We didn’t hear much about the Iraq elections. A few purple-finger photos, but that’s all. Why? Too quiet. Besides, making a big deal about it would only make W. look good and Big Media would never do that. But the Marine, MG John Kelley, who until recently ran Al Anbar province notes that, for its people, this was the first free election of their lives.
MORE: On the other hand, there’s an outside chance it could all unravel again.
With the big media, and their sycophantic imitators, it’s all about the narrative, the "quagmire" or "the surge isn’t working." For a few, it’s lately become rather astoundingly flipped to "the surge is working." There’s still scant middle ground in their reporting from Iraq. Not so with independent journalists like Michael Totten. With them there’s always room for bewilderment. Especially when it comes to Mookie Sadr, the Shia puppet of Iran, leader of Iraq’s branch of Hezbollah, whom we still refuse to arrest, deport, kill, etc. Instead, surge or no surge, the vicious little neo-Saddam killer goes on and on.
UPDATE: Uncle Jimbo at BlackFive says Mookie’s recent declaration of a hudna is a stall. Of course it is. He says letting Mookie live was one of the biggest mistakes of the Iraq campaign. Right again.
Comments Off on Mookie still in the saddle, part 2
Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops
Tagged Blackfive, Iraq's Hezbollah, Mookie Sadr
There’s really very little more pathetic than when a "professional journalist" at a self-important glossy like Harper’s Magazine attacks bloggers by pretending that he’s anything more than an ink-stained wretch plying a not-very-reputable trade. Grim at BlackFive gets his rebuttal exactly right:
"The journalist is also in error by suggesting that it is a disservice to the public to let the public read the actual words of military officers, instead of [journalism’s] filtered narrative. We ask them questions, often questions that readers have asked us to ask them; then we post the transcript, and readers can judge for themselves."
Ah, for the days when editors crushed spent cigarettes on the linoleum and kept a flask in their desk. They had more perspective than many of today’s "journalism majors," who make their two phonecalls in carpeted offices where they are endlessly agast at departures from the party line. Being so far removed from ordinary human behavior themselves.
Comments Off on Harper’s high horse
Tagged Blackfive, Harper's Magazine, Ken Silverstein
Aussie Beccy Cole is one country singer whose style is to embrace the troops in The Long War.
Via Blackfive, of course.
Blackfive’s new book, an anthology of downrange practitioners of a new kind of war reporting, benefited from a recent Instalanch, but also has sterling reviews. As one commenter at Amazon said, "Finally, the soldiers’ voices speak." Much is made of the blog aspect. But what’s really new is getting the soldier’s voice almost immediately, instead of thirty years later.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 