FRIENDS, THE MEDIA, IRAQ AND THE WAR

A very old friend wrote me today. It has been years since I saw him but he is on my e-mail list. We have exchanged family pictures over the years. I recently forwarded an e-mail that I thought was poignant, describing the heroism of an American marine in Iraq.

You will find it here: http://www.wtv-zone.com/Mary/THISWILLMAKEYOUPROUD.HTML

(Click on it and scroll down)

In response he replied that he is proud of the marine, but that he believed that the war in Iraq is wrong, that the “Free World” opposes us, that the war has cost us billions that presumably could have been better spent elsewhere, that we are mired down and that our actions are encouraging terrorists. He went on to mention the Geneva convention and prisoner abuse. I suspect that he is unfamiliar with the actual Geneva convention and assumes that prisoner abuse is SOP in the army (there may be a part in the army field manual that tells our soldiers just how to abuse prisoners).

I don’t know my friend that well any more; we played together nearly 50 years ago in a small town in Michigan and have gone our separate ways since then. But I can understand why he believes what he believes.

And it’s too bad.

He believes what he believes because that is the story that has been reported via the MSM since the early days of the war. Click on the link above again and let me know if you have seen any news reports of heroic action on the part of our troops in Iraq. Tell me if you are aware of any reconstruction going on in Iraq. Yet, if the situation is so dire, if the people hate us so, if the Islamofascists are winning, why are people lined up in the street to join the Iraqi army? Why do Iraqi children swarm around our soldiers (and become the targets of murderous killers who drive car bombs into the crowd)? Why did they line up outside polling places, braving bombs and bullets, to vote in legislative election in January and why did they line up again yesterday to vote on the new constitution?

An interesting example of the media’s bias found in Oxblog where the NY Times and the Washington Post could not agree on WHAT HAPPENED TODAY IN IRAQ? Were the voters “unenthusiastic “(NY Times), or were there “scenes of joy” (WA Post)?

Thank God for Al Gore’s invention of the internet. We now get our reports unfiltered, if we want to get the facts. If we are still stuck on the wrong side of the bridge to the 21st Century, we can still have the MSM tell us they facts they wish us to know, and tell us how to think about them.

But by all means, don’t red more than one newspaper; you’ll get confused.