Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We still have time to mess this up!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

I really should read my own blog.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Come on, man.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

The words do not have to be perfect.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Michael Totten In Iraq

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17Comments

  1. 1.

    Walker

    He seems like a straight shooter. But I start to question his biases when he says stuff like this:

    You’d think explosions and gunfire define Iraq if you look at this country from far away on the news. They do not. The media is a total distortion machine. Certain areas are still extremely violent, but the country as a whole is defined by heat, not war, at least in the summer.

    We aren’t looking at individual attacks in the media; we have numbers. In June, Iraq had the most number of coalition attacks since “Mission Accomplished”. So either his point is that Iran has never really been “defined by war”, or he is asserting that his anecdotal experience is representive.

    Anecdotes are useful for formulating theories, but they are not useful as supporting evidence for those theories. This is a failing of both pro-war and anti-war media.

  2. 2.

    The Pirate

    I wonder if he still thinks the pro-invasion folks were on “the right side of history.”

  3. 3.

    ATS

    Totten is only “reasonable” compared wth the OSP crowd. Relocate him abroad (e.g. Europe) and he’d be judged a jingoist US tub thumper and a Labour party zionist at best. Pious aides, and an amiable demeanor sure as hell don’t change that.

  4. 4.

    ATS

    Totten is only “reasonable” compared wth the OSP crowd. Relocate him abroad (e.g. Europe) and he’d be judged a jingoist US tub thumper and a Labour party zionist at best. Pious aides, and an amiable demeanor sure as hell don’t change that.

  5. 5.

    capelza

    Totten is sincere, I’ll give him that.

    When Israel attakced Lebanon, he was so torn by it, he knew people there, it was personal for him) and wrote about that. His comment section was very interesting. His fellow hawks turned on him in a not very pretty way.

    Haven’t been there for awhile, well since then really, but I wonder if that lesson sank in at all for him. Sounds like maybe it hasn’t.

  6. 6.

    Randy Paul

    Capelza,

    He hasn’t, especially when he spouts nonsense like this:

    Willie and Larry work construction for private companies in harsh places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They are both well-rounded individuals with Red State tastes and political views and a worldliness and cosmopolitanism that surpasses that of most people who live in the Blue States.

    I’ve lived in both blue and red states and the only thing I’ve learned is that generalizations about “most people” are for the intellectually lazy.

  7. 7.

    capelza

    Randy Paul.

    That is extremely lazy of him. He lives in Oregon (or did) and he should know damn well that’s a lot of bullshit. God, what a load of drivel.

  8. 8.

    Andrew

    They are both well-rounded individuals with Red State tastes and political views and a worldliness and cosmopolitanism that surpasses that of most people who live in the Blue States.

    I’m pretty sure this means that they are assholes with expensive watches they bought in Dubai.

  9. 9.

    Rome Again

    I’ve lived in both blue and red states and the only thing I’ve learned is that generalizations about “most people” are for the intellectually lazy.

    Sweeping generalizations just about always are, right Cassidy?

  10. 10.

    Newell Blair

    He does seem like a guy who at least makes something of an effort to be honest.

    But like most Western reporters he doesn’t speak Arabic and is therefore extremely limited in his sources. He must either talk to the educated English-speaking elite, who have many biases of their own, or try to use a translator, which brings tons of other problems.

    Because of his weak sourcing, he often flatly reports extremely questionable and sometimes just inaccurate claims (especially in his Lebanon reporting, he even said Nasrallah wasn’t a religious scholar ‘Alim’ which is insane. He didn’t also seem to know this word, which is sort of like to report on catholic affairs without knowing the meaning of “cardinal.”)

    He seems like he makes an effort to report both sides, and he’s certainly not worse than other Western reporters, but I can’t really see much special about him other than a pleasant writing style.

  11. 11.

    John Cole

    He seems like he makes an effort to report both sides, and he’s certainly not worse than other Western reporters, but I can’t really see much special about him other than a pleasant writing style.

    Because anymore, honest people make me extremely pleased.

  14. 14.

    searp

    I just got back for the second time this year. What he describes is just standard procedure. Think about it: he got there with just a few delays, courtesy of DoD, which is understandably more concerned with moving soldiers.

    The austerity and strangeness of it all shocked me the first time, but this comes from not understanding how the military lives. Conditions at Ali Al Salem, BIAP, and the Green Zone are good! Much worse at other locations. Soldiers understand and are used to it, even if they don’t like it much. Michael Totten will get used to it.

  16. 16.

    Tom S

    It would take a special kind of insanity to claim–on the basis of Totten’s piece–that the situation in Iraq is not as bad as the media is saying. If it takes 16 hours to get from the Bagdhad airport to the Green Zone because of security conditions and procedures, Bagdhad is far from pacified.

  17. 17.

    searp

    We aren’t even trying to pacify the country in the sense that Americans can walk around without an armed escort. One aspect of the situation in Iraq is pretty simple: foreigners of any nation, but especially the US, are not at all welcome and will be kidnapped or killed if they wander around without a substantial armed guard.

    The goal, as I understand it, is to make the country safe for Iraqis. This may well be a hill that cannot be climbed.

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