NBC reporter on the ground in Iraq:
By on Mar 22nd, 2006 at 3:00 pm
NBC reporter on the ground in Iraq:
“The situation on the ground is worse than the images we project on television“
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You mean that the 1/3 of americans that think the press is ’sugar coating’ Iraq are correct? Wow, imagine that…
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:05 pmThere are wonderful things going on in Iraq that are not being reported. For instance Ayatollah Sistani just issued a fatwa calling for the death of homosexuals.
-Rev. Pat Robertson
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:07 pmNow what kind of message is that sending to the troops! uhh.. wait. The troops already know how bad things are.
Things are progressing well in Iraq. GWB wouldn’t lie.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:07 pmGee, maybe the press ought to report instead of just hinting? Oh, but then Americans would actually care, can’t have that!
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:10 pmConsidering how bad it looks in what they do print, the sh!t must really be hitting the fan over there…
My neighbor’s grandson was killed in Iraq a few days ago. In one of the last letters he sent his grandfather he said “I don’t know what the hell we’re doing here and the Iraqi people just hate us.” I wonder how many of those letters are being sent back to the States.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:14 pmThose letters are probably being opened and destroyed by the DOD over in Iraq.
Not that that is legal, but that hasn’t ever stopped bushco yet.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:17 pm#5 Check out Micheal Moores website he has some letters written by soldiers and has compiled them into a book. There are thousands of them.
My daughter was there and she worked on helicopters, but never grasped why we were there and does not want to go back. And she spent her entire time on a “secure” base.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:20 pmAnother trait that I-RIGHT-I/MizzWrong and the Reichwing share with the ‘headchoppers’ as (s)he likes to call them appears to be homophobia. The Iraqi mullahs have put out a fatwa on Gay people, and are going around murdering anyone suspected of being gay.
You can always spot a closeted gay man by how desperate he is to kill gay people to prove his heterosexuality. Right MizzWrong?
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:29 pmTo anybody who says the troops back Bush, consider this from yesterday’s press lecture, I mean conference:
Doesn’t he realize that this is his biggest problem:
He mentioned himself 10 times in one paragraph. No wonder nobody gives a crap about what he says. Everything is about him.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:30 pmClassic narcissism.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:37 pmMy wife met a woman the other day. This woman’s husband is in Iraq right now. According to what this woman tells my wife, the press is getting it all wrong in Iraq. According to her when the Iraqi’s shake their fists and shout at us they are doing it out of encouragement and joy, not anger. Swear to god that’s her take. A buddy who recently returned said that no one there likes us and that only the children smiled at them or showed them any kindness. And he fully believes in the mission and wants to go back.
Even at it’s worst in Vietnam soldiers, US civilians and members of the press could move about Saigon pretty freely without too much fear of being killed. Can anyone even think that about Iraq?
The president said the other day that the troops are going to stay through his term and that the next president will decide. Is that not in contradiction to his previous no time tables statements and as the Iraqi’s stand up we will stand down statements? What if they fully stood up tomorrow, the violence ended and it became a democratic nirvana? By his own words previously we should come home, but his recent words suggest otherwise. Like wise with Iraqi’s standing up and us standing down. According to the president and his supporters things are not as bad as advertised. OK if that is the case then I am assuming they mean things are better than we know. If that is truly the case then why are we still needed in such large numbers? One would assume that if things are not so bad that something is going right and the need for our presence is lessened. What I am actually assuming is that the leadership is once again full of SH*T.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:38 pm#8, I always said radical Islam and the Republican party have more in common than they think – I really think the US can use this to positive advangtage in their dialogue with Ahmadinejad. /sarcasm off
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:39 pmThe situation on the ground is worse than the images we project on television
My first thought when reading this is; well, duh!
The MSM is firmly in the pocket of the ReichWingNut Party. Otherwise it would be more like Vietnam in that the nightly news would show what’s actually going on over there.
So where’s the reporter’s footage? I want it shown on every media outlet there is in the US!
When I was recently in Europe and South Asia I remembered why I read their materials before I checked out the US outlets. The materials from Europe and South Asia was… on the whole… wait for it… more accurate! What we don’t know here in the US is literally killing us.
ITMFA now!!!
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:44 pm#11: “According to her when the Iraqi’s shake their fists and shout at us they are doing it out of encouragement and joy…”
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:44 pm- – Yeah, and that’s an Andover pep cheer too.
Here’s the Michael Moore letter link:
The War Is Killing My Friends and I’m Sick of It.
Thanks for the heads up Clif.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:50 pmNo one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:52 pmSpudge: The man has developed a neurosis trying to defend the indefensible–his meaningless war. His Napoleonic complex stands in the way of any rational explanation of his policies and their results by himself or his aides. It is difficult or “hard work” to fufill the demands of a position that requires intelligence, communication skills and integrity when you lack any of these personal traits in order to convince the publics you serve that you can deliver leadership. The “I” word only emphasizes the total incompetence and arrogance that a dysfunctional person such as Bush relies on to recapture lost prestige and adoration. The country is paying dearly for his lack of integrity and skills of leadership. We may never recover.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:53 pmspudge – and don’t forget how great the world looks from
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:03 pmhis “perch” – fantastic!
I agree the images in Iraq are worse than what the media shows but not for the reasons mentioned here. The fact is that we see all the fighting and destruction on the news, but we rarely to never see the toll on the people. Thousand of Iraqis are dying because of this war, whether it be from suicide bombings or unaboidable human casualty from gunfights, bombing raids, phosphorous droppings, etc. The media won’t show all the mutilated corpses that are a part of everyday life in a warzone. For that reason alone the reality is worse than what the media is reporting. All they can report is the story and give the numbers.
And nobody in their right mind would agree that repainting a hospital, or a school being rebuilt negates any of the horrific human casualities. Especially considering any school or hospital can be brought back eventually because they are only things…people can’t be brought back and are not things. Excpet the Bush admin treats them as things. They treat the military the way a child treats toy soldiers in the toy box.
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:04 pmBUT BUT BUT Its a Picnik on tha Gounds by the Tigris river according to gwbush and propgrandassits…. Its just dreary but otherwise I drove all over the Green Zone according to the gop blogger who went to Iraq ummm what was his name lil’bushco?
The streets are a mile deep in human blood from both sides and bush is calling for more blood for his hungry ,greedy eyes of death, power, control and greed…
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:05 pm#9 SB
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:36 pmHe is at the center isn’t he? What he thinks, believes, perceives – right or wrong – he’s da man. He’s always been the guy at the top, incompetent, in over his head, corrupt and igonrant, but he’s there looking down and pontificating. He can’t string four coherent words together; he can’t answer a question directly — he has to rummage through the pre-programmed “files” in his brain (or papers on his dias), and select a reply that resembles an answer. Didn’t he even comment about something he was “supposed to say?”
The moron is speaking today to an audience of pre-screened people, progrmmed to applaud on cue and ask pre-scripted questions.
Speaking of the press, a Montpelier, Vermont paper fired a 27 year veteran of the paper for printing an essay by Sen. Leahy.
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:40 pmof course they are… we know this because foreign press aren’t afraid to report the bad news and show the carnage…
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:46 pm[...] NBC reporter on the ground in Iraq:Think Progress, DC - 1 hour agoYou mean that the 1/3 of americans that think the press is sugar coating Iraq are correct? Wow, imagine that … Things are progressing well in Iraq. … [...]
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:46 pmI find the reporter’s statement a bit disturbing. Better or worse in Iraq — why aren’t they just reporting accurately what they are seeing?
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:48 pmFor Bush to insist that we must “stay the course” because ” we are making progress”, is to pursue the same willful blindness that LBJ said about “seeing the light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam. Call it for what it really is; Q-U-A-G-M-I-R-E.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:05 pmSpeaking of quagmire, us older folks remember a tune by Pete Seeger. it went “we’re waist deep in the big muddy, and the big fool says to push on”.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:08 pmIt is bothersome that the administration has chosen to vilify the media, as a means to save their own behinds, and heck with everyone and everything else.
But we know that a favorite tactic of the Republican party is to divide and attack. Bush is not a uniter, he is a divider. And that’s a fact.
The former Iraq minister said this weekend that 50 to 60 people are dying a day, and he called it a civil war in Iraq.
Last night on Nightline, they were showing a sitcom being made in Iraq, but as they were shooting it, the Iraqi man in charge was killed.
What does Dr. Phil say, beside the “You either get it, or you don’t.”. Ah, “We cannot change what we don’t acknowledge.”
It doesn’t help anyone, if this administration refuses to face realities, whether over there, or over here.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:30 pmI’d be fine with simply having people read the information the government itself puts out. Read the State Dept Weekly Status Report, the DoD reports,the USAID reports,etc. The charts and graphs show that after 3 years,the electricity is below pre-war levels,the oil production and exports are below pre-war levels, the insurgents attack the infrastucture more than they blow up IEDs.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:38 pmMaybe what needs to happen to get the idea across is for DC to get 3 hours of electricity per day this summer so Congress and the President can have a sense of what it’s like to live in their sister city. And then make sure it goes on for 3 years to get the full effect.
The war would be over by July 4th and the troops would be back in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The only way to test whether the troop withdrawal will work is to do it.
Instead,we get stay the course,Freedom and Democracy,baby!
Only listen to George Bush. Don’t listen to Mikhail Moorsky, he’s a left wing propagandist.
George Bush knows the situation on the ground in Iraq. Mikhail Moorsky doesn’t. Those letters supposedly from soldiers in Iraq are all lies and propaganda.
Listen only to the official Pentagon reports.
Any other information will be more left wing propaganda.
The NBC reporter is a left wing propagandist out to brainwash the great unwashed.
March 22nd, 2006 at 5:54 pmYeah, that’s it. It is a vast left wing conspiracy.
March 22nd, 2006 at 6:01 pmW KNOWS THE SITUATION IN IRAQ QUITE WELL
March 22nd, 2006 at 6:10 pmHe goes there everyday , read the reports every night ,all the reports , not just from the yes men .he reads all from Faux news , , from Rush , he reads a lot .
How come Laura says he’s asleep by 9.00pm ?
He will do very well as a used car salesman , he should try . Who knows there may be a real future for him there on used car lot .
[...] NBC reporter on the ground in Iraq:Think Progress, DC - 3 hours ago… For instance Ayatollah Sistani just issued a fatwa calling for the death of homosexuals. Now what kind of message is that sending to the troops! uhh.. wait. … [...]
March 22nd, 2006 at 6:34 pm#33 Since they can’t admit being gay with out getting sent home don’t ask don’t tell actually protects them there……. go figure….
March 22nd, 2006 at 7:01 pmIt’s been reported that this Administration has been actively shutting down our troops blogs. Why? If the damn news about Iraq is soooo good, why not let our troops speak for themselves?
March 22nd, 2006 at 7:05 pmThis Iraq thing, it’s all easily explainable. It’s the “Canine Conspiracy.”
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:50 pmI have a question.
If the conservatives are so upset that reporters are in Iraq are lazy, and news editors back home only want to report the bad news, then WHERE ARE ALL THE FOX REPORTERS COVERING THE SCHOOL OPENINGS IN IRAQ???
You would think that FOX would be the Iraq happy news 24/7 network. But I don’t recall them doing much reporting on the ground in Iraq that’s different than anyone else’s.
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:25 am