Disrespectful or not aside. It reflects the sentiment of our soldiers in the front line. They maybe tired of seeing their comrades getting killed for nothing, especially if you are told to be the target of a turkey shot. Have you given that a thought? Wouldn't you want at least given a chance to survive with the right equipment if you are in that situation?

It easy to talk about protocols if your life is not on the line.

__________________
95 R129
04 Infiniti G35.5 BS
10 X204

If the situation is as bad as he said, then I'll bet you silver dollar to donut that his fellow soldiers are padding him on the back. You honestly think any one of those guys want to die or maimed? Let's be real. I may not be able to speak out, I will thank the guy and call him a hero if someone in my shoes does it for me.

__________________
95 R129
04 Infiniti G35.5 BS
10 X204

Who do you think programmed the Nortel Megellan ATM switches for field communications network on the back of the Humvees throughout Desert Storm?

Can you hear me now? (TM of Verizon)

__________________
95 R129
04 Infiniti G35.5 BS
10 X204

Yeah, we all get hot under the collar, but all and all, there is no better group of people I'd rather know. Hope all of you enjoy the coming holidays, whatever your religious persuasion or lack there of!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Kirk

Ditto. We will pick it up after the Holidays

__________________
95 R129
04 Infiniti G35.5 BS
10 X204

Note this article on Rumsfeld's current visit to Iraq. In one statement he continues to make the false connection between Iraq and 9-11, and in another, blames the question from the soldier on the reporter for "planting" the question. Given the onesided nature of the questions he was asked on this trip, all designed to portray the media as the bad guy, when the real truth is he has screwed pooch, I bet he planted a few questions of his own. The Republican Party has become the Blame Party. Make a mistake, be a man and admit ? Hell no, lets blame the "liberals". News is bad because you've blown the war so bad it stinks like a dead rat? No problem, blame the media. Just more of our slide into Nazism. "Liberals" and "media" - the new word for "Jews" and "kikes". Same techniques, same reason for using it - to portray The Party and its Leader as infallible, and to find scapegoats for everything that is wrong to deflect the blame. Does anybody find it odd we have stories where soldiers are complaining about lack of armor and protection, yet Rumsfeld seems to have found a group in 100% support? Turns out there is a reason for this to - The Regualr Army has been getting all the armor and protection it needs, while the Guard and Reserve troops have been getting the $hitty equipment and flak jackets. Rummy knows as long as he visits RA units, he's safe from the possibility someone mignt make an embarassing gripe. The Army is starting to become as divided as the rest of the country, as our modern draftees - the Guard and Reserves, get screwed while the Pentagon lavishes equipment on its RA bootlickers. Don;t believe me? When you read press stories about troops complaining, note what part of the Army they serve, you'll get the picture :


Rumsfeld needles media as troops bemoan bad press


MOSUL, Dec 24 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday took a delighted dig at the media after troops he was visiting in Iraq complained their good works were ignored by the press while disasters grabbed the headlines.

A soldier at his first stop in Mosul asked Rumsfeld how the "propaganda" worked?

Rumsfeld, under attack since he appeared to brush aside a question about poor equipment from a U.S. soldier in Kuwait that later turned out to have been composed with help from a reporter, jumped at the opportunity to turn the tables.

"That doesn't sound like a question placed by the press," he told his audience to loud applause.

A few hours later in Tikrit, the same frustration surfaced with another soldier complaining that she had a hard time explaining what they were doing in Iraq when she got back home and asking what could be done to get past the bad press.

Rumsfeld said the message was getting through anyway.

"I think the country does understand that we lost 3,000 people on September 11th and the fact that those people were operating in this part of the world ... You've seen the evil up close and personal, you know the danger that this poses.

"What you're doing is important. I think the American people get it."

© Copyright Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of Reuters Ltd.

http://powerlineblog.com/

The Associated Press Twists the Truth


Long-time readers of this site know that the Associated Press is not a
reliable news source. One of the most blatant lies of the 2004 campaign was
when AP reporter Scott Lindlaw, a long-time Democratic partisan, falsely
reported that a crowd of Republicans in Wisconsin booed when President Bush
announced that Bill Clinton had just been hospitalized with a heart
problem. We publicized this story here, as did others in the blogosphere.
We did a number of follow-up posts, including this one. Despite many emails
sent by our readers and others, the AP stonewalled and never apologized for
the outrageous lie told by its reporter.


Reader Michael Yore points out that the AP is at it again, with this report
about Secretary Rumsfeld's trip to Mosul to visit the troops there:


The questions from the troops for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
were considerably more friendly on his Christmas Eve visit to Iraq
than they were on his previous trip to the region a couple of weeks
ago.


Two weeks ago at a forward base in Kuwait, a handful of soldiers
openly challenged him about inadequate equipment and long deployments.


Rumsfeld cut off their complaints by saying, "You go to war with the
Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have." That set
off a wave of criticism of the defense chief's brusque manner.


This is pure fabrication. The transcript of Rumsfeld's question and answer
session in Kuwait is here. Judge for yourself whether Rumsfeld "cut off
[the soldiers'] complaints":


Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. My question is more logistical. We've had
troops in Iraq for coming up on three years and we've always staged
here out of Kuwait. Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local
landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to
up-armor our vehicles and why don't we have those resources readily
available to us? [Applause]


SEC. RUMSFELD: I missed the first part of your question. And could you
repeat it for me?


Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for
coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north
relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of
rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been
shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on
our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament
vehicles to carry with us north.


SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace
at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from
all over the world, wherever they're not needed, to a place here where
they are needed. I'm told that they are being ? the Army is ? I think
it's something like 400 a month are being done. And it's essentially a
matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter on
the part of the Army of desire. It's a matter of production and
capability of doing it.


As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the
Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq
conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor
necessary at a rate that they believe ? it's a greatly expanded rate
from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate
that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.


I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the
Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not
every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it
to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip. It's
interesting, I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people
who've been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about
it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can
be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown
up. And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have
as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate
level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has
been working on.


And General Whitcomb, is there anything you'd want to add to that?


GEN. WHITCOMB: Nothing. [Laughter] Mr. Secretary, I'd be happy to.
That is a focus on what we do here in Kuwait and what is done up in
the theater, both in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. As the secretary
has said, it's not a matter of money or desire; it is a matter of the
logistics of being able to produce it. The 699th, the team that we've
got here in Kuwait has done [Cheers] a tremendous effort to take that
steel that they have and cut it, prefab it and put it on vehicles. But
there is nobody from the president on down that is not aware that this
is a challenge for us and this is a desire for us to accomplish.


SEC. RUMSFELD: The other day, after there was a big threat alert in
Washington, D.C. in connection with the elections, as I recall, I
looked outside the Pentagon and there were six or eight up-armored
humvees. They're not there anymore. [Cheers] [Applause] They're en
route out here, I can assure you. Next. Way in the back. Yes.


What a country, in which a National Guardsman can be "cut off" so
"brusquely" by one of the most powerful men in the world. Actually, if you
read the whole transcript, what comes through are Secretary Rumsfeld's
forthrightness, common sense and immense good humor, and the affection the
troops show for their leader.


Which is consistent, I guess, with the question a soldier in Mosul asked
Rumsfeld yesterday: "How do we win the war in the media?"

__________________
D. Chang
Network Integration Engineer
MCSE, CLP, CCNA

Why of course - the AP always lies, and The Party always tells the truth! Thats the real reason we are losing - its the media! Its all "the liberals" fault! It's the "enemy within!". I wonder how much of Rumsfeld's propaganda push was run by these guys, who all just happen to work for him?


Truth Be Told, Lies Are Part of Pentagon Strategy


WASHINGTON - "The first casualty when war comes is truth." So said Sen. Hiram Johnson, a California Republican, in the year 1917.

There is a struggle inside the Pentagon over where to draw the line in conducting so-called information operations or propaganda in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and who will be involved. On one side are the information warfare activists, led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretary Douglas Feith. On the other are those who believe that telling lies to the media is wrong and military public affairs officers should never be involved in that.

The wrangling has been going on since soon after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 when a Pentagon war planner, speaking anonymously, told a Washington Post reporter, "This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine. We're going to lie about things."

Not long afterward the Pentagon opened its controversial Office of Strategic Influence amid reports that its mission included planting false news stories in the international media. A public outcry led to the hasty shuttering of that office, but Rumsfeld served notice that while the office may have been closed, its mission would be continued by other entities.

The defense secretary told reporters on Nov. 18, 2002: "Fine, you want to savage this thing, fine. I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done, and I have."

This week the Los Angeles Times reported that CNN had been targeted in an information war operation three weeks before the start of the attack against Fallujah. On Oct. 14 Marine 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a public affairs spokesman, went on camera to declare that "troops crossed the line of departure" -- that the Fallujah operation was under way.

It was not. The U.S. commanders obviously hoped that the false news broadcast by CNN would trigger certain moves by the insurgents and foreign terrorists holding the Sunni city -- moves that then could be analyzed to gain information on how they would defend Fallujah.

Marine sources in Iraq flatly deny that Lt. Gilbert's statement to CNN was a deception operation or part of a larger psy-war operation. They say the distinction between public affairs and information operations is very clear and jealously guarded by the public affairs community.

Also this week the Washington Post brought new attention on the friendly-fire killing of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, a former NFL football star who gave up the spotlight to become a soldier. For days after the death of Tillman, military commanders and spokesmen both in Afghanistan and at Fort Bragg left out any mention of his having been killed by American bullets as they spun the story of a hero killed in battle.

That incident brought to mind the false stories about the rescue and heroism of Pvt. Jessica Lynch foisted on reporters during the opening days of the attack into Iraq. The official picture painted initially was of a young woman who fought to the last bullet before being wounded and captured. The truth was that Pvt. Lynch was injured when the vehicle in which she was riding crashed and she was knocked unconscious. She never fired a shot.

An investigation of the Tillman death and the information given to the media is presently under way, according to an Army spokesman. Defense Department spokesman Larry DiRita says he has asked his staff for "more information" on how the Oct. 14 Marine incident came to pass.

Critics point to one troubling recent development: the decision by commanders in Iraq in mid-September to combine information operations, psychological operations and public affairs into a single strategic communications office run by an Air Force brigadier general who reports directly to Gen. George Casey, the American commander.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote a letter in late September warning American commanders of the problems of lumping military public affairs in with information operations.

Myers warned that public affairs and information operations must remain separate. But his warning seems to have fallen on deaf ears in Iraq because civilian leaders in the Pentagon and the National Security Council insisted on a blended effort of both public affairs and psy-ops to woo Iraqi and Arab support for America's efforts in Iraq.

In the old days of the Cold War America's propaganda war was fought by the U.S. Information Agency, which was strictly forbidden from distributing any propaganda inside the United States. USIA was first gutted and then folded into the State Department during the mid-1990s.

Everyone involved in this argument would do well to heed Gen. Myers' warning against mixing the liars and the truth-tellers in one pot. That distinction was blurred during the Vietnam War and the image the American public carried away was of the Five O'Clock Follies, the daily official news briefing in Saigon where lies and spin were dispensed along with the facts.

Believe me, we do not want to go there again.


About the Author
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a nationally syndicated columnist. One of America's preeminent war correspondents, with more than four decades as a reporter and writer, he recently concluded an assignment as a special consultant to Gen. Colin Powell at the State Department.

Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent 22 years as a foreign and war correspondent and bureau chief for United Press International, and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and senior writer for U.S. News & World Report magazine. His overseas postings include tours in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow in the former Soviet Union. During the course of 15 years of foreign postings Galloway served four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War and half a dozen other combat operations.
In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert Storm, riding with the 24th Infantry Division (Mech) in the assault into Iraq. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway "The finest combat correspondent of our generation -- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."



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Nothing new about propaganda mind games. It is as old as recorded history, and our country is not immune to it as we were taught by public education. Yes it does appear to be getting worse under the Bush administration and before as TV can quickly program any individual who gets snagged by it. People should learn to evaluate the source instead of taking it as "gospel." Pun intended.
Democrats need to start a network to get their viewpoint across. Republicans have Fox, so Democrats could have Sox or something.

__________________
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!

.....or Sux.......okay, i'm just kidding. don't get all upset.

I am really upset. BooooHooooo! Okay, I am over it.

__________________
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!

So mush for the Iraqi "remnents and dead-enders" theory:


Army historian cites lack of postwar plan
Military strategist calls effort in Iraq 'mediocre'

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters file
The U.S. military lacked a formal plan for stabilizing Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, a failure that has contributed to a "mediocre" Army effort there, war historian and strategist Maj. Isaiah Wilson III has concluded.
By Thomas E. Ricks


Updated: 12:49 a.m. ET Dec. 25, 2004

The U.S. military invaded Iraq without a formal plan for occupying and stabilizing the country and this high-level failure continues to undercut what has been a "mediocre" Army effort there, an Army historian and strategist has concluded.

"There was no Phase IV plan" for occupying Iraq after the combat phase, writes Maj. Isaiah Wilson III, who served as an official historian of the campaign and later as a war planner in Iraq. While a variety of government offices had considered the possible situations that would follow a U.S. victory, Wilson writes, no one produced an actual document laying out a strategy to consolidate the victory after major combat operations ended.

"While there may have been 'plans' at the national level, and even within various agencies within the war zone, none of these 'plans' operationalized the problem beyond regime collapse" — that is, laid out how U.S. forces would be moved and structured, Wilson writes in an essay that has been delivered at several academic conferences but not published. "There was no adequate operational plan for stability operations and support operations."

High-level criticism
Similar criticisms have been made before, but until now they have not been stated so authoritatively and publicly by a military insider positioned to be familiar with top-secret planning. During the period in question, from April to June 2003, Wilson was a researcher for the Army's Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group. Then, from July 2003 to March 2004, he was the chief war planner for the 101st Airborne Division, which was stationed in northern Iraq.

A copy of Wilson's study as presented at Cornell University in October was obtained by The Washington Post.

As a result of the failure to produce a plan, Wilson asserts, the U.S. military lost the dominant position in Iraq in the summer of 2003 and has been scrambling to recover ever since. "In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative ... gained over an off-balanced enemy," he writes. "The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since."

It was only in November 2003, seven months after the fall of Baghdad, that U.S. occupation authorities produced a formal "Phase IV" plan for stability operations, Wilson reports. Phase I covers preparation for combat, followed by initial operations, Phase II, and combat, Phase III. Post-combat operations are called Phase IV.

Army commanders faulted
Many in the Army have blamed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon civilians for the unexpectedly difficult occupation of Iraq, but Wilson reserves his toughest criticism for Army commanders who, he concludes, failed to grasp the strategic situation in Iraq and so not did not plan properly for victory. He concludes that those who planned the war suffered from "stunted learning and a reluctance to adapt."

Army commanders still misunderstand the strategic problem they face and therefore are still pursuing a flawed approach, writes Wilson, who is scheduled to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point next year. "Plainly stated, the 'western coalition' failed, and continues to fail, to see Operation Iraqi Freedom in its fullness," he asserts.

"Reluctance in even defining the situation ... is perhaps the most telling indicator of a collective cognitive dissidence on part of the U.S. Army to recognize a war of rebellion, a people's war, even when they were fighting it," he comments.

Because of this failure, Wilson concludes, the U.S. military remains "perhaps in peril of losing the 'war,' even after supposedly winning it."

Overall, he grades the U.S. military performance in Iraq as "mediocre."

Phase IV defended
Wilson's essay amounts to an indictment of the education and performance of senior U.S. officials involved in the war. "U.S. war planners, practitioners and the civilian leadership conceived of the war far too narrowly" and tended to think of operations after the invasion "as someone else's mission," he says. In fact, Wilson says, those later operations were critical because they were needed to win the war rather than just decapitate Saddam Hussein's government.

Air Force Capt. Chris Karns, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which as the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East oversaw planning for the war in Iraq, said, "A formal Phase IV plan did exist." He said he could not explain how Wilson came to a different conclusion.

Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who as chief of the Central Command led the war planning in 2002 and 2003, states in his recent memoir, "American Soldier," that throughout the planning for the invasion of Iraq, Phase IV stability operations were discussed. Occupation problems "commanded hours and days of discussion and debate among CENTCOM planners and Washington officials," he adds. At another point, he states, "I was confident in the Phase IV plan."

Asked about other officers' reaction to his essay, Wilson said in an e-mail Monday, "What active-duty feedback I have received (from military officers attending the conferences) has been relatively positive," with "general agreement with the premises I offer in the work."

He said he has no plans to publish the essay, in part because he would expect difficulty in getting the Army's approval, but said he did not object to having it written about. "I think this is something that has to get out, so it can be considered," he said in a telephone interview. "There actually is something we can fix here, in terms of operational planning."

In his analysis of U.S. military operations in 2003 in northern Iraq, Wilson also touches on another continuing criticism of Bush administration's handling of Iraq — the number of troops there. "The scarcity of available 'combat power' ... greatly complicated the situation," he states.

Wilson contends that a lack of sufficient troops was a consequence of the earlier, larger problem of failing to understand that prevailing in Iraq involved more than just removing Hussein. "This overly simplistic conception of the 'war' led to a cascading undercutting of the war effort: too few troops, too little coordination with civilian and governmental/non-governmental agencies ... and too little allotted time to achieve 'success,' " he writes.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Maybe you can Get John Kerry to expalin how his 4 months experience would let him solve the issue overnight.....OTHER THAN SURRENDERING TO THE TERRORISTS.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

There you go again, cheerleading with "Bush! Bush! He's our man! If he can't do it, nobody can!"

The subject is whether or not he had any idea of what the point was before he went in, which is a clear and resounding "NO!" and whether or not he realizes it and is working a plan to shut down the private human game reserve he has established for Islamists to come and shoot and bomb America's young men and women with next to no penalty. They love Bush for it, as if they get to kill, mutilate or wound an American they are heroes across the Muslim world, and if they get killed trying they are martyrs celebrated across the Muslim world.

Bush is in charge. Kerry lost the election. Bush is responsible. Kerry is not. Try to use an excuse your parents might accept, this "Johnny failed the test too, and his parents didn't ground him!" line of logic is universally rejected by parents the world over. Why would you think we should accept a line of reasoning we reject from a child from you? Get another pitch. Jim

__________________
Own:
1986 Euro 190E 2.3-16 (291,000 miles),
1998 E300D TurboDiesel, 231,000 miles -purchased with 45,000,
1988 300E 5-speed 252,000 miles,
1983 240D 4-speed, purchased w/136,000, now with 222,000 miles.
2009 ML320CDI Bluetec, 89,000 miles

Owned:
1971 220D (250,000 miles plus, sold to father-in-law),
1975 240D (245,000 miles - died of body rot),
1991 350SD (176,560 miles, weakest Benz I have owned),
1999 C230 Sport (45,400 miles),
1982 240D (321,000 miles, put to sleep)

Jim you like most liberals moaned and complained about Regan...and how he was going to start WW3......well it didn't happen, and USSR is no more....

The Liberals are incapible of acknowledging their wrongs.....so they constantly create percieved wrongs of the opposition.

Point is if this all stopped tomorrow....you would not acknowledge he was right, and you would look for something else to complain about....

THis is why the liberals oare loosing support by the day...................

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche