As if you didn't know- the media in Iraq

[AndyP]

Here's a good article about what our troops and our gov't are doing doing to "encourage freedom of the press". This really scares me. I knew it was bad, but not this bad. The truth is very frightening. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1197288,00.html

"Since the "war on terror" began, al-Jazeera has been a thorn in the side of the Pentagon. "My solution is to change the channel," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said this month in Baghdad, "to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources."

The trouble for Kimmitt is that millions of people in the Middle East disagree. Al-Jazeera has become the most popular TV network in the region - with a daily audience of 35 million - precisely because it has shown the human carnage that US military onslaughts leave in their wake. If it became a "legitimate, authoritative, honest news station" of the kind that routinely censors the realities of US military operations, it would lose its audience. "

[ewagner]

1. Kimmit doesn't understand

Al-Jazeera is a popular news outlet. They may indeed have a bias but Kimmit doesn't understand that he had to DEAL WITH THE BIAS. That's what "winning the hearts and minds" is all about.

Kimmit may be a good military man but he is politically tone deaf.

[lutherj]

2. If it didn't happen, they wouldn't be able to report it.

"The al-Jazeera reports of US snipers firing at women and children in the streets of Falluja have now been corroborated by international observers in the city."

[fob]

3. WTF? Is this part for real?

The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources - Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt

It's not the INTENTIONAL killing of women and children that's the problem, it's the SHOWING of it that is?

Is he trying to deflect blame by mislabelling as illegitimate the source that caught US troops on film committing war-crimes?

Do I understand the words that are coming outta his mouth?

time for nap in fetal position