Yet more quantitative evidence that the media is biased toward the liberal end of the scale.
And then there is this statement that is repeatedly played up in the liberal press which slavishly follows the Kerry team’s “findings”:
Fact: 9-11 Commission Report Said No ‘Collaborative Operational Relationship’ Existed Between Iraq and Al Qaeda. “We have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.”
BUT U.S. Congressman Joe Wilson (R., S.C.) tells NRO that opponents of President George W. Bush often cite some of the 9/11 commission’s findings while conveniently skipping over the obvious Iraqi-al Qaeda connections referenced in the same report. “The claims by the Kerry campaign are not only wrong, but disingenuous,” says Wilson, who has three sons in the military, one of whom is in Iraq.
Disingenuous indeed: The Kerry camp fails to mention that the 9/11 report also says Osama bin Laden met with an Iraqi official in Khartoum during the mid-1990s and issued an appeal for space to establish terrorist training camps in Iraq. He also asked for assistance in obtaining weapons. Granted, no evidence points to an Iraqi agreement on such matters, but the report clearly states, “the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.”
In March 1998, al Qaeda operatives were invited to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence officers after bin Laden issued a “public fatwa” against America and her allies. In July, Iraqi officials traveled to Afghanistan where they met with both the Taliban and bin Laden. The following year, Iraq may have offered bin Laden safe haven after a period of “reported strains” between the al Qaeda leader and the Taliban. And the 9/11 commission’s findings reveal there were “indications” of “friendly contacts” between Iraq and bin Laden, and an expression of “common themes in both sides’ hatred” of the United States.
Are these oversights on the part of Bush’s opponents? Perhaps. But the 9/11 report also states that Ansar al Islam (an al Qaeda-affiliated organization comprised of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs vowing to form an Islamist state in Iraq) was formed with the assistance of bin Laden in late 2001, and “there are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.”
Some members of Ansar al Islam trained in al Qaeda camps based in Afghanistan, and, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Federation of American Scientists, “the group provided safe-haven to al Qaeda fighters before Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
Additionally, terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who has direct ties to both al Qaeda and Ansar al Islam, has been operating out of Iraq since May 2002. And intelligence gleaned since the 2003 invasion of Iraq indicates that as early as 1997 and 1998, Unit 999 (an ultra-secret special-operations branch of the now-defunct Iraqi army) was training foreign terrorists in Iraqi camps. The trainees included members of Iran’s infamous Mojahedin-e Khalq, the Turkish Kurdistan Worker’s Party, and al Qaeda.
Simply put, the connections between Saddam Hussein’s government, al Qaeda, and other affiliated terrorist organizations are legion.
“If this is what we know, imagine what we don’t know,” says Wilson
[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]Sloppy reporting, not biased.[/quote] Good to know that when I see another black man accused of a crime on tv.
Namaste???
What is your point? What are you trying to say?
Well the latest crime report is out and let’s see how the findings are reported in the Washington Post.
[quote=“Curt Anderson, Associated Press, writing in the Washington Post,”]Crime Rate Remains Steady at 30-Year Low
Violent Acts Down 55% in a Decade
By Curt Anderson
Associated Press
Monday, September 13, 2004; Page A10
The nation’s crime rate last year held steady at the lowest levels since the government began surveying crime victims in 1973, the Justice Department reported yesterday.
The study was the latest contribution to a decade-long trend in which violent crime as measured by victim surveys has fallen by 55 percent and property crime by 49 percent. That has included a 14 percent drop in violent crime from 2000-2001 to 2002-2003.
“The rates are the lowest experienced in the last 30 years,” Justice Department statistician Shannan Catalona said in the report. “Crime rates have stabilized.”
There are numerous possible explanations for the sustained decrease in crime. But experts say the fact that crime rates have leveled off confounds earlier studies that attributed it to such things as a more mature, less violent drug trade or police tactics that focus on high-crime areas.
James Lynch, professor at American University’s Department of Justice, Law and Society, said the reason that crime is down so broadly is difficult to pinpoint.
Two recent possibilities, he said, are a prison population at a record 2.1 million and the terrorism fight’s deterrent effect on more routine street crime.
Therefore, a safer society is one that requires more prisons. Is that whoat you’re saying, Fred?
What if you considered the opposite–A safer society is one that has the need for fewer prisons.
Which society would you rather live in?
no, a safer country is one with more criminals behind bars. there’s a difference. if the us had fewer prisons, there would be more convicted criminals back on the streets faster.
You missed the point.
You have a certain budget and you have to decide whether to help people stay out of crime or build prisons for when people run out of alternatives and turn to crime.
Therefore you:
a. Provide alternatives in the form of job training, counselling, rehab., back-to-work programs for convicted felons, housing, education, etc.
b. Build prisons and wait for people to break the law because they need to eat.
I guess it all depends on your idea of the true nature of humanity.
a. People are essentially good: give them a chance
b. People are essentially evil, prepare them a place: prison
Does that illustrate the Democratic/Republican dichotomy?
Good God men - the Chin ! It’s staring you in the face !
Do liberals all have huge chins ?
[quote=“Wookiee”]You missed the point.
You have a certain budget and you have to decide whether to help people stay out of crime or build prisons for when people run out of alternatives and turn to crime.
Therefore you:
a. Provide alternatives in the form of job training, counselling, rehab., back-to-work programs for convicted felons, housing, education, etc.
b. Build prisons and wait for people to break the law because they need to eat.
I guess it all depends on your idea of the true nature of humanity.
a. People are essentially good: give them a chance
b. People are essentially evil, prepare them a place: prison
Does that illustrate the Democratic/Republican dichotomy?[/quote]
oh, i got your point. i just dismissed it as unrealistic.
can you show me an example of a country which has successfully reduced crime by the methods which you perscribe? by that, i mean a country with a sustained level of crime which was able to dramatically reduce that level through rehab and training.
if not, then it’s just a fantasy what-if on your part.
[quote=“Wookiee”]You have a certain budget and you have to decide whether to help people stay out of crime or build prisons for when people run out of alternatives and turn to crime.
Therefore you:
a. Provide alternatives in the form of job training, counselling, rehab., back-to-work programs for convicted felons, housing, education, etc.
b. Build prisons and wait for people to break the law because they need to eat.[/quote]
Isn’t public education free? That includes both traditional classes and vocational training.
That should be sufficient to give people an alternative to crime.
If it isn’t, then the Democrats should drop their selfish and unreasonable objection to the idea of school vouchers.
Yes school vouchers should help and a major crack down on discipline might go a long way to ensuring safety of students so they are not intimidated by drug dealers and hoodlums and forced to try to act dumb just so as not to draw violent attention.
My point is that like you Wookie, the press, agrees that we should spend more money on treatment and education. The fact that it has not worked and resulted in only more crime, did not deter them from their “noble” views.
The Republicans came in and said we are going to lock you up if you keep f***ing up and did. Now, we have a lot less crime and this is backed up by the statistics of the DOJ and people like you are moaning about the fact that we have so many people in prison while failing to make the very direct connection between incarceration and a safe society. That is why you are a liberal I guess. You have only feelings and no sense. We should try to rehabilitate people. We should try to educate the poor. We should try to make people safer, but you have to do what works and while you are busy defending the criminals, most of whom are young, male and black, I am defending the victims, most of whom are also young, male and black. One of the greatest contributors to poverty in the inner city or inner ring suburbs is that there are no jobs and why are there no jobs? Because crime is so serious that all the stores have moved away. Trust me. I have seen this first hand and a city with boarded up streets and one liquor store is not an attractive sight.
Why is it so difficult for you to put behind your failed policies to try something that actually works. What is this need among liberals to be “good” at the cost of the “good” of society and the very people that they “claim” that they are “trying to help?”
Oooh, I know the answer.
Its because they cannot get votes from people that they do not make helpless.
Hmmmm. Very interesting.
Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw have for too long assumed that they know what is best for the American people whether it comes to what to tell them or when to tell them. Both have made comments that are off the chart when it comes to lacking in objectivity. The only good thing is that both of their TV news programs are declining so rapidly in viewership that they are no longer relevant to the media process.
The WSJ has had some good editorials about this:
opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110005611
[quote]Jonathan Klein, a former executive vice president of CBS News who oversaw “60 Minutes,” debated Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard . . . Mr. Klein dismissed the bloggers who are raising questions about the authenticity of the memos: “You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at ‘60 Minutes’] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”
He will regret that snide disparagement of the bloggers, many of whom are skilled lawyers or have backgrounds in military intelligence or typeface design. A growing number of design and document experts say they are certain or almost certain the memos on which CBS relied are forgeries.
CBS’s fallback defense is that its story was only partly based on the documents and points to its on-camera interview with former Texas House speaker and lieutenant governor Ben Barnes, who claimed that he pulled strings to gain a place for Mr. Bush in the National Guard. But Mr. Barnes is clearly unreliable. The New York Times reported last February that an unnamed former Texas official–later revealed to be Mr. Barnes–was telling reporters he had interceded on behalf of Mr. Bush but that his story “was subject to change, and there were no documents to support his claims.”
Indeed, Mr. Barnes’s own daughter says her father’s story can’t be trusted. Amy Barnes Stites called a talk radio show Thursday to report that her father had told her a different version in 2000, when Mr. Bush first ran for president. “I love my father very much, but he’s doing this for purely political reasons,” she said. “He is a big Kerry fund-raiser and he is writing a book also. And the [Bush story] is what he’s leading the book off with. . . . denied this to me in 2000 that he did get Bush out (of Vietnam). Now he’s saying he did.” When hostess Monica Crowley asked Ms. Stites if she believed her father had lied in his interview on “60 Minutes,” she replied “Yes, I do. I absolutely do.”
“60 Minutes” may have a sterling reputation in journalism, but it has been burned before by forged documents. [Case involving documents forged by a disgruntled former Customs inspector claiming his boss, Rudy Camacho, took bribes.] … Mr. Camacho sued CBS and eventually settled for an undisclosed sum. In 1999 Leslie Stahl read an apology on the air: “We have concluded we were deceived, and ultimately, so were you, the viewers.” [/quote]
looks like the only “expert” cited by cbs who’s still backing the cbs line is a typewriter repairman. meanwhile experts across the internet(including the people who creating the first truetype fonts) are piling on the forgery story. lol. i almost feel sorry for dan rather. almost. 
here’s what i don’t get. cbs bagged on the blogs because they were just some random people writing stuff from home and cbs was a big professional organization. yet when push comes to shove, some wacko right-wing nuts can come up with interviews with the most respected document forensics guy in the country, people who actually CREATED the first computer version of the times new roman font, a cio(or ceo or whatever) of the company that owns the patent for inventing times new roman, and experts on the ibm composer and selectric. from big budget cbs we get…a typewriter repairman???
and now for something a little different.
a week or 2 ago, bush attended a rally in wisconsin. it was the day clinton had to go to the hospital. the ap report said that when bush mentioned the clinton news and wished him well, the crowd started booing and bush did nothing to stop them.
the problem? the crowd NEVER BOOED. there were other reporters present and NOBODY else heard any booing. there were tapes of the event and NO BOOING was recorded. turns out the guy who reported it is a very committed bush-hater. he was quoted as saying he would do anything to keep bush from winning. ap edited that line out of the story later, but many publications(including the bbc) had already published the original version with the booing. in fact, for many days publications continued to use the false original.
media bias at its finest. where’s the retraction? where’s the apology? would anyone else know about this incident if it weren’t being pushed by the right-wing blogs?
Big news.
The media is biased.
It always has been and always will be. Media outlets care about sales and ratings only.
After 9-11 Bush and the gang could do no wrong for awhile. Anyone who said otherwise was un-American. Now, the scales of popular media are tipping in another direction it seems. I, for one, am glad to see that the climate of fear and certain reprisals is gradually lifting and the media outlets are focussing once again on their targt audiences.
Let’s face it, every media corp from The New York Times to Time to Teen Beat knows who make up the majority of their readers/listeners/viewers. They cater to this audience by publishing stories that dovetail with the beliefs, shown through market research, of this audience. So, right wingers read Ann Coulter and listen to Rush Limbaugh and left wingers read Arianna Huffington and listen to NPR.
Just like this thread: look at the evil left media bias, with predictable contributions from Freddie, Fripper and Tigger. We could do the same with evil right wing media with MT, Vork/Vann and maybe even me chiming in.
[quote=“Flipper”]and now for something a little different.
a week or 2 ago, Bush attended a rally in wisconsin. it was the day Clinton had to go to the hospital. the ap report said that when Bush mentioned the Clinton news and wished him well, the crowd started booing and Bush did nothing to stop them.
the problem? the crowd NEVER BOOED. there were other reporters present and NOBODY else heard any booing. there were tapes of the event and NO BOOING was recorded. turns out the guy who reported it is a very committed Bush-hater. he was quoted as saying he would do anything to keep Bush from winning. ap edited that line out of the story later, but many publications(including the BBC) had already published the original version with the booing. in fact, for many days publications continued to use the false original.
media bias at its finest. where’s the retraction? where’s the apology? would anyone else know about this incident if it weren’t being pushed by the right-wing blogs?[/quote]
One of the explanations in the backtracking is that it was a typo. It should have read “OOING”. 