Why is it that news about Afghanistan is not being covered?

[LittleApple81]

I have two friends who work with an NGO there and they say the situation is really bad. They cannot go around without heavy guard and trips to the countryside are impossible.
Even Novak had an article saying that is not going well, and you know Novak is no liberal.
C-Span was discussing it early in the morning. By the way, few liberal callers.

[saracat]

1. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

I am Bush the great and powerful. There is no Afganistan!

[rebellious woman]

2. Great Wizard was a fake too.

[Don_G]

3. Probably Because It Isn't Going Well

I'm sure Dimbo and his "minions-of-evil" are surpressing all honest news reports from the area to enhance his upcoming chance of re-selection.

Afghanistan has always been a quagmire as the British, Soviet Union has discovered and we are just finding out.

[dusty64]

10. Yup. This will probably

be what happens will coverage of Iraq once things are supposedly turned over to our handpicked regime. Out of sight out of mind.

[TexasProgresive]

4. Afghanistan is off the radar

One of our local communities set up a Memorial Day display of American flags - one for each of the US dead in Iraq- they didn't say it that way but the number of flags was 800+ instead of nearly 900 which would include the dead soldiers of Afghanistan.

[acmavm]

5. The two biggest reasons I can think of is 1. because we lost that one big

time and 2. we lost it because of our little foray into Iraq.

Since we lost it due to complete ignorance and greed on the part of the bush* administration, it is not something that the press wants to discuss. bush* looks bad enough already without going into that subject.

Then there is always the issue that, like Iraq, we don't have a way of ever getting out of there. The embarrassment caused by losing ro third world warriors did terrible damage to the Soviets, it will do the same to us.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

13. Heck...we ALREADY took it on the chin in Vietnam...

...that's why our military developed the kind of quick-strike, heavy air, low-casualty doctrine to be used in every conflict after Vietnam. That also meshed well with the all-volunteer concept which included a smaller standing army.

Unfortunately, we had a coup in December 2000, and some of our top military leaders went with the flow and followed the direction of the NeoCon Junta. We are now mired in two major conflicts in the Middle East, and God only knows how many minor conflicts throughout the rest of the world. Now, the pressure is building for a military draft because the military cannot keep pace with the military committments generated by the FratBoy Fuhrer and his rightwing, goose-stepping minions.

God forbid that someone use some common sense and get us the hell out of those conflicts in the Middle East...to hell with being "embarrassed"...before the whole deck of cards we now know as the United States comes crashing down.

[RafterMan]

6. You know,

I really wish one of these international affairs people Kerry has all over TV would remind everyone WHY Rummy refused to put more peacekeepers in to stabilize the country after Kabul fell.

The press corps was genuinely mystified by that at the time and now that the answer has become clear, it seems like a good time to reevaluate the wisdom of that decision.

[gottaB]

7. Because the truth is at odds with preconceptions

The way I see it, there are two increasingly self-evident ways of framing the Afghanistan conflict.

1. The United States has been defeated in Afghanistan.
   
2. The United States never intended to rebuild Afghanistan, but instead meant to preserve a state of perpetual hostility and social unrest in order to more efficaciously carry out certain nefarious deeds believed to be essential to fighting the "war on terror."
   

Neither of these frames jibes with popular sentiments about the Afghanistan war. No major media outlet wants to buck popular sentiment or take the steps necessary to correct pervasive misunderstandings. Quite apart from their ongoing interest in maintaining advantageous positions within the flow of official disinformation, the major news organizations also must consider their reputatation, such as it is. Getting the story right would involve considerable expenditures of capital, social, economic, and cultural. Don't count it any time soon.

[LittleApple81]

8. A caller on C-Span asked "Why do we spray drug crops in Latin

America and let Afghanistan increase their poppy crop the way we have?" He said the invasion of Afghanistan has become an incredible failure.

[gottaB]

11. sooner than I pictured, perhaps

If we know it already, it won't be long before they inform us. Fully, not just drips and drabs.

The change could propelled be market logic, or Good Bye Lenin! logic.

:shrug:

[electricmonk]

14. Latest from a friend over there

A friend of mine is a journalist working for IHA out of Turkey and is currently in Afghanistan with the Marines. Here's a snip from today's blog:

But there is talk that the governor is involved in the drug trade. This would not at all be uncommon and really shows the root of the problem here in Afghanistan. Everything is connected to the drug trade. Warlords, militias, governors, terrorists, the local economy. All of it dependent on the poppy plant. In fact there is no way possible that the governor, whose compound is surrounded by the lovely flower, would not be getting a cut of the wealth that surrounds him. It's ingrained in the culture here and it's going to be a tough habit to break.
Currently the coalition is in a "support mode" and pretty much turns a blind eye to the poppies. There is an unconfirmed, but well "in the know" report that two soldiers killed in Orzagun province earlier this year weren't killed by Taliban, but were killed by farmers after they torched some poppy fields.
I'm also told that satellite imagery shows that this year's poppy harvest (which we are in the middle of) will be a record harvest. This is the first full harvest since the fall of the Taliban, which just a few years ago had the poppy nearly eradicated.

More here.

[kentuck]

9. If a tree falls in the forest......?

And no one is there, from the press, does it make a sound?

[chelsea0011]

12. The media wouldn rather be in a hotel in the green zone

than a tent at 12,000 fett above sea level.