proper headline is "Kerry knowingly volunteered for dangerous duty in Vietnam is No myth." or "Kerry knowingly volunteered for quite dangerous duty is no myth." Because he did. Explaining that it was Kerry's second choice that was quite dangerous is a detail that goes below the headline.

Kerry's supporters are probably wrong if they say that coastal patrol duty on a Swift boat in February, 1968 was especially dangerous or very dangerous or quite dangerous. They're probably correct that coastal patrol duty was dangerous. They're certainly wrong when they Kerry went to Vietnam in late 1968 and then volunteered for dangerous duty. And they're wrong when they use Kerry's Swift boat service in late 1968 and early 1969 to describe the dangers of Swift boat service at the time Kerry volunteered. Spinsanity was correct to point out the errors of these assertions.

However, having decided to enter the fray on this topic, Spinsanity has a duty to properly and prominently report to its readers any new information they receive that may change the underlying truth of whether John Kerry was volunteering for very dangerous duty in Vietnam. They failed to do so.

The points made in my August 29th email were raised by Steve Gilliard in his August 12th posting criticizing the August 5th Spinsanity posting. He wrote: "In fact, there is an implication Kerry was trying to avoid danger, when that is clearly not the truth. First, as his own records show, he applied for the Riverine Force during the height of the Tet Offensive, February 10, 1968. And he requested PBR duty as his second choice and that was clearly dangerous." I didn't read Steve's blog until after my August 29th email to Spinsanity.

Sheldon

--- end of open letter--