Posted by
Gretske on Wednesday, August 08, 2007 4:44:58 AM
The
hottest new story making the rounds is the saga of "reporter-blogger"
Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army private, who wrote gut-wrenching tales
of abuse in Iraq. He had the readers of New Republic up in arms over
stories of our soldiers ridiculing women disfigured by war, animal
abuse and disrespecting ancient bones. Not that it takes much to get
the ultra-left readers of New Republic up in arms anyway. But, there
was one, teeny, tiny problem with Beachamp's reporting. It was lies. He
admitted that he made up all up, or most of it anyway.
Using
the Ratherian proposition, lefties excused the outright lies by saying
that the kind of abuse that Beauchamp wrote about " and worse," is
"probably happening in Iraq every day." You have to admire people who
don't let a little thing like the truth get between them and their
irrational beliefs. New Republic is upset that the Army is "short circuiting"
its own attempts to get at the truth. Tsk tsk, what a shame, the US
Army will not stand aside and let the editors of the New Republic check
the story they have gotten wrong from the beginning.
The
most important point of this story is not whether Beauchamp lied or
didn't lie, and it is not even whether bad things are happening in Iraq. They probably are. They always do in war. The
point is FOCUS. Those who are rabidly hoping for a major American
defeat in Iraq, and the editors and writers of New Republic are among
them, are using this kind of story to assist in the effort to lose.
Of
course bad things are going to happen in war. Bad things happen
every day on the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Dayton, OH and
Chicken
Bristle, KY. What the mainstream media does is to focus on these small
events, and using Political Correctness and feel-good politics, get us
to anguish over them. And, we do. I hate to be crass, but the whole Abu
Ghraib incident should have been on the back of Section B once, not on
the front page of Section A every day for weeks. When maniacal suicide
bombers send themselves to Paradise, the Arabic word for "Hell," and
take dozens of innocent lives with them, our friends at the New York
Times and other radical papers, blame it on George Bush. You have also
admire people who don't let logic interfere with their firmly held
convictions.
All
of this journalistic manipulation of the truth and putting agenda over
fact, is for the simple purpose of changing the dialog. The big point
here is, when you send
brave and dedicated people out on a mission, risking their lives, you
watch from afar, and stay focused on winning the war, not micromanaging
their every move.
The New Republic piece was just this sort of
story, designed to divert the American public's attention away from the real
story, how the forces of freedom and liberty are slowly, but surely,
overcoming decades, and centuries, of abusive, oppressive rule by blood
thirsty tyrants in Iraq. It's very simple, win in Iraq, and a new way of life
for Muslims in the Mideast ensues; lose in Iraq and new way of life for
Americans may well ensue. One we will not like at all.