Re: The secret government marches on...
At 10:46 AM 04/09/2003 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
It's only when an operation has to hide lots of money from even some of the big agencies (or parts thereof) that they have to resort to moving drugs and whatnot to fund "Iran Contra" and other extracurriculars. George W almost certainly piloted one of the planes used to move cocaine into the US to fund some of those operations.
He may have snorted one plane-load of that coke, but this is the first time I've heard an assertion that he flew the planes as opposed to just getting high...
On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 11:26:17AM -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
At 10:46 AM 04/09/2003 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
It's only when an operation has to hide lots of money from even some of the big agencies (or parts thereof) that they have to resort to moving drugs and whatnot to fund "Iran Contra" and other extracurriculars. George W almost certainly piloted one of the planes used to move cocaine into the US to fund some of those operations.
He may have snorted one plane-load of that coke, but this is the first time I've heard an assertion that he flew the planes as opposed to just getting high...
Don't have the URL's handy, but I've read at least a couple of webpages giving dates, plane used, airports, etc. He and his brother both were supposedly involved, flying arms to the contras and coke back, and, so the story goes, got more or less busted coming back when the wrong person was on duty or some such, but Daddy took care of it. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
On Wednesday 09 April 2003 23:35, Harmon Seaver wrote: Regarding GW Bush flying a planeload of coke:
Don't have the URL's handy, but I've read at least a couple of webpages giving dates, plane used, airports, etc. (rest of the coke-inspired yet still insipid fantasy deleted)
Let me guess, the URLs were for DemocraticUnderground, al Jazeera, and Indymedia? I'm probably going to regret replying to Seaver ("Even if you win the Special Olympics...") but this was just too pathetic to pass up. -- Steve Furlong Computer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel Guns will get you through times of no duct tape better than duct tape will get you through times of no guns. -- Ron Kuby
On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 04:14:26AM -0400, Steve Furlong wrote:
On Wednesday 09 April 2003 23:35, Harmon Seaver wrote:
Regarding GW Bush flying a planeload of coke:
Don't have the URL's handy, but I've read at least a couple of webpages giving dates, plane used, airports, etc. (rest of the coke-inspired yet still insipid fantasy deleted)
Let me guess, the URLs were for DemocraticUnderground, al Jazeera, and Indymedia?
Actually not. At least one was a site that seemed to be run by Birchers, or at least all the rest of the stuff looked like JBS. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
--
Regarding GW Bush flying a planeload of coke:
On Wednesday 09 April 2003 23:35, Harmon Seaver wrote
Don't have the URL's handy, but I've read at least a couple of webpages giving dates, plane used, airports, etc.'
On 10 Apr 2003 at 4:14, Steve Furlong wrote:
(rest of the coke-inspired yet still insipid fantasy deleted)
Let me guess, the URLs were for DemocraticUnderground, al Jazeera, and Indymedia?
During the past couple of days I have been arguing with someone on usenet who cites as evidence for the extravagant untruthfullness of the mainstream press, Robert Fisk's report that the coalition troops were nowhere near Saddam Hussein airport. (As it was then called) For his very similar work in Kosovo, Fisk was named "foreign correspondent of the year" (presumably by a committee of lying commies who share his ideology) Looks like Fisk is becoming the new Chomsky. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG EHE+kWinCvAXZ7/5cIzitHd+WRfsmFBelFUWVAfQ 4XfQTfd3p80Tg9ff6IT6oLL6UbUBQCr/BnXKrowfA
On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 09:18:36AM -0700, James A. Donald wrote:
During the past couple of days I have been arguing with someone on usenet who cites as evidence for the extravagant untruthfullness of the mainstream press, Robert Fisk's report that the coalition troops were nowhere near Saddam Hussein airport. (As it was then called)
For his very similar work in Kosovo, Fisk was named "foreign correspondent of the year" (presumably by a committee of lying commies who share his ideology)
Looks like Fisk is becoming the new Chomsky.
Fish and I would disagree politically if we ever met in person, I'd wager, and I have no brief to defend his political views. But from the perspective of a fellow journalist, well, we sometimes make honest mistakes at the best of times, and probably even more so in wartime. You're accusing him of intentionally telling a lie, and to agree I'd have to at the very least look at the wording of his report. Disagreeing with a reporter's political views does not mean that all their claims of fact are wrong and maliciously so. -Declan
At 11:28 AM -0700 4/10/03, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Disagreeing with a reporter's political views does not mean that all their claims of fact are wrong and maliciously so.
Since I still think that I. F. Stone was the best political reporter of the 20th century, I have to agree. Cheers - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Due process for all | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | used to be the | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@pwpconsult.com | American way. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
-- On 10 Apr 2003 at 14:28, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Fisk and I would disagree politically if we ever met in person, I'd wager, and I have no brief to defend his political views. But from the perspective of a fellow journalist, well, we sometimes make honest mistakes at the best of times, and probably even more so in wartime. You're accusing him of intentionally telling a lie, and to agree I'd have to at the very least look at the wording of his report.
Read fisk's account: http://tinyurl.com/995f
Disagreeing with a reporter's political views does not mean that all their claims of fact are wrong and maliciously so.
Compare Fisk's account, with more mainstream accounts of the same events: http://tinyurl.com/9966 The problem is not that Fisk argued that Saddam should win, the problem is that he claimed that with his own eyes he saw decisive and irrefutable evidence that Saddam was winning, or at least not losing nearly as fast as was claimed. He claimed "the Americans had been caught lying again", when as events proved, they were speaking the truth. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG G1k65SCJYsdVwpW2iXlft89KPTWuH3Fio5GZ2VWi 4LPUtiGFyLoxDyzZvhOWod9MiNRkUAdlInq1fjBbV
On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 02:24:55PM -0700, James A. Donald wrote:
Read fisk's account: http://tinyurl.com/995f
Disagreeing with a reporter's political views does not mean that all their claims of fact are wrong and maliciously so.
Compare Fisk's account, with more mainstream accounts of the same events: http://tinyurl.com/9966
I find Fisk's writing tedious and his comments about Americans lying juvenile. Yet even the two articles juxtaposed does not prove Fisk was lying; the New York Times article was posted on 4/4 -- Fisk's article could have been (and probably was) written days earlier. -Declan
-- James A. Donald:
Read fisk's account: http://tinyurl.com/995f
Compare Fisk's account, with more mainstream accounts of the same events: http://tinyurl.com/9966
Declan McCullagh
I find Fisk's writing tedious and his comments about Americans lying juvenile. Yet even the two articles juxtaposed does not prove Fisk was lying; the New York Times article was posted on 4/4 -- Fisk's article could have been (and probably was) written days earlier.
You have failed to read the article -- he tells us when he wrote it. Read his article, and fit the timeline of the events he describes, against the timeline of events the other article describes. The time at which he claims to have visited the airport in his account was an hour or two before the attack began in the mainstream account. If he was merely telling us the US had not taken, or was not attacking, the airport, that would be no problem, but his claim was that the US was nowhere near the airport, the airport was in no imminent danger of falling, or even of being attacked, that in the unlikely event that the US had reached the outskirts, they had fled or been driven back. He claimed to have confirmed Baghdad Bob's account. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG UeOahX2F3qng0DuT72LmTbiYdgS6MD0POlGJxDXQ 4ixc+yX9lOEwCVzsQ38DCmNPK7siG0rcLOR5le//t
James A. Donald wrote:
but his claim was that the US was nowhere near the airport,
His claim was that he couldn't see them, and that even the mainstream reports put them many kilometers away, if you read them carefully.
the airport was in no imminent danger of falling,
And, according to the Sun-Sentinel report, it wasn't -- they reported it as empty early in the morning.
or even of being attacked,
Now you are being dishonest. He made no claim about what might happen in the future, only about what he was seeing at that moment.
that in the unlikely event that the US had reached the outskirts, they had fled or been driven back.
This statement is complete fantasy, and corresponds to nothing that Fisk actually wrote in his report. I don't know much of anything about Fisk, but I now know that *you* cannot be trusted to give an honest report.
-- James A. Donald:
[According to Fisk] the airport was in no imminent danger of falling,
Kevin S. Van Horn:
And, according to the Sun-Sentinel report, it wasn't -- they reported it as empty early in the morning.
The Sun Sentinel reports it being attacked with heavy Iraqi casualties within hours of Baghdad Bob's making the claims that Robert Fisk endorsed,and falling later that night. Fisk tells us that the Iraqi minister was right and the Americans were wrong, that the Americans had been caught lying again The Sun Sentinal reports that the Iraqi minister (Baghdad Bob) was wrong, the Americans were right, and the Baghdad Bob was caught lying.
Now you are being dishonest. He made no claim about what might happen in the future, only about what he was seeing at that moment.
You are splitting legalistic hairs. If Fisk is telling the truth, the Sun Sentinel is lying. If the Sun Sentinel is telling the truth, Fisk is lying, Subsequent events give us good cause to believe the Sun Sentinel was telling the truth, and that Baghdad Bob was lying extravagantly and ridiculously. And if Baghdad Bob was lying, which today everyone, including Fisk, agrees, then Fisk was lying, for Fisk told us that the Iraqi minister was right and the Americans were wrong, that the Americans had been caught lying. James A. Donald:
that in the unlikely event that the US had reached the outskirts, they had fled or been driven back.
Kevin S. Van Horn:
This statement is complete fantasy, and corresponds to nothing that Fisk actually wrote in his report.
Fisk wrote in his report: "Had the Americans found themselves miles away on the edge of the old RAF airbase at Habbaniyeh, one wondered, and confused it with the airport outside Baghdad? Had they sent a patrol up to the far side of the Saddam airport for a few minutes, just to say they'd been there? Back in 1941, a German patrol briefly captured the last tram-stop on the line west of Moscow, collecting the discarded passenger tickets as souvenirs - and then got no farther. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG UF2jhZOGzR8dKNQyDi7aAAL0PxEKS2JzZq7j9/wo 4j5LuVYJEoaFiMRRjMce6FlKzsLV6RpvY/jHfji09
-- James A. Donald wrote:
but his claim was that the US was nowhere near the airport,
On 10 Apr 2003 at 22:35, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote:
His claim was that he couldn't see them, and that even the mainstream reports put them many kilometers away, if you read them carefully.
A truthful report would have read as follows: "US claimed its forces were on the outskirts of the Airport. The minister for information denied that US forces were anywhere near reported, and offered to permit newsmen to tour the airport. The ministry of information minders took the the newsmen to the airport lounge, but did not permit them to get anywhere near the outskirts of the airport, let alone tour it, which shows the minister to be lying about permitting newsmen to see for themselves, which would suggest the minister is lying the location of US forces, and the US telling the truth. Instead, Fisk conspicuously fails to mention that the minders are controlling the newsmen in a way that prevents them from knowing what he claims to know, and instead proclaims that the minister is telling the truth, and the US lying Fisk omits critical facts, and confidently claims to know what he was not permitted to know. The one is a lie of omission, the other a lie of commission. Fisk conceals from his readers the fact that it is impossible to check on the lies of a totalitarian state, and denies barefaced the fact that promises to allow such checking are always lies. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG r1bxpJ7VZETqopavASLrWpcoBbAT8s1kyWEEd3bw 4QwAleCULDpfKQBa3TU6SXNZetICTYpqbww+2vya/
On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, James A. Donald wrote:
Instead, Fisk conspicuously fails to mention that the minders are controlling the newsmen in a way that prevents them from
You mean, something similar to say, placing them in military units chosen by minders in Washington, and saying "that's what you get" when non-"embedded" reporters die*.
Fisk omits critical facts, and confidently claims to know what he was not permitted to know.
I'd love an example to discuss.
The one is a lie of omission, the other a lie of commission. Fisk conceals from his readers the fact that it is impossible to check on the lies of a totalitarian state, and denies barefaced the fact that promises to allow such checking are always lies.
So your assertion is that reporting what a government body is saying is wrong, and failing to say that they may be saying things that may be propoganda is wrong. Are you similarly pissed at Fox? Please share with the group. -j *I'm not saying the US intentionally killed reporters. I don't know if that is an accurate analysis or not. It is a war, and shit happens. -- Jamie Lawrence jal@jal.org "And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is." - Larry Wall
-- James A. Donald wrote:
Instead, Fisk conspicuously fails to mention that the minders are controlling the newsmen in a way that prevents them from
On 11 Apr 2003 at 12:28, Jamie Lawrence wrote:
You mean, something similar to say, placing them in military units chosen by minders in Washington, and saying "that's what you get" when non-"embedded" reporters die*.
When the regime fell, the embedded reporters mostly wandered off from their units, ceased to be embedded. This shows that the violence inhibiting reporting was the violence of the regime. When the regime fell, the press became free. James A. Donald:
Fisk omits critical facts, and confidently claims to know what he was not permitted to know.
Jamie Lawrence
I'd love an example to discuss.
He confidently claimed to know that US troops were nowhere near the outskirts of the airport, when the Ministry of Information did not permit reporters to see or visit the outskirts of the airport. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG eD/eqsXBtVNuDXHQaF/zzdK8ReRDHeCZ8r0Cz2LZ 4GRV6snc/JSU1ULsbq9WthWWT96N82LFnfpiQ5y1M
On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 08:31:14PM -0700, James A. Donald wrote:
You have failed to read the article -- he tells us when he wrote it. Read his article, and fit the timeline of the events he describes, against the timeline of events the other article describes. The time at which he claims to have visited the airport in his account was an hour or two before the attack began in the mainstream account.
You are incorrect. As I said, I read the article. It was reposted from another site and it is anything but clear when it was filed. The New York Times has a timestamp and datestamp; the reposted one did not. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious here, but I'm not interested in defending this fellow further. My only points, which I trust has been made emphatically enough at this point, are: Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by honest mistakes; and journalists rarely have the full story at the best of times. -Declan
-- On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 08:31:14PM -0700, James A. Donald wrote:
You have failed to read the article -- he tells us when he wrote it. Read his article, and fit the timeline of the events he describes, against the timeline of events the other article describes. The time at which he claims to have visited the airport in his account was an hour or two before the attack began in the mainstream account.
Declan McCullagh
You are incorrect. As I said, I read the article. It was reposted from another site and it is anything but clear when it was filed. The New York Times has a timestamp and datestamp;
You do not date it by the datestamp, you date it by the events to which Robert Fisk refers.
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious here
I do not think you have read the article. Here is Fisk's article http://tinyurl.com/995f Here is the mainstream article http://tinyurl.com/9966 They contradict each other. Therefore one or both is lying. Since we now have good cause to believe the mainstream article true, it follows that Robert Fisk is lying.
Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by honest mistakes; and journalists rarely have the full story at the best of times.
Probably Fisk did not know where the American forces were, but he assured the reader, with great confidence, that he did know. He claimed to have confirmed Baghdad Bob's account -- the account of the Iraqi minister of information, an account that events proved to be hilariously false. In this article Fisk claims, claims with enormous confidence and certainty, to confirm a speech by Baghdad Bob that caused much hilarity among those less credulous. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG hUerhSZ4SgYnzK+o+9WY+vpqa2fz5wMLUo5P4mdc 4QTgvRyr+0L2R2DmuDNeXORcSXRqN6x+5NGfxu2AW
"James A. Donald" wrote: [...]
You do not date it by the datestamp, you date it by the events to which Robert Fisk refers.
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious here
I do not think you have read the article.
Here is Fisk's article http://tinyurl.com/995f
Here is the mainstream article http://tinyurl.com/9966
They contradict each other. Therefore one or both is lying. Since we now have good cause to believe the mainstream article true, it follows that Robert Fisk is lying.
They really don't contradict each other. Fisk's article implies that the journalists set off at 1400 Iraqi time - that is 2300 New Zealand. The article is dated April 4th, so he is presumably talking about the events of April 3rd - which is confirmed on the copy of the same article at http://robert-fisk.com/articles210.htm He mentions dusk, so its a fair bet he turned up in the late afternoon and left at nightfall (a sensible thing to do in a place that gets regularly bombed) The BBC reports on April 4th said the US took the airport "overnight" i.e. evening of April 3rd to morning of 4th - that is after Fisk's visit. The other article you refer to actually CONFIRMS Fisk's account:
During the day, the ministry organized a trip to the airport for reporters in the capital, and they filmed the empty runways and terminals. Yet within hours, artillery and rocket fire erupted in the region and military officials said an assault on Saddam International Airport had begun.
Exactly what Fisk wrote - the Ministry took the journalist to the airport, there were no Americans there. If there had been Americans there earlier it was a small raid, not a major attack (hence the reference to the Moscow trams) and they had gone away again (or maybe were hiding). The big attack happened the night after these events. The BBC website accounts of the day agree with this, as do those on the website of, for example, the Houston Chronicle (the first US paper whose URL I remembered). They describe the attack on the airport as being overnight, finishing on the morning of the 4th. The only mention of it on the 3rd I found is a quote from an interview with Rumsfeld: "He refused to comment on reports that coalition forces had launched an assault on Baghdad International Airport, about ten miles outside the city." Anyway Baghdad is a big city and this is NOT a war with rigid front lines (one of the reasons the Iraqis managed to capture logistical support staff). It is perfectly possible that someone could be 20 km west from the city centre but not in visual contact with US ground units only 15km from it, or that a small US reconnaissance force watching over the airport from one direction could be invisible to journalists looking at it from another. I believe thos guys are quite good at not being seen when they don't want to be. Fisk is no friend of the US government - though from reading his stuff I think he hates the Ba'athists and the other middle-east kleptocracies even more, try reading http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=76415 He certainly puts a heavy spin on what he sees, but there is no actual lying apparent in these article and no contradiction between them. The two articles you quote are really about different things - the US paper is doing a roundup of the events of the day, with a gung-ho spin on it; the main thrust of Fisk's piece is in fact about how the Iraqi propaganda is widely disbelieved by Iraqis - using the absurd monuments to the so-called victory against Iran as an image of the bombastic rubbish the Ba'athist government spouted - and comparing it with two pieces of US propaganda that he thinks were untrue. The Americans are saying "we will inevitably win a glorious victory". Fisk is saying "all governments are liars in wartime". Both use the events of the same day to illustrate their different points. NB the Independent publishes most of Fisk's columns in their "Argument" section, i.e. as opinion, not reportage.
Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by honest mistakes; and journalists rarely have the full story at the best of times.
Probably Fisk did not know where the American forces were, but he assured the reader, with great confidence, that he did know.
No he didn't, he assured his readers that he knew where they *weren't* - that is right in front of him. Your rhetorical tricks are transparent. Such as contrasting the phrase "Fisk's article" with "mainstream article" - implying that Fisk and his paper are not "mainstream", are somehow marginal. Fisk mainly works for the London paper called the Independent. I don't read it much but it is certainly "mainstream". It is boring, somewhat staid, establishment-oriented broadsheet newspaper - politically probably in around the same small-l-liberal-but-not-radical place as the New York Times. It's mainly read by middle-aged middle-class Londoners who can't stomach the Murdochised Times but don't want to be seen reading the Guardian (which is much more entertaining but is associated in their minds with social workers, teachers, and flaky new-media types). Fisk's writing is one of the best things about an otherwise often stodgy paper. Your allegation that Fisk was in London at the time is defamatory. He's one of the best-respected British reporters - an occupation, incidentally, which has suffered a far higher casualty rate in this war than the US military have - and has put himself in harm's way in several previous wars. He worked at the Times for years - which is as "mainstream" as journalism gets - and was their Belfast correspondent at the height of the "troubles". And he *is* a good writer - even if you disagree with him you have to admit that his latest piece is worth reading: http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=395707 The bit about Corporal Breeze from Michigan is a gem. Brings tears to your eyes. If Fisk ever gives up watching Arabs getting shot at maybe he could get a scriptwriting job for Steven Spielberg.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 01:12:22PM +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
And he *is* a good writer - even if you disagree with him you have to admit that his latest piece is worth reading: http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=395707 The bit about Corporal Breeze from Michigan is a gem. Brings tears to your eyes. If Fisk ever gives up watching Arabs getting shot at maybe he could get a scriptwriting job for Steven Spielberg.
Yes. This is fine reporting. Not sure I agree with his conclusions, but it's sobering stuff. -Declan
Fisk writes: "But within seconds, the marble had fallen away to reveal a foundation of cheap bricks and badly cracked cement." These are the same materials used on the Lincoln Memorial, and most monuments: the surface is one thing, the under layers quite different. That's the truth of monuments, not to say news reporting, underlayed with advertising -- which most often is more accurate than the journo-school-stylized reporting. Fiction, advertising, was invented to gloss "non-fiction" until it was found more successful to reverse the osmosis. Headlines, bylines, lead syntactic paragraphs, reliable sources, eyewitneses, the artful couture of dissimulation, padding, shaping the substance to fit the consumer, at the executive level, National Intelligence. The NYT, for one, heavily loads its 3rd page with lingerie ads when the front page is grimmest. Brits, more civilized, lead with tits and ass, with news positioned later where it belongs among the mongrelized detritus. If you want to see if a monument, a news forum, is authentic strip away its surface, its credentialism. A good one has no surface, demands no upfront credulity, it's all solid same-throughout substance, earned case by case, not powdered and rouged with a perdurable masthead, plagiarized battle flags aflutter. Embeddeds couldn't be happier camp followers, catching and pitching initimacies of the censored battlefield. No real gore, not at all, you have to go overseas to gander that porn. Check the front page of the WSJ today about the Cunt encouraging young Marines to do talk therapy for news-squeaky-clean agony of watermeloning Iraqis defending their homeland. As if Lon Horuchi was consulting on patriotic head shots, faking remorse, doing a job, staying alive, weeping about it, chickenshits.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 11:03:38AM -0700, John Young wrote:
These are the same materials used on the Lincoln Memorial, and most monuments: the surface is one thing, the under layers quite different.
I had no idea. Now I feel silly for taking photos of the surface without knowing (or asking) what lies underneath. http://www.mccullagh.org/image/1ds-1/lincoln-memorial-statue-2.html http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-8/jefferson-statue.html -Declan
-- "James A. Donald":
Here is Fisk's article http://tinyurl.com/995f
Here is the mainstream article http://tinyurl.com/9966
They contradict each other. Therefore one or both is lying. Since we now have good cause to believe the mainstream article true, it follows that Robert Fisk is lying.
On 11 Apr 2003 at 13:12, Ken Brown wrote:
They really don't contradict each other.
One says the Iraqi minister of information told the truth at his conference on the third of April, and the US lying in its press release of thursday the third of April, the other says the US telling the truth, and the Iraqi information minister lying on the third of April
Fisk's article implies that the journalists set off at 1400 Iraqi time - that is 2300 New Zealand. The article is dated April 4th, so he is presumably talking about the events of April 3rd - which is confirmed on the copy of the same article at http://robert-fisk.com/articles210.htm He mentions dusk, so its a fair bet he turned up in the late afternoon and left at nightfall (a sensible thing to do in a place that gets regularly bombed)
The US claimed on the third of April that US forces were on the outskirts of the airport. The minister of information responded on the third of April claiming that US forces were nowhere near the airport. So you interpret the article as Fisk truthfully saying he was unable to check the claims of the Iraqi information minister? But that interpretation contradicts not only the overall tone and impression of Fisk's article, but also the plain words of the article, which proclaimed the minister of information to be telling the truth, and the Americans to be lying.
The BBC reports on April 4th said the US took the airport "overnight"
The question at issue is not when US forces took the airport, but when US forces reached "the outskirts" of the airport. Fisk lied. The US reached "the outskirts" of the airport on the morning of thursday the third of April. The US announced this, referring to "the outskirts of the airport", the minister denied it, and Fisk claimed to confirm the ministers denial, though in reality no newsmen were permitted to check the minister's claims.
Exactly what Fisk wrote - the Ministry took the journalist to the airport, there were no Americans there.
The US claim (3rd April) was that Americans were on "the outskirts". The minister of information did not merely deny that American troops were relaxing in the airport lounge, he denied that US troops were anywhere near the airport. The goons from the ministry of information did not permit the newsmen to see the outskirts, a most curious restraint, a restraint that Fisk neglects to mention.
Anyway Baghdad is a big city and this is NOT a war with rigid front lines (one of the reasons the Iraqis managed to capture logistical support staff). It is perfectly possible that someone could be 20 km west from the city centre but not in visual contact with US ground units only 15km from it, or that a small US reconnaissance force watching over the airport from one direction could be invisible to journalists looking at it from another.
Yes, fog of war and all that. But Fisk did not merely say that he did not know, he said he did know, and supported that pretended knowledge by deceptively omitting crucial facts -- that the newsmen got a guided tour to the airport lounge and back to Baghdad, a tour that curiously that omitted any opportunity to check the facts in dispute, curiously failed to show what had been promised would be shown. The fact that the newsmen were not taken around the outskirts shows that had they been taken there, they would have encountered US troops. Obviously, if US troops had not been massing on the outskirts of the airport, preparatory to taking it, the guided tour would have included the outskirts, since on the third of April, the outskirts were the issue in dispute.
Fisk is no friend of the US government - though from reading his stuff I think he hates the Ba'athists and the other middle-east kleptocracies even more,
Assuming he is Baghdad at all, which I very much doubt, why no mention of the Ministry of information minders? If he did not love totalitarian terror regimes, why omit this crucial fact? Saudi Arabia is a kleptocracy. Baathism is totalitarian. The fact that you are unaware of this shows where Fisk's heart lies. He wants a world of slavery and terror.
The two articles you quote are really about different things - the US paper is doing a roundup of the events of the day, with a gung-ho spin on it; the main thrust of Fisk's piece is in fact about how the Iraqi propaganda is widely disbelieved by Iraqis - using the absurd monuments to the so-called victory against Iran as an image of the bombastic rubbish the Ba'athist government spouted - and comparing it with two pieces of US propaganda that he thinks were untrue.
The old moral equivalence deal. Stalin supposedly equals McCarthy. But they were not morally equivalent, and he did not merely say he thought they were untrue, he claimed to have seen with his own eyes that one of those "pieces of US propaganda" was untrue, when we now know it was true. US troops *were* on the outskirts, and were massing preparatory to an attack which took place shortly after the journalists visit.
The Americans are saying "we will inevitably win a glorious victory".
Fisk is saying "all governments are liars in wartime".
No, the Americans were saying "we have reached the outskirts of Baghdad airport", and Fisk was saying "Americans have not reached the outskirts of Baghdad airport." But now we know they had reached the outskirts of Baghdad airport.
NB the Independent publishes most of Fisk's columns in their "Argument" section, i.e. as opinion, not reportage.
But Fisk adds authority to his opinions by claiming to report from Baghdad.
Probably Fisk did not know where the American forces were, but he assured the reader, with great confidence, that he did know.
No he didn't, he assured his readers that he knew where they *weren't* - that is right in front of him.
He assured his readers that US troops were not on the outskirts of Baghdad airport, but they were on the outskirts of Baghdad airport. By omitting to mention the journalists were taken on a guided tour by Ministry of information minders, a tour that conspicuously failed to show them the outskirts, he gave his readers an entirely false impression of what was in front of those journalists. As to what was in front of him, I suspect his desk in England.
Your rhetorical tricks are transparent. Such as contrasting the phrase "Fisk's article" with "mainstream article" - implying that Fisk and his paper are not "mainstream", are somehow marginal. Fisk mainly works for the London paper called the Independent. I don't read it much but it is certainly "mainstream".
Full of commies. Lunatic fringe totalitarians, adherents of a dying religion, sticking to the edicts of a dead party. They are starting to blend in with flying saucerists and neo Nazis. A decade or two down the line we will may well hear that Trotsky did not die, but was taken in a flying saucer to a distant planet, from which he will return to lead us to utopia.
It is boring, somewhat staid, establishment-oriented broadsheet newspaper - politically probably in around the same small-l-liberal-but-not-radical place as the New York Times.
Recollect the New York times on the Ukraine famine. While Stalin was torturing peasants to extort their seed corn, the New York Times denied everything, and was naturaly awarded the Pulitzer prize for their courageous denial of the story. Since then the former Soviet Union has come to its senses, but the New York Times remains married to blood and death, insulated from reality by their own little Berlin wall
It's mainly read by middle-aged middle-class Londoners
Upper crust, more likely, like the New York times -- the kind of people who could imagine themselves as the planners in a totalitarian terror state. The people who tend to imagine themselves as the planned, rather than the planners, working class people, are not so keen on terror and slavery.
And he *is* a good writer - even if you disagree with him you have to admit that his latest piece is worth reading: http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?stor y=395707 The bit about Corporal Breeze from Michigan is a gem. Brings tears to your eyes. If Fisk ever gives up watching Arabs getting shot at maybe he could get a scriptwriting job for Steven Spielberg.
He certainly has lots of experience writing fiction, but selective ommission is more his style. When he tells of the Olympic sports offices, run by Uday Hussein being looted, you get the impression of these wicked looters wrecking this innocent happy sports facility, neglecting to mention that Uday would get his kicks torturing sportsmen and sports women to death. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG yeIfWr0m3sQrpZeptpMuj4rGUQbBtyZu6kY5uILT 4gpdPwnMq5gq6jaYrMmOeN8GyAlT85f1B8MYaKVNs
It occurs to me that the "Project for the New American Century" people's well-known despite for international law and treaties and the UN is At first sight it is absolutely nothing but "might is right". They are the strongest, they will do what they want to do and not let anyone stop them. That want they want to do is much more congenial to us than what some other people might want to do doesn't change the nature of it. They might well want to use their power benevolently - even liberally - but they will be the ones to choose how to use it. They recognise that the USA is the strongest military power in the world, at least for the next few decades, and they want to use those few decades either to prevent anyone else catching up with them or (because they aren't so stupid as to believe they can get away with that for ever) to remake the rest of the world in their own image so that if Europe, China, or India ever again draw close to them in economic or military power we will have been conditioned to behave in American ways. They despise the idea of international law or treaty obligations. They think of the world as made up of states and governments rather than of individual people, and they also think that relations between states must necessarily be hierarchical, rather than consensual or by agreement. They have a huge emotional desire for stability and predictability and think that that is best secured by concentrated power rather than dispersed power, by dictation rather than negotiation, by unilateral action rather than by mutual agreement. They want to simplify the world in order to do it good. They are, in fact, in international affairs, taking up a position very similar to the old discredited state socialists in national affairs. Just as the apparently benevolent Fabians and the obviously vicious Soviets saw that state power was overwhelmingly supreme within a nation state, and wished to simplify and organise and dictate relationships between peoples and communities within the nation, in order to better control the nation for its own good; and therefore preferred a strong central government and top-down rule by civil servants and bureaucrats to the messy business of democracy, markets, and mutual aid; so the PNAC sees US power as overwhelmingly supreme between nation states, and prefers an international system based on the one-to-many relations of the USA with everybody else to the messy business of many-to-many relations of treaties and international law.
On Monday, April 14, 2003, at 07:26 AM, Ken Brown wrote:
It occurs to me that the "Project for the New American Century" people's well-known despite for international law and treaties and the UN is ...
They recognise that the USA is the strongest military power in the world, at least for the next few decades, and they want to use those few decades either to prevent anyone else catching up with them or (because they aren't so stupid as to believe they can get away with that for ever) to remake the rest of the world in their own image so that if Europe, China, or India ever again draw close to them in economic or military power we will have been conditioned to behave in American ways.
They despise the idea of international law or treaty obligations.
Speaking of the next couple of decades in the United States, I'm going to be chortling when a leftist President takes power and uses the same tools the Right is now using: -- pre-emptive wars not declared by Congress (let alone not for clear and present danger reasons) -- PATRIOT Act snooping, illegal searches, and unlimited detentions -- the whole system of police state measures -- a Homeland Security Director that would do Fidel Castro or Ralph Nader proud APRIL, 2009. WASHINGTON (Routers) -- President Clinton today declared that the illegal regime in Switzerland must be removed to protect American from tax cheats and corporate criminals. She cited the Bush Doctrine as justification. She urged the Swiss government to lay down their arms and report to reprocessing centers in Coalition of the Willing nations like Lichtenstein. OCTOBER, 2010. WASHINGTON (Routers) -- Administration officials announced today the detention of another 4000 illegal combatants in America's war on unauthorized communication systems and other terrorist devices. "These high tech criminals have been helping the drug dealers and have undermined our approach to stamping out tools for tax evasion," said Homeland Security Director Kweizi Mfume. Mfume noted that last summer's raid on the illegal "Crypto" conference had netted more than 150 information terrorists. He added that some are cooperating and may be moved from Guantanomo to U.S. processing facilities. --Tim May "Al Qaida was never the real threat...Afghanistan is." "Aghanistan was never the real threat...Iraq is." "Iraq was never the real threat...Syria is." "Syria was never the real threat...stay tuned."
James A. Donald wrote:
Read fisk's account: http://tinyurl.com/995f
Disagreeing with a reporter's political views does not mean that all their claims of fact are wrong and maliciously so.
Compare Fisk's account, with more mainstream accounts of the same events: http://tinyurl.com/9966
You didn't read the "mainstream" account, nor Fisk's account, carefully enough. Fisk's account was posted at 8:00 a.m. (Iraqi time) on April 4, corresponding to midnight, April 4 in the Eastern time zone, where your "mainstream" U.S. news account (southern Florida Sun Sentinel) of the same day was published. Fisk's account was clearly written many hours earlier than the Sun Sentinel report, which states, "During the day, the ministry [of information] organized a trip to the airport for reporters in the capital, and they filmed the empty runways and terminals. Yet within hours, artillery and rocket fire erupted in the region and military officials said an assault on Saddam International Airport had begun." The "empty runways and terminals" is consistent with Fisk's report, which appears to have been filed before the actual capture of the airport took place. Fisks's report says, "Only three hours earlier, the BBC had reported claims that forward units of an American mechanised infantry division were less than 16km west of Baghdad -- and that some US troops had taken up positions on the very edge of the international airport. "But I was 27km west of the city." That is to say, the mechanized infantry division was 11km to the east of the airport at the time of the BBC report, but that report had been written so as to give the impression that US troops were already attacking the airport. Even if we discount Fisk's report and only rely on the Sun-Sentinel report, we have to conclude that "some US troops" must have, in reality, been only a very small number of hidden scouts -- not an assault force. In other words, just as with Umm Qasr, the initial "mainstream" media (BBC) reports gave the impression that the coalition's attack had progressed farther than it actually had. (Umm Qasr was reported under control of coalition forces many days before this was fully achieved.)
-- On 10 Apr 2003 at 22:24, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote:
The "empty runways and terminals" is consistent with Fisk's report, which appears to have been filed before the actual capture of the airport took place.
The attack taking place within hours is not consistent with Fisk's report. Fisk did not merely claim that no attack was taking place. No one claimed an attack was taking place. Fisk claimed to have exposed the Americans as lying, and confirmed Baghdad Bob as telling the truth, in that supposedly US troops were nowhere near the airport. Fisk issued a bunch of rhetoric similar to that of Baghdad Bob: "the Iraqi minister was right and the Americans were wrong" "the Americans had been caught lying again" "Had the Americans found themselves miles away on the edge of the old RAF airbase at Habbaniyeh, one wondered, and confused it with the airport outside Baghdad? Had they sent a patrol up to the far side of the Saddam airport for a few minutes, just to say they'd been there? Back in 1941, a German patrol briefly captured the last tram-stop on the line west of Moscow, collecting the discarded passenger tickets as souvenirs - and then got no farther. " That someone, possibly Fisk (though I suspect him to be in England, not Baghdad), wandered through an airport lounge and saw no scenes of battle is doubtless true -- since the pentagon did not claim to be attacking the airport at that time. That Baghdad Bob was right about the location of US troops was not true. That the Americans were lying about the location of US troops was not true. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG a9S0tpaCtCFHBGn0DGv6LFN/K8eXxRxr2FLQwbqK 4MrIWG0Ir0gNtYK5aZyvwG6iikiag3oFTnboGTFu/
participants (11)
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Bill Frantz -
Bill Stewart -
Declan McCullagh -
Harmon Seaver -
James A. Donald -
Jamie Lawrence -
John Young -
Ken Brown -
Kevin S. Van Horn -
Steve Furlong -
Tim May