Iraq the Model is back online after the 4-day curfew and the insanity in Baghdad. It’s worth a visit to see Mohammed’s ground-eye view of events there.
Iraq the Model is back online after the 4-day curfew and the insanity in Baghdad. It’s worth a visit to see Mohammed’s ground-eye view of events there.
Ace just put up a post trying to help Jackie Danicki find the two thugs who assaulted her on the London Tube. Amid the sympathy generated for Ms. Danicki, the incident stimulated a secondary discussion concerning the lack of a right of self-defense in the UK. Since I was going on about rights the other day, I figured this would be a good time to revisit the subject of the right to self-defense.
Most of my quotes will come from an article by the Cato Insitute entitled “Self Defense: An Endangered Right.” I encourage you to read the whole article.
I’m absent-minded, but hopefully it never causes me the grief that this guy’s undoubtedly catching:
A bomb-like device was found in a rental car Sunday morning at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, shutting down part of the Lindbergh terminal parking ramps for about two hours.
The Bloomington police bomb squad examined and blew up the device. FBI agents interviewed the man who rented the car after he arrived on the West Coast on Sunday. He said that the device was not a bomb and that he didn’t mean to leave it behind, said Pat Hogan, airport spokesman.
So what is a “bomb-like device” that is “not a bomb?” Here’s the description:
The device, which was loose in the compartment, included tubes, wires and shrapnel, airport officials said.
Shrapnel? Doesn’t sound like a straightforward electronics device. Of course now that they blew it up, he’s probably in hot water back at the company as well.
to Flopping Ace’s, who is looking at the sourcing for many of the MSM’s most discouraging reports on violence in Iraq. As has become commonplace, the integrity of their sources and their diligence as reporters is found wanting.
UPDATE: Scroll down to the most recent updates at Flopping Ace’s. AP’s been had.
UPDATE II: In this interview with John Roberts, E&P give us this headline: John Roberts Tells Kurtz: Iraq Worse Than Media Shows, which seems to oppose the point made above.
Reading the interview, however, shows that the headline misrepresents Roberts’ statements. He does say that the media doesn’t show the gore, and he does say that it’s difficult for the media to convey the level of chaos that exists. He also points out that adequate progress toward stabilizing and democratizing Iraq would bring public opinion back to supporting the war, regardless of the media’s presentation.
But he never claims that the media is doing a decent job of reporting reconstruction efforts, nor does he show how reporting accurately reflects conditions for the country as a whole. What he is saying is: “it’s hard to bring the reality of the violence and brutality home, and it’s hard to show the pressure of the constant threat of violence.” I don’t think Americans harbor any illusions about the reality of either of those conditions.
There’s a bit of bait-and-switch going on here as well. The complaints about the MSM go back to the invasion – the violence that Roberts is talking about has existed since about April of this year. The claim that the situation is worse than reported is based on current levels of violence, not the violence as it existed previously. The fact that Roberts may have a case at this point in time should not allow him to paint a picture of a fair media since 2003, particularly when the media hasn’t changed its reporting at all (a point he inadvertently makes when he talks about the public’s weariness of violence reports).
And certainly it should be acknowledged that the damage of media bias is two-fold: it saps the commitment of the American public and encourages the media-manipulating insurgents and terrorists. And that’s the point of the Flopping Ace’s story. The terrorists have been feeding the MSM stories of burned people and mosques, callous acts involving collateral damage, and other gruesome deaths, and the MSM has been passing them along without vetting them. And those stories have been heard not only by the American public, but by Iraqi citizens and all the people of the Middle East.
We don’t need that anchor around our necks.
