To the Soldiers:
Thank you for your service.
Thank you for your protection and thank you for putting your life on the line, every day and every night for me.
Thank you for being willing to leave your families, not knowing whether you will return because you are a patriot and feel the need to protect those of us here in America.
Thank you for not giving up on us, despite the battle raging here at home.
Thank you for stepping up to the plate, time and time again and for understanding the Iraqi's are human beings that deserve to live in freedom.
Thank you for everything you do for.
I support you and your mission as do hundreds of thousands, even millions of Americans.....we will continue to support you.
To Our President:
Thank you for keeping your word when you promised:
We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail." -- George W. Bush
Thank you for not bowing to what is popular but doing what you were elected to do...keep us safe and stand up for the principles you stand for.
Thank you for your continued love for us and for supporting the troops 100%.
Thank you for understanding the nature of our enemy.
Thank you for understanding that if we give up and retreat in defeat, they will come back here again and force us to face them on THEIR terms instead of ours.
Thank you for a strong economy and for your tax cuts to promote an even stronger economy.
Thank you for not turning your back on us as many have turned their backs on you.
Thank You Mr. President and God Bless You. (Bless that little veto pen of yours too, use it well!!!!)
I do not agree with all of the issues the president stands for, but I respect him for standing on principle on those issues.
I was slightly to the left before 9/11, then I realized that the left isn't prepared to handle the issues that face us in todays post 9/11 world and I became FIRMLY planted to the right ever since.
I have been reading military blogs again today and I would like to thank Milblogging.com for bringing 1,644 military blogs in 28 countries to our attention and giving us access to our soldiers, to their words, thoughts and feelings.
I am starting with our soldiers view of the Left and the Democratic Party.
I would like to bring one to everyones attention to 2nd Battalion, 94th Artillery, and their entry titled "The Ghost of Tokyo Rose".
Anyone who remembers anything about World War II, or has studied anything about World War II, will understand and remember that during World War II, the Japanese developed a way to demoralize the American forces. The Japanese psychological warfare experts developed a message they felt would work.
They gave their psychological warfare script to their famous broadcaster "Tokyo Rose" and every day she would broadcast this same message packaged in different ways, hoping it would have a negative impact on American GI's morale.
What was that demoralizing message?
It had three main points:
1. Your President is lying to you.
2. This war is illegal.
3. You cannot win the war
Does this sound familiar?
Is it because;
Tokyo Hillary,
Tokyo Harry,
Tokyo Teddy
Tokyo Nancy ,
Tokyo Durbin,
Tokyo Kerry,
etc. have all learned from the former enemies of our country and have picked up the same message and are broadcasting it on
Tokyo CNN,
Tokyo ABC,
Tokyo CBS,
Tokyo NBC,
etc., to our troops?
The only difference is that they claim to support our troops before they
demoralize them.
Come to think of it... Tokyo Rose told the American Troops she was on their side also!
The American Left, especially the Democrat politicians.... need to understand that this is how the majority of the troops, their families and MANY of the American people see you.
The louder you scream for withdrawal and for defeat the more we see your inability to understand our enemy and the more we understand how dangerous you are to America's safety.
From 4 Mile Creek, an Iraq war veteran, on February 2nd, 2007, Titled "Not Scary at All"
I heard Senator Clinton talking at the DNC, or DLC, or whatever.
Why is she more willing to threaten the government of Iraq than she is willing to threaten al Queda?
She also promised that if elected President, she would end the Iraq War, if still ongoing, the moment she became President.
Let's contrast a possible Jan 20th, 2009 with the known Jan 20th, 1981. Moments after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President, Jan 20th, 1981, the islamic fascists in Iran released the hostages they had held for 444 days because they knew they'd get their ass kicked if they didn't. There was no cheering on their part, only a silence that lasted years.
If Senator Clinton becomes President Clinton, on Jan 20th, 2009, the islamic fascists in Iran will be dancing in the streets, praising allah, and shouting "Death to America!" as they watch President Clinton fulfill her promise to surrender the battlefield in Iraq to them.
At last, a Democrat with a plan for the war on terror. It's a plan to surrender within the first hours of her presidency, but at least it's a plan.
Nope, not scary at all.
A message to William Arkin from 4 Mile Creek:
I'm really glad the Left, emboldened with their victory in the 2006 elections, have decided to throw off the "we support the troops" bullshit they had tried to hide behind for the last few years. This writer for the Washington Post goes so far as to call the troops "mercenaries" and yearns for the days when the Left routinely called us "baby killers" and spit on our uniforms.
What is most striking about this writer's little essay is his complete lack of tolerance, and his willingness to discard the Constitution of the United States. When the Left is in the minority, their rallying cry is "We must be heard!" I don't remember William M. Arkin ever saying to the anti-war Left in the early days of the Iraq War, when they were in the minority, that they needed to shut up and support the majority of the American people. In fact, if you cruise through some of the older essays from the Left, they say the exact opposite. But like all of the Left, William Arkin doesn't really believe in free speech, he believes in free speech for those who agree with him only. Which of course, is the antithesis of free speech. When it comes to soldiers willing to express their opinion on whether we should pursue a winning course in Iraq, he'd prefer, as would all other Lefties, that we shut the fuck up. They'll find one soldier from Iraq who disagrees with pursuing a strategy for vicgtory, and they will put him in an ad and get it shown during the Super Bowl. But if 300,000 of us Iraq War Veterans say we want to pursue victory, and victory is the only honorable thing to do, then we need to keep quiet. The fact that these very troops are what has protected William's free speech for the last 200+ years holds no water with this dirtbag because he's got that debt covered:So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?
Who's we? What soldier's family have you taken care of, William? I'd like to know their name. When did you open your house to a soldier's family? I paid for my house, as has millions of other veterans; no one gave me housing. The "vast social support systems" you speak of are a hindrance to my mission, not a help. The fact that I as a commander had to teach EO and CO2 to my soldiers instead of basic weapons drills was due to Lefty dickheads like you, and no, I won't thank you for that.
No soldier within or without Iraq has asked any American to roll over and play dead. They have continually, and consistently asked for the support of the American people to get the job done in Iraq, and they have every right to do so. Apparently William feels that as long as the meager paycheck is there, along with whatever he means by "obscene amenities", we should have no other complaints.
There is probably no better example today of why the Left in America is so closely aligned with the islamic fascists. The islamic fascists believe it's okay to preach from every mosque that infidels deserve to die and Jews are the descendents of monkeys and pigs, then turn around and riot when simple line drawings of muhammed (please beat upon him) are printed in a newspaper. The Left has come to love that idea of unidirectional freedom of speech that islam preaches daily. The Left believes that it's okay to have free speech, as long at that speech is approved by them. Anyone not toting their line is an infidel, haram, and needs to shut the fuck up.
Sorry William, I won't shut up. I won't tote your line. I won't accept that my commanders need to tell me what I can and can't say.
And I wont' accept that you, and you alone, have the final word on what should be said about Iraq.
Good for him. If anyone is an expert on Iraq, it is not our MSM (Mainstream media) nor our politicians that go to Iraq for a few days and come back believing they know more than our soldiers that fight, live and die there...it is the people that have SEEN Iraq as no one else can...our military, that understand it the best.
Now, our soldiers thoughts on the Media:
The first is from 2005, but it shows that our soldiers have been aware of the media bias since the beginning.
5th Cag's Experiences in Iraq, titled " Media and Iraq in general and Fallujah, specifically"
Now, my (very few) regular readers know that I don't like to preach much. I know this blog is being read by you-know-who, but that's only part of the reason. The real reason is that I'd prefer to show you pictures of every day life in Iraq rather than give you my views on events that are beyond my control and out of my lane. However, in reading the below piece from Jack Kelly, it struck me that I haven't shared with you my own little first-hand brush with media bias. So here goes:
We've hosted several media correspondents (print and TV) out here at the CMOC ... LA Times, NY Times, Fox News, CNN, Knight-Ridder, AP, UPI, even GRD (German) TV. I have, to a man/woman, gotten along well on a personal level with every single correspondent that's come through here.
However, almost invariably, the "good parts" of the story get covered up and obscured by the bad news, or the "facts" are reported in a manner which makes things appear to be worse than they actually are. For example, one recent visiting correspondent (I'm not going to name names here, you can google it just as easliy as I can), in reporting on reconstruction progress in Fallujah, wrote words to the effect that "only 60% of the homes in the southern part of Fallujah have power or water."
Now, reading that, you'd think that we just plumb were not doing our jobs here, wouldn't ya? Well, the reporter was technically correct. We do still have some work to do in the southern part of the city. However, the real story is that, prior to our arrival, ZERO PERCENT of homes in the southern part of Fallujah had power or water. Yes, on our watch, contractors solicited by us and paid for by us have gone in and put power to poles and water to pipes where previously there was none! Your intrepid correspondent chose to report it this way, despite the fact that he had been shown a brief which graphically displayed before-and-after status, and he had been told what I just wrote here. I reckon it just "reads better" that 40% of Fallujans in the south don't have power or water, despite our efforts and ongoing plan to get it there, hm?
I'm not trying to imply that all media are bad or purposely mis-represent the facts, but just remember to keep an open mind when you're reading anything: this blog, mainstream media, DoD press releases. People are naturally biased one way or the other, and it follows that our passion about issues seeps into whatever we write or produce, even though we may try to keep it "fair and balanced" -- to borrow a phrase.
Anyway, for the real scoop, check out folks like Michael Yon, Michael Fumento, Ollie North, and yes, even "MSM" CNN correspondent Jane Arraf, to name but a few.Washington Times
August 21, 2005
Familiar Patterns
By Jack Kelly
Near the end of his touching account of the funeral of Lance Cpl. Brian Montgomery, one of six Ohio Marine reservists killed in an ambush Aug. 1, the Los Angeles Times' David Zucchino reported a fact I have seen nowhere else:
"Before leaving Iraq, Eric made his buddies promise they would track and kill the insurgents who took his brother from him. Last week, he said, a squad member's mother called to relay a message from Iraq: 'We got the [expletive].' "
News reports from Iraq typically lead with U.S. casualties, usually without putting them in context or reporting what happened to the enemy. Two days after Brian Montgomery's death, 14 Marines from the same battalion were killed when a roadside bomb destroyed the amtrac in which they were riding. It was Page One news all over the country. But there was little on Operation Quick Strike, in which they were taking part.
Imagine if correspondents covering the Normandy invasion had emphasized American casualties, while downplaying the strategic significance of the battle, the greater losses of our enemies and the valor of our fighting men. Would people on the home front have become discouraged?
Suspicions Iraq war coverage is intended to discourage the home front have deepened because of the massive coverage accorded Cindy Sheehan, recently camped out on the doorstep of President Bush's ranch in Crawford.
Cindy's son, Casey, was killed in Iraq last year. She suffered a terrible loss, but no different than that of more than 1,800 other mothers. Why have the media given Mrs. Sheehan so much attention and so little to the others? Could it be because Mrs. Sheehan opposes the war, and most of the others do not?
This is a familiar pattern for journalists. Thousands of Americans lost husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But media attention was lavished on a handful -- the so-called Jersey Girls -- stridently critical of President Bush.
Soldiers and Marines in Iraq have complained bitterly that journalists exaggerate their difficulties and give short shrift to their accomplishments. "I know the reporting's bad because I know people in Iraq," Mark Yost, associate editorial page editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, said in a July 12 column.
"I get unfiltered news from Iraq through an e-mail network of military friends who aren't so blinded by their own politics that they can't see the real good that we're doing there," Mr. Yost said. "The fact that makes this all the more ironic is that the people who are fighting and dying want to stay and the people who are merely observers want to cut and run." Mr. Yost was subjected to a torrent of criticism from thin-skinned colleagues.
"I'm embarrassed to have you as a colleague," wrote Pioneer Press reporter Charles Laszewski. Knight-Ridder Baghdad bureau chief Hannah Allam (Knight Ridder owns the Pioneer Press) said only the press knows the real story.
Steve Lovelady, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, in an e-mail exchange with Web logger Jeff Jarvis implied Mr. Yost should be fired because "he's a right-wing shill who belittled and betrayed hundreds of reporters who go into harm's way every day to tell us what the hell is really going on."
But most journalists rarely leave the fortified green zone. "It's very confining for our staff to go into Baghdad and have to spend most of their time on the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel," said Mike Silverman, Associated Press managing editor.
Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor, said it was much easier to add up the number of dead than to determine how many hospitals got electricity on a particular day or how many schools were built.
Mr. Silverman and Miss Carroll were recounting to the New York Times' Katherine Seelye a July AP editors' discussion of reader complaints that only one side of the Iraq story was being told.
The AP could, of course, embed more of its reporters with U.S. troops. But then they would be in greater danger than at the Palestine Hotel, and would be deprived of its comforts.
Jack Kelly, a syndicated columnist, is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette.
Many constantly deny the media bias, claiming that we are overstating it.... These words from our military tell a different story....this cannot be denied, except by those that continue to bury their head in the sand.
Now for more recent opinions about the media coverage coming out of Iraq.
Daily Dispatch, written November 2006, titled "What War? Part 3 of 3"
It’s been an interesting war.
Too bad you missed it.
The legacy media has persuaded 54% of the American people that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was not worth the effort – i.e., that he should have been allowed to ignore the treaties that ended the Operation Desert Storm, and to rearm.
The ascendant Democratic Party will soon attempt to translate its “concept” of “Strategic Redeployment” into plain English, i.e., “cut and run.”
Do you doubt it? Stop listening to Democrat Senators on “Meet the Press.” Attend any Democratic Party mass rally and look at the signs.
The unparalleled achievement of our armed forces – the overthrow of two terrorist states, and their replacement with democratic republics, at a casualty rate 1/20th that of Vietnam – may or may not be undone. It boils down to whether President Bush can weather the storm of criticism generated by the best planned, best executed war in American history.
But since you’ve probably missed the war our troops have nearly won, you ought to know why.
You missed it because the legacy media wouldn’t report it.
For the viewing public, this has been a war without baselines. It is impossible to understand the violence of contemporary Iraqi society without understanding the violence of the Ba’athist era that preceded it. Saddam waged two massive wars of aggression, in which a million perished. In addition, his Makhabaret and Army exterminated hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and drove millions into exile. The violence in Iraq is persistently presented out of its historical context, as though it were happening in an American suburb. But the majority of Iraqi people – Shi’ites and Kurds – feel more secure since Saddam’s overthrow, and say so in poll after poll.
This was a war of phony trendlines. Because the legacy media wanted America to lose, every tactical move of Al Qaeda was treated as a trend, while any diminution in violence was unreported or under-reported. American casualties have declined, not increased, over the past three years. To the media, that is not a trend. But a one-month spike in troop deaths is a trend. Sectarian violence that drives Iraqis into exile was a trend. But the 1.5 million increase in the Iraqi population under the occupation was not a trend. Nothing indicative of normalcy in Iraqi life interests the anti-American press.
This was a war without geography. Iraq has 18 governates, or provinces. Over 80% of the violent incidents are concentrated in four of them. Anti-government violence is virtually absent in 10 of them. Wars are about territory. The “pacified” areas in Iraq – those that accept the authority of the elected government – are large and growing. But the media doesn’t bother with maps.
Here’s another amazing fact: This is a war in which only one side conducts operations! Bombings in which “insurgents” kill dozens of urnarmed civilians certainly constitute news to American reporters. But the brilliant counter-insurgent operations that have reduced the terrorists to this level of idiocy do not. Every day, Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces raid bomb making factories, kill al-Qaeda gunmen, confiscate deadly arsenals, and rescue kidnap victims. It is a strange “journalism” that covers only one side of a conflict.
The American media will not cover Iraqi politics. No other emerging democracy has ever received the weird combination of no press and bad press, that the Iraqi democracy has received. All of the major parties in the Iraqi legislature have heroes committed to democracy, who have risked their all to create a civil society. They are wrestling intelligently with the same types of problems that every emerging democracy wrestles with – the distribution of natural resources, private property rights, federalism, and the reconciliation of factions. Instead of covering the interesting interplay of Kurdish, Sunni, Shi’ite, and secular forces, the American media has persistently taken cheap shots at everyone involved, calling them lackeys when they co-operate with the coalition, and enemies when they assert their independence. The hatred of American has led our traitor press to savage our democratic allies for no better reason than that they support us.
Economics is also curiously absent from the coverage of this war. It is hard to understand the politics of a country without understanding the economic circumstances of the various parties’ constituents. The abrupt transition of a command-and-control economy into a market economy is characterized by hope and disappointment, by entrepreneurship and unemployment; and above all, by visible, dynamic change. There are major stories that should have been told about rural electrification, the revival of agriculture, the increase in Iraqi oil export earnings, the explosion of communications (both private and public), and the reform of Iraq’s monetary and investment laws. Some excellent dual-language Iraqi sites cover these matters. The American media does not.
Generally speaking, good news from Iraq is no news – at least as far as our traitor-media is concerned. For instance, over the past month, prominent Anbar tribes entered a pact with the government to assist in the killing and capture of the terrorist groups they previously harbored. The daily results have been dramatic. The operations reports are available at the web site of the Multi-National Fore-Iraq. Did you hear about that? Or try this: In October, 2006, Iraqi civilian deaths were halved compared to September. Did you hear about that? The legacy media won’t report good news from Iraq because it is more important for them to defeat Republicans in America in November than to defeat mass-murdering jihadists anywhere and ever.
Independence, though much flaunted by our legacy press, is curiously absent from their reports from Iraq. Much of what we see and hear is rehashed boiler-plate from al-Jazeera and other organs of the hostile Sunni-dominated press of the Middle East. Much of what we see and hear is planted by the terrorists themselves, through native “stringers” who replace American reporters in the actual harvesting of news. Recently, CNN solicited terrorist input in order to “balance” its coverage.
Which leads us to our final point: Just as there have been no heroes in the legacy media’s tale – neither or troops, nor the Iraqi democrats – so there have been no enemies. It seems odd that a press so focused on the daily reports from the Baghdad morgue should find so little to say about those who fill that morgue. It seems odd that no opprobrium should attach to men who place I.E.D.s in dumpsters to kill beggars, or who bomb market places in order to kill women, or who spray schoolbuses with bullets, or who set up check-points to kill everyone named “Omar”. The fascist rot that infects Arab society inspires loathing, and is undoubtedly much of the reason for the war’s unpopularlity. But that same rot inspired 9/11, and thousands of bombings in India, Indonesia, the Phillipines, London, Madrid, and Tel Aviv. To saddle George W. Bush with the stain of Islamo-fascism, a globalist ideology that preceded him, and that his successors will inherit, is, well, thaumaturgy.
But our American journalists draw no moral conclusions regarding our opponents. Their attitude toward the war resembles that of Shakespeare’s power-hungry nihilist:…it is a tale
told by and idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing…
But it needn’t be so. Our young men-and-women-at-arms have sacrificed much to make us safe, and to create a decent society for tens of millions abroad.
We wish President Bush and our troops in the field godspeed in achieving these goals, despite the jackal-howlings of their critics.
Aren't our soldiers GREAT? I love reading their blogs. They have hope, faith and they know what they are doing is worthy and good.
I will be trying to spotlight as many military blogs as I can in the coming months. They deserve to have their words heard or seen and if I can bring a few people to their wonderful sites, I will be happy.
Go visit milblogging.com and read through these blogs.
You will notice, as I have, that where WE constantly see and hear despair from our politicians and the media, these fantastic men and women feel hope and pride.
Doesn't it say something that they can be in the midst of the fight and still have a better attitude and outlook than we do here in the states.
What does THAT say about the media bias being shown today?
Once again, Thank you so MUCH for all you do for us.
.