Beauchamp?s Unit- More Shoddy Journamalism and the Citizen Journalist Response!
By: John Cole October 27, 2007 at 10:18 am
The Washington Post has a piece on Scott Beauchamp?s unit in Iraq, and it didn?t take me long to realize this is just another liberal hit piece designed to subvert our will, coughed up in the middle of the MOST EPICEST GRANDEST AND IMPORTANT STRUGGLE FOR OUR TIME?. Why couldn?t they instead spend these pages talking about all the happy soldiers or discussing all the soldiers who did not get killed or blown up? Now granted, the fellow writing this piece is just a reporter, and not an anonymous diarist ostensibly adding color, but I think that reporters and news organizations should have to live up to the strict standards of evidence set by Greater Wingnuttia? for anonymous color commentators. As such, let us parse this bilious ?news? piece:
Their line of tan Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles creeps through another Baghdad afternoon. At this pace, an excruciating slowness, they strain to see everything, hoping the next manhole cover, the next rusted barrel, does not hide another bomb. A few bullets pass overhead, but they don?t worry much about those.
?I hate this road,? someone says over the radio.
LIES! This is such an obvious and blatant lie, I can not believe the reporter would open with it. EVERYONE knows that SOP requires radio silence during convoys. As we established during the Beauchamp affair, no one in the history of the military has ever broken SOP, so one MUST conclude that no soldier ever said ?I hate this road? over the radio. Even then, note that there is no name involved. Shouldn?t the reporter have found out who said it (if it in fact was said)? And then had ten people sign their names to a document stating their buddy said it? This is basic journalism, folks.
Additionally, as we learned yesterday from Mark Noonan, bravely fulfilling his patriotic duties at Blogs for Bush, the insurgents and jihadists read our media and use it as inspiration to fuel their movement. Doesn?t this reporter realize that letting the terrorists know we hate that road means they will simply redouble their efforts, and attempt to make us hate it more so that we leave the region, come home, and inevitably allow ourselves to be taken over by a worldwide Caliphate that makes us wear Burkhas? Why would he give the enemy this ?grist? for their ?propaganda mill??
I think Bob Owens needs to investigate this soldier?s blog and Myspace accounts and find out if he has aided and abetted the terrorists in any other ways. I contend no soldier ever made the statement, but if one did, he must be driven from the military pronto. Or, at the very least, punished so I can write about it on my blog at length. At any rate, back to the Washington Post.
They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.Once again, the bias is clear. This reporter has clearly never been to the streets that John McCain walks. Those are bustling market places, packed with people of all ethnicities and religions. And what an obvious lie about the soccer field. Besides, Iraq just won a big soccer game and there is no way Iraqis would let their fields fall into disrepair.
I will continue on, but I just can not take much more of this bias.
A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon?s Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water?the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot?that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots.
?When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street,? Alarcon said this week. ?The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks.? What about all the roads that don?t have bomb craters in them (photographic evidence of Baghdad roads without craters can be found here)? And the fact that this reporter would assert that a soldier (an NCO, no less) would use the term ?hot chicks? is absurd and offensive, as you and I know our men would never show that much disrespect or use such vulgar terminology.
That is it. I can no longer deal with this bias. Even so, I think I have clearly demonstrated, using my skills as a citizen journalist, that there are enough factual errors of such magnitude that we must dismiss everything ever said about Iraq by the biased Washington Post. Bring me the head of the editor who let this trash get through. Fortunately, there are other patriots willing to brave this filth, such as McQ at Q and O, who managed to read through this obvious enemy propaganda from the WaPo and still come up with a positive message:
It think the lesson from the two stories is challenges remain, progress is certainly at different points in different areas of Iraq, but it appears to me that the trend is toward the positive.
As for me, when I need the truth about our impending glorious victory in Iraq, made possible only through the resolve of President Bush and a few patriotic bloggers fighting the Information War, I know where I will go for the unvarnished truth- Hugh Hewitt, Red State, and Rush Limbaugh. I am done with the driveby mainstream media.
*** Update ***
I didn?t want it to come to this, but it has now been thirty minutes since I posted this obvious complete destruction of the WaPo?s shoddy reporting, and I have yet to speak to their Editor, so I have decided to ratchet up the pressure a notch. I have taken it upon myself to send 263 emails to this unit?s Public Affairs Office demanding an investigation of these obvious falsehoods (as a citizen journalist, I don?t have anything better to do, so I figure they don?t either), and I have also requested that the military refuse to work with the Washington Post in the future. The void left by their absence can be filled with more honest, unbiased, and more mainstream organizations like WorldNetdaily.
I take my obligations as a citizen journalist seriously (I may have a breaking story about Graeme Frost?s parents ordering extra cheese at McDonald?s yesterday), so I will keep you posted.
*** Update #2 ***
One of our readers has pointed out that the soldier ?allegedly? quoted here, Victor Alarcon, may in fact not be a soldier at all, but in reality may be the Bolivian Cultural Attache. Now I am no geography expert, but that must be one hell of a commute for our ?alleged? soldier. If the media wasn?t so insistent on seeing what they want to see, and instead would fact-check to make sure their biases are not showing, they would realize that this may yet be another phony soldier. All they had to do was a basic google search (and we know how important those are) to figure that out.
*** Update #3***
It has been brought to my attention that other patriotbloggers also had some questions about this sham of a travesty of a piece, and fired off an email to MNF-Iraq:
Dear MNF-Iraq- ...The Washington Post wrote a disturbing article today on Iraq. ( ?I Don?t Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier?s Life?)
In the article?a Sgt. Victor Alarcon said this:
Sgt. Victor Alarcon?s Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water?the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot?that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots. 1- Are you familiar with ?Lake Havasu??
2- Does Sgt. Victor Alarcon speak for MNF-Iraq?
3- In the article Maj. Eric Timmerman says ?It?s just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing,? on thhe descent of Sadiyah. Is that the official MNF-I position?
4- Does Maj. Eric Timmerman speak for MNF-Iraq?
Thank you for your time.
He has already received his response from our brave soldiers in the field, and what a surprise, the reality on the ground is nothing like what was reported by these traitors in the Washington Post.
Filed under: General Stupidity, Military, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing |
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