After surveying the response of Greater Wingnuttia (via Memeorandum) to the NY Times piece we discussed earlier, it is good to see there has been no reforumulation in the wankosphere as to what constitutes media bias. The old formula still holds:
“If I disagree with or don’t like a story, then it is liberal media bias. If I agree with or like a story, then it’s so powerful that not even the liberally biased media can ignore it.”
So the NY Times writes a story about the security situation getting better, and the wankosphere goes into overdrive to show that this times, the NY Times gets it right. All those other times, they just had BDS or something. Captain Ed:
The New York Times finally discovers a breaking news story from Iraq — that life has improved as a result of the surge.
***Now that the Times has finally acknowledged the success of the surge and the reality of Petraeus’ testimony, will they apologize for disparaging the American commander so viciously? Will they retract their political hitpiece of an editorial of September 11th? Don’t bet on it. The Times will undoubtedly take the position that all of this success happened yesterday.
You kinda wonder if he even read the NY times piece, or just got so excited by the headline that he went into overdrive. The deep thinkers at NewsBusters:
That’s not a cement mixer you hear. It’s the collective Dem gnashing of teeth. Things have gotten so bad — meaning good — in Iraq that now even the New York Times is reporting it.
A slight error in the gloating at Weekly Standard, as they admit that things WEREN’T going so great until very recently:
What those articles say is that we’re finally winning in Iraq, that the lives of ordinary Iraqis are getting better, and that the surge has saved the lives of thousands of innocent people. Apparently that’s not a story the “reality-based community” is very comfortable with.
Yes. They are so uncomfortable with the notion they reported it on the FRONT PAGE.
Well, knock me over with a straw–and get Harry Reid a Kleenex. The NYTimes, yes, the NYTimes, reports what you’ve been reading from milbloggers and embeds in the blogosphere for weeks and months…
Yes, Micehlle. They try to report things as they see it, not as how they want things to be. A novel concept. And so it goes on virtually every right-wing blog- shock that the NY Times is reporting this news. For a brief moment of sanity, head to Tom Maguire, who notes the following:
That said, the Times had a still-defensible point about the lack of progress towards political reconciliation in Iraq:
The chief objective of the surge was to reduce violence enough that political leaders in Iraq could learn to work together, build a viable government and make decisions to improve Iraqi society, including sharing oil resources. Congress set benchmarks that Mr. Bush accepted. But after independent investigators last week said that Baghdad had failed to meet most of those markers, Mr. Crocker dismissed them. The biggest achievement he had to trumpet was a communiqué in which Iraqi leaders promised to talk more.
Dan Drezner also puts things into context:
This report, combined with reports on monthly deaths from sectarian violence, suggest that the effects of the surge are clear — we’ve managed to get Baghdad back to the place it was prior to the February 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. I believe this is also a period in which even members of the Bush administration admitted that their Iraq policy was “adrift.”
The Times also goes on to note the following:
By one revealing measure of security — whether people who fled their home have returned — the gains are still limited. About 20,000 Iraqis have gone back to their Baghdad homes, a fraction of the more than 4 million who fled nationwide, and the 1.4 million people in Baghdad who are still internally displaced, according to a recent Iraqi Red Crescent Society survey.
Which, no doubt, will be ignored or treated as proof of their liberal bias. Regardless, I reiterate my previous sentiments. I am glad that things are a touch safer, and I hope this is a lasting trend. We have, however, been down this road before, and should things unfortunately take a turn for the worse, no doubt it will be the fault of the pinkos at the NY Times who just have BDS.
Zifnab
It reminds me of the Climate Change debate. Every winter, snow starts falling from the sky in New York and Bill O takes a moment from screaming about child molesters raping you in the eyes through the liberal internet and the ACLU offically becoming a chapter of the KKK to note that Al Gore is a big fat liar because its cold outside.
We’ve been playing this game since ’03 and even the NYTimes doesn’t seem able to catch on. Every year, come November, the violence drops. And every year, come Feb, it spikes again. We’ll institute the Bush Korea Model and play this game for the next 50 years. It’s practically verbatum out of 1984, with Eastasia beating back Oceania who turns around and beats back Eastasia again, like god-damn clockwork.
1.4 million minus 20k Iraqis seem to have figured it out. Why can’t America?
demimondian
Actually, 5.4M Iraqis have figured it out. And another million or so are dead.
But that’s facty stuff. Crazy talk!
Ugh
So is Captain Ed going on the “Mock” list or what?
And Dan Drezner:
What do you mean “we” kemosabe? Don’t you suppose that Baghdad has been so ethnically cleansed thet at some point the violence has to drop?
ATS
Breaking News: Wow! The cops sent 200 officers down to DC’s Logan Circle and waddya know! Prostitution went down, thanks to the surge.
For exactly as long as the surge lasted.
Eureka!
Libby Spencer
That is my wish, that it will last and get even better. I’m afraid I lost my hope back about 2004. But this post better reflects my own reponse to the wingnut cheering section, that I posted this morning at NH. I didn’t know quite what to make of that one you posted earlier.
Bubblegum Tate
Has somebody made a casualty graph for the entirety of our Excellent Iraqi Adventure? (God, I just typed the phrase “casualty graph.” Now I feel like some douchebag pencil-pusher at RAND or something.) That would probably be a useful resource in divining these blatant trends that always seem to elude the wingnuts’ comprehension.
badgervan
It’s still “whack-a-mole” in Iraq. The north, where most of the bad guys moved to from Baghdad, is getting worse, and the political situation is still stalled.
The sects are simply biding their time; when we start to reduce the troops, as we must as we are running out of them, all hell is going to break loose.
You can’t “win” a religious/sectarian war/occupation – why people don’t understand this, after examining history, is just depressing as hell. Reason, common sense and understanding basic human nature mean nothing to these hypocrites who are destroying us from within.
bushcheney want oil, and Israel requires protection ( AIPAC is way too influential in our government ). Those are the two main reasons why it will take a dem prez and Congress to get us the hell out of a neighborhood that we have no moral standing to be in: the middle east.
Paul L.
Great a chance to bring up my favorite subject that drives the regulars here crazy as it reminds them just how wrong they were.
My low opinion of the New York Times is due to the “stellar” reporting of Duff Wilson and Selena Roberts on the Duke Lacrosse rape
casehoax.They couldn’t report the facts. They had to report the narrative.
Zuzu
I was with ya right up until the description of Maguire representing “a brief moment of sanity.”
A brief moment of sanity among the wingnut insanity generally, possibly.
A brief moment of sanity for him, more likely.
A brief moment of sanity in the generally unrestrained lunacy he calls a blog, well, that too.
Teak111
According to the New Yorker (currently, on online), the surge is only a small part of the reduction in deaths. You have Shite Malitia in “freeze” mode, Sunnis insurgents retooling and working with the Amer mil in the “Sunnis Awakening,” Iran shutting down arms into Iraq, vanquishing of AQM, and the “community policing” technique of 100 soldiers garisoned in different parts of the city. Does all this mean the “the Surge is Working?” Guess so. More like a confluence of events is working. Frankly, I think the Shites and the Sunnis are waiting for the Amer to leave. Then it will be a fight to the death because Maliki doesn’t want to give the Sunnis any more power or seats, or oil rights.
xyzzy
It’s worth noting that these modest (and debatable) security improvements were obtained at the cost of significantly overextending our resources, while in Basra the British improved the security situation by NINETY PERCENT by *withdrawing*.
Jay
Except Surber who is so busy worrying about the NYT that he doesn’t notice his own paper following The Bleeding Lead Standard.
grumpy realist
Tacitus’s comment holds for wingnuts:
“They make a desolation, and call it peace.”
Jake
Yes, yes of course. This isn’t about how many people who have returned to B-dad or why. This isn’t about winning or losing the war. This is about proving the filthy libruls wrong.
But I’m sure the Wankers of Wingistain (or is it Wingers of Wankistain?) will start calling for troop withdrawals any minute now…
Hang on, they’re just settling down after the intial excitment…
[crikets chirp]
Libby Spencer
They’re out there. Somebody did a good one a couple of months ago comparing 2006 and the surge months in 07 anyway. I can’t remember if it was Kevin Drum or Josh Marshall who linked to it. I think it was Drum.
Bubblegum Tate
Wow. That’s a really good way of putting it.
Sinister eyebrow
I’m still amazed at the figure of 5.4 million refugees (internal and external). That means 20% of the population of the Entire Country has fled or been driven out. That’s mind boggling. Who would call this a success?
And that doesn’t even cover the death toll, which stands somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million. A few more years of this and half the population of the country will be dead or in a refugee camp. By any yardstick it is a humanitarian catastrophe and a slaughter. At some point, there will be a decline in violence as the population continues to decline. There’s going to be no one left to fight…or rebuild.
Maybe GWB should’ve just come out and said he thought the world needed more Somalias instead of all the happy talk about building democracies blah, blah, blah.
Enlightened Layperson
So, after four straight years of failing to notice that victory was at hand, the NY Times is finally acknowledging that victory may be at hand? Nine straight Friedman Units of refusing to see that victory was just one more Friedman Unit away, and they finally admit that we might win in one more FU. What an obvious bias! [/snark]
Wilfred
This is from Marc Lynch a couple of days ago:
I felt better after I read that since I was thinking more along the lines of permanently.
OxyCon
Most of the Iraqis returning to Baghdad are doing so because they have no other place to go. They are no longer welcome in Syria and are being turned away from the Syrian border.
Most of this “triumphant return of Iraqis to Baghdad” meme is nothing but spin.
The truth will all come out two months from now, as usual, two months after the spin.
heywood jablomy
There’s another term for this:
“The dead cat bounce.”
You set in motion a disaster that leads to the deaths of tens of thousands and the displacement of millions. Finally, the cyclone peters out. Your boast? Fewer people are dying now that there are fewer people to kill.
Woo-hoo. It’s time to declare victory and leave.
Dug Jay
Good comments, losers.
jcricket
Who? The goal-post-movers that are your current Republican party (and wingnut-o-ophere).
Anyone remember WMDs? Smoking guns? Mushroom clouds? Chemical weapons raining down on Israel? Wasn’t there something about that presented by somebody to someone sometime ago before we went into Iraq?
jake
Ninelevenchangedeverything, even the nature of truth. Anyway Saddam was a bad guy and if we hadn’t gone in there now, Al Qaida might have gone in there later and then we wouldn’t be able to fight them over there rather than fight them somewhere else and democracy, freedom, Iraqi people, support our troops, uh … Look! Britney Spears isn’t wearing panties!
Bruce Moomaw
Actually, Drezner didn’t just “put things into context” — he cited a whole parade of major reasons to think that optimism about Iraq is totally screwy. (Three different sources, as of his latest update.) My own attitude can be summed up as: Let’s see what the mice do when the cat’s away — which is the basic point of all Drezner’s arguments too.
Indeed, when you bother to read more than just the first few paragraphs of that NYT piece, calling it “optimistic” in the first place is a spectacular stretch. Presumably the Fighting Keyboarders haven’t been able to move their lips fast enough to get to that particular point in the article.
glasnost
The times has been running positive stories for months.
jcricket
How long will it take for righties to understand that newspapers are supposed to report on what’s happening. Not what we’d like to happen, or what companies or governments tell us is happening.
Further, the Times has displayed great (probably too much) sensitivity when it comes to balancing their right to print information and the government’s need for secrecy on true national security matters (witness some of the stories they’ve withheld at the government’s request).
If the right would like an example of the press operating the way they’d like, I suggest Burma.
jcricket
BTW John – there was this faux Dale Earnheardt controversy (when he died). Righties have spun a narrative that the MSM is out of touch with America because they didn’t run any stories on his death (since he’s such a big figure in “salt of the earth sport” NASCAR).
Of course they’re wrong – the Times did run a front page story (and some others).
Wingers will stop at nothing to destroy the press. I only hope the press wakes up sometime in my lifetime.
TenguPhule
Yay, the Wingnut Goalposts rolling down Shit Hill are accelerating downward!
The level of violence that was out of hand in 2005 and 2006 is now cited as proof positive by the Bedwetters that ‘We’re winning now!’ in 2007…because it’s a drop from the record high violence for most of 2007…
Yeah, we’ve been through this song and dance before and it always ends the same.
Violence goes up, Wingnuts claim progress.
Violence goes down, Wingnuts claim progress.
Violence goes up again, Wingnuts roll a saving throw to disbelieve.
TenguPhule
Paul L. describes FOX News.
Mike
Mmmmhmmmm. So, anyone up for the challenge of finding evidence of MSM, Dem politicians, liberal bloggers lamenting the success of the surge. Because I’m positive none of the posts John quoted offer any supporting evidence to their claims.
LITBMueller
Count me as one who laments the fact that this “surge” ever took place – at least once I read about how the military was going into the Sunni areas and providing money/weapons/whatever to Sunni tribal leaders (i.e., future warlords) to “fight al Qaeda.” What crap: “al Qaeda” is an incredibly small portion of the insurgency there, and many of the leaders we are now propping up WERE/ARE insurgent leaders.
If the definition of a “surge success” is setting the groundwork to turn Iraq into 1990’s Somalia or a more violent verison of Afghanistan, count me out.
In the end, the whole Surge Strategy, and the way it was conducted, may end up being the reason why we have to keep a permanent military force in Iraq – in other words, we can’t leave, because, if we do, the Sunni warlords we propped up and essentially armed will immediately begin battling the Shiites, who we also propped up and armed.
Some will say some day that it was a strategic blunder, but, when you consider that the government is spending billions on the largest embassy ever built in Baghdad, you’ll excuse me for believing that this government (a) never intended to leave Iraq, and (b) is intent on setting the conditions so future presidents can’t leave it either.
BIRDZILLA
What else can you ever get from the NEW YORK SLIMES but the usial amount of poppycock and bunk they realy need to change their famous logo to ALL THE NEWS WE SEE FIT TO PRINT
jcricket
Much like how everything that happens is “good for Republicans”. Dems win elections? Good for Republicans.
Iraq worse? Only Republicans can save us, obviously good.
Hillary the nominee? Republicans hoot and holler.
Obama the nominee? Go Republicans!
It’s about time to stop listening to any Republican or conservative summary of events and what they mean. They really are all just PR and spin.