Start Your Stopwatches
By Mitch Berg
I’m looking for the first instance of someone in lefty politics or the media taking this news out of context:
Attacks against British and Iraqi forces have plunged by 90 percent in southern Iraq since London withdrew its troops from the main city of Basra, the commander of British forces there said.
The presence of British forces in downtown Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, was the single largest instigator of violence, Maj. Gen. Graham Binns told reporters Thursday on a visit to Baghdad’s Green Zone.
I’m gonna watch for talking heads, leftybloggers and MSM stopping the report right there.
Of course, that wouldn’t be the whole story:
With an overwhelmingly Shiite population, Basra has not seen the level of sectarian violence that has torn Iraq apart since the February 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad.
But it has seen major fighting between insurgents and coalition troops, as well as between Shiite militias vying for control of the city and its security forces.
British officials expected a spike in such “intra-militia violence” after they pulled back from the city’s center, and were surprised to find none, Binns said.
And watch for this bit here…:
“That’s because the Sadrist militia is all powerful here — more powerful than Badr. If Badr was allowed to take on JAM in Basra, they’d lose pretty quickly,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
…to be portrayed as a failure, rather than a key part of fighting this sort of counterinsurgency; picking the most powerful, most stability-enhancing, most co-optable local faction and playing it against the others. It’s counterintuitive to people who are commited to democracy, now, including many neoconservatives. (Steven Vincent approached it suspiciously but clinically in his writing about the British zone; he was eventually murdered in Basra).
November 16th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Is that a complaint about taking something out of context?
John Kerry said our troops are terrorists.
Never happened, never will.
November 16th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Well Mitch, DU posted the entire story as a link.. man, those bastards, how could they take things out of context like that!?!
November 16th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Funny thing too Mitch, DU put their link up three hours before you put this up, were you unaware of their story when you posted, or were you just creating a fictional strawman that you ‘knew’ that eventually the left would do something you predicted here when you knew it had already happened?
November 16th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Jesus on a pogo stick. Three straight Peev comments. It’s like some sort of blog SNL skit.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Funny thing too Mitch, DU put their link up three hours before you put this up,
Mitch, In the future you will need to check with DU or at the very least with Peev before you post – he really does think this is his blog.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Queu Lilliputians, scatology included.
Kel – If Mitch, who reads LOTS of blogs, already knew the DU story was out there, he created a false premise, with an apparent intent to mislead. I never said he had to get my permission, that’s your illogical, fractured, addle-brained fiction. I said he shouldn’t create false stories/false impressions. I asked a question honestly, though, it’s entirely possible he didn’t know, and if he said he didn’t I’ll believe him.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Back in 1972 Kerry dd say US soldiers were criminals.
John Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relation Committee, April 22, 1971:
“I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command….
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”
November 16th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Ish. I say ban him again, and again and again and again.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Terry,
What you’ve said is true, and entirely unrelated to Kerry being taken out of context and misrepresented as having said our troops were terrorists.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Right-o, peev. Kerry said our troops were war criminals, not terrorists.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Right, but was taken out of context, the point of this post, was that Kerry said, our troops, raiding homes in the middle of the night, terrorizes the Iraq civilian population.
Which people *ahem* reported/posted as “Kerry calls Troops Terrorists.” Also, Kerry HARDLY called all troops war criminals, what he said, and what has been documented repeatedly, is that we, our troops, have committed war crimes, which DID happen in Vietnam. He went on to say he knew of specific instances and (iirc) said perhaps even he or the troops under him, engaged in some. Now that’s actually being honest about the impacts of wanton behavior, both on the psyche of the soldier, and upon the civilian population in the occupied country, and, btw, happens to be the EXACT point David Patraeus has made numerous times. We can’t win the peace if we treat the civilian population like dirt.
But this was a complaint about ‘out of context’ theatre – and I was simply pointing out that we don’t have to go very far to see exactly the same conduct repeated by the right, that it is complaining about here.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Hey, Peev was a troop, as I learned last week. I say if Kerry didn’t hurt Peev’s feelings, then you chickenhawks shouldn’t take offense either.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
How about the Vietnam vets? Should we check with Peev to see how that effected him so we can decided if it was offensive then?
“John Kerry said our troops are terrorists.
Never happened, never will. ”
Except when it did, it didn’t count because Vietnam was bad. Man.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
I didn’t know your fragile wingnut sensibilities were so easily bruised, Buzzkill. Someone getting the smelling salts, I think Buzzkill’s about to have another of his fainting spells!
November 16th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Angry clown is now using 1st person? What’s up with that? Stick with the program Chuckles.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Hey Buzz…
the “never happened, never will” was sarcasm. just a hint. It did happen, here.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
and Buzz, Kerry was a vietnam vet, one would think he doesn’t have to get his own persmission to relate his own experiences.
I get that hypernationalist sentiments think ANY comments being honest about our conduct, about our own failings is treason, but you know what, it isn’t, it’s called being honest. It’s called showing we’re better than scumbag nations like Vietnam – by admitting we fail, and holding us to a better standard. Get it.
But no, instead, let’s bury our heads in the sand, and distort John Kerry’s comment, let’s TAKE THEM OUT OF CONTEXT, and then bitch when it happens in reverse.
November 16th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Peev, no one ever said that all our troops were war criminals. What Kerry did was testify to the integrity of the soldiers making the accusations (“over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans”) and then say that these war crimes (Kerry’s words) were “committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command”. Thus he indicted the US military for war crimes in a time that that war was still being fought.
His words mean nothing different in the full context of his testimony as recorded here: http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/JohnKerryTestimony.html.
Whether his allegations were true or untrue isn’t at issue. It is perfectly legitimate to say that his accusation reveals something despicable — or heroic, if you were on the anti-war side — in his character.
November 16th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Funny thing too Mitch, DU put their link up three hours before you put this up,
I don’t play the “scoop” game. This is not a news outlet.
were you unaware of their story when you posted,
I haven’t been out on DU for probably 2-3 years, that I can remember.
or were you just creating a fictional strawman that you ‘knew’ that eventually the left would do something you predicted here when you knew it had already happened? \
We won’t know it’s “fictional” until we see all the lefty commentators who don’t jump up and down like poo-flinging monkeys bellowing “Look! Iraq Will be Peaceful When We Leave!”
November 16th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Poo flinging is hardly an occupation left to lefties.
Glad to hear this wasn’t a scam, sorry, but you do spin things a bit. My apology for the insinuation.
I agree that this isn’t proof that Iraq will be peaceful if we leave. It’s absolutely NOT that.
Nor is the fact that attacks from AQI are down proof that the surge is working, yet, that gets pretty well misrepresented too.
Basra is about the fact that the Shiaa want to run things, get out of their way, and they stop blowing you up.
Baghdad is about ‘balkanization’ – about the fracture of that city into Shiaa and Sunni areas, and about a fact that utterly repudiates the whole reason for the invasion in the first place, namely that Iraqis had little or NO interest in ‘fundamentalist’ Sunni-ism (Suffi’ism or Wahabism). It wasn’t going to send WMD to the Taliban.. and once we stopped being so STUPID about civilian casualties, a lesson it took this dullard of a Prez 4 years to figure out, even though he had plenty of people (Patraeus) telling him so – well, solving AQI wasn’t so big a stretch, and really had next to nothing to do with any surge. Now, Shiaa/sunni violence, that problem is both NOT solved long term, and while probably somewhat decreased, is more due to balkanization, than anything else.
Yet – I don’t think there is any evidence that suggests that if our troops left Bagdhad, attacks on our troops would likely drop, and attacks in the city, probably wouldn’t change. It doesn’t mean Iraq would be peaceful, it means our presence, other than as an agent against AQI (or similar agents) is mostly unwanted. We’re not going to sort out the Sunni Shiaa mess we created. The Shiaa (just like in Basra) want us gone, the Sunni are of two minds, first they hate us for toppling their advantaged position, but second, they are afraid of what COULD happen if we left. I doubt seriously that we have much impact on Sunni/Shiaa violence. I didn’t say NO impact, I said much impact. Our presence is neither of great benefit, nor harm, except to ourselves, in solving THE MAJOR PROBLEM.
November 16th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
That last paragraph should have said “any evidence that can refute a suggestion” in the first paragraph.
November 16th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
in the first sentence..of the last paragraph.. sorry.