darin
05-08-2009, 11:04 AM
Excellent Op-Ed.
...Lying about civilian casualties is the one sure way to impede or even halt US (or Israeli) operations, to force such tight restrictions on our troops that they can't win.
...
It works. The media love the charge. Our troops and pilots are always guilty -- even if proven innocent. Because so many on the left want us to be guilty.
Few journalists bother to investigate. If the Taliban, al Qaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas says it, it must be so. In Media Wonderland, terrorists never lie.
This week, Taliban terrorists publicly beheaded three civilians in Afghanistan's Farah province, then herded women and children into compounds from which they fought government forces and US advisers.
With a vicious ground battle under way, the Talibs knew attack aircraft would appear. According to military sources, they set up the target. And, just in case, they slaughtered those women and children with grenades before any aircraft appeared. The entire massacre was a planned media event.
And who gets blamed? Not the Taliban. Before the smoke cleared, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was apologizing. (Apologizing is one thing this administration does with real enthusiasm.)
Our SecState played right into the Taliban's hands. It was instinctive on her part. Clinton and her new Cabinet peers know that our military's evil. No need to say a single word about the Taliban's atrocity.
A few hours later, President Obama stepped up to his mike and read a prewritten statement about his meeting with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's bookie-in-chief, President Asif Ali Zardari.
We'd need to comb the historical records, but it's just possible that no American president ever read a statement so out of touch with on-the-ground reality. The platitudes were thick, the substance was thin and the vision was pure fantasy.
more:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/05082009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_casualty_con_168138.htm
...Lying about civilian casualties is the one sure way to impede or even halt US (or Israeli) operations, to force such tight restrictions on our troops that they can't win.
...
It works. The media love the charge. Our troops and pilots are always guilty -- even if proven innocent. Because so many on the left want us to be guilty.
Few journalists bother to investigate. If the Taliban, al Qaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas says it, it must be so. In Media Wonderland, terrorists never lie.
This week, Taliban terrorists publicly beheaded three civilians in Afghanistan's Farah province, then herded women and children into compounds from which they fought government forces and US advisers.
With a vicious ground battle under way, the Talibs knew attack aircraft would appear. According to military sources, they set up the target. And, just in case, they slaughtered those women and children with grenades before any aircraft appeared. The entire massacre was a planned media event.
And who gets blamed? Not the Taliban. Before the smoke cleared, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was apologizing. (Apologizing is one thing this administration does with real enthusiasm.)
Our SecState played right into the Taliban's hands. It was instinctive on her part. Clinton and her new Cabinet peers know that our military's evil. No need to say a single word about the Taliban's atrocity.
A few hours later, President Obama stepped up to his mike and read a prewritten statement about his meeting with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's bookie-in-chief, President Asif Ali Zardari.
We'd need to comb the historical records, but it's just possible that no American president ever read a statement so out of touch with on-the-ground reality. The platitudes were thick, the substance was thin and the vision was pure fantasy.
more:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/05082009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_casualty_con_168138.htm