Wedding Party Massacre? Doubtful.....

On Wed, 26 May 2004 11:22:52 -0400, "Leslie Swartz"
wrote:

Scott, what is so elaborate about splicing x feet of wedding party footage
together with y feet of ululating widows/broken bodies of children/etc?

Splicing video? Nothing, in and of itself -- as you say, film is easy.
It's the combination of film and witnesses that would be hard to fake.
Finding different people, including eyewitnesses, in Makr al-Deeb,
Ramadi and Baghdad who say that there was a wedding going on there,
that specific people were at that wedding, that events on the video
reflect that, that the people who were killed were not insurgents,
that women and children were killed? Is the woman who says that her
children were killed there lying? The widow of the wedding singer in
Baghdad? The local chief?

At this point, interviews have been carried out in those various
places with a whole variety of different people, by AP, the New York
Times, al-Arabiya, Reuters and AFP _at least_... there may well be
other agencies involved, but I have seen reports from those agencies
in which reporters talked to folks themselves.

Not just one community, not just one family. Everyone from shepherds
to the widow of a moderately well-known Iraqi entertainer. Putting
that together with the video makes the idea that the whole thing is a
big hoax considerably harder to believe, in my opinion.

Are you saying that finding *one* unnamed person to lie about the
sourcing/circumstances of a piece of video constitutes an "elaborate hoax?"

Nope. But finding a whole bunch of them to do so about the event as a
whole certainly qualifies as an (over-) elaborate hoax. The video
itself is only part of it.

Scott

Ppropaganda works.

"Eliminate SPAM" wrote in message
...
John Mullen wrote:
"Leslie Swartz" wrote in message
(note: I'm the guy who posted the analogy to the Jenin mythology and
how
the power of "Arab Truth" is stronger than the power of "Western Truth"
mainly because while our truth is based on reason and evidence, arab
truth
is based on faith and culture. Truths based on reason and evidence are
harder to demonstrate than truths basedc on "it sounds right to me and
fits
my assumptions and preferences." That's why it's irrelevant- to you-
whether or not the "evidence" of the "wedding massacre" are in any way
"true" or "false" in a western sense. The pictures are purely
authentic-no
fakery required- in that they represent what they represent- it's just
that
what they represent have nothing whatsoever to do with what the
providers
are *claiming* tehy represent. Nice chatting with you anyways.)

You may not be as naive as I thought, as it seems you do sort-of
understand
the point I was making. I don't buy the 'Arab truth' vs 'Western truth'
dichotomy though. Truth is truth. But in war, perception is reality.

John


John -

I suggest you become more informed on cultural differences worldwide.
There are many ways worldwide of defining 'truth'; many do not depend on
reason and evidence. Mr. Swartz's observation on "Arab Truth" vs.
"Western Truth" is very close to the mark.

I beg to differ.

I've travelled and lived in different parts of the world and found that most
people are pretty much the same. Scottish jerks, Scots who are ok. French
jerks, French people who are ok. African jerks, Africans who are ok. USA,
Germany, Spain... Ad infinitum. Decent people outnumber jerks about 75-25 I
would say, pretty much everywhere you go.

I've also studied human developmental psychology. Children of all cultures
understand 'truth' as a concept very early on, round about the time they
learn how to lie! Only people with certain mental disorders are exempt from
this knowledge. It certainly isn't restricted to any one race or religion!

Trouble is, we also get very good at convincing ourselves of what we want to
believe...

I work worldwide and have to deal with such frequently. One guide I have
used for years is "Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands: How to do Business in 60
Countries". Aside from providing useful info on business and personal
customs, it also discusses cultural orientation such as cognitive
styles. Let me quote from their section on Saudi Arabia (since they
don't have an 'Iraq' section):
"Saudis find it difficult to accept any outside information that does
not reflect Islamic values... Generally, a Saudi's faith in Islamic
ideologies shapes the truth, but it is also affected by the immediate
feelings of the participants. Objective facts seldom overrule one's
thinking."

Nice.

I think you will find that all humans' behaviour is shaped by their moral
world view and their immediate feelings more than by 'objective facts'. Not
just people of the Islamic faith or Arabs.

It would be interesting to see if there are any books in Arabic about how to
deal with the irrational Western infidels! They must exist...

Care to apologize to Mr. Swartz?


No. What for?

John

"www.PokerCalifornia.com" wrote in message
om...
Ppropaganda works.

It certainly does.

J

In message , "Paul J. Adam" wrote:
In message , Michael P. Reed
writes
In message , "Paul J. Adam" wrote:
It's not a "war zone"

??????

Many keep saying so.

- major combat operations ended last year.

ISTR that they did. This is not the modern British Army (as it appears as
things are judged "over there." A few companies skirmishing with small
groups
of insurgents hardly constitute a major battle. There has been no large
scale
(corps/army) maneuvering, since the fall of Baghdad.

So a virgin could walk the length and breadth of Iraq with her bosom
full of gold, and none might raise a hand to her?

You need to build brick houses if you do not want the Big Bad Wolf to blow it
down.

What, was he wrong or something? Isn't anyone going to tell him?

For "he" you should have written "I," and, yes, you are, or are you
attempting
to sell the notion that guerilla war is not war, therefore, a "warzone"
cannot
exist?

I'm not the one trying to claim that Iraq is a peaceful haven of
tranquility with just the last handful of insurgents to be winkled
out...

Who has tried to claim that? Not anyone that I have read. Insurgent activity
ebbs and flows. After their conventional defeat, it took time to reorganize
and reconstitute and after a couple of months insurgent attacks rose, then
after suffering casualties and captures, it fell (as after Sadaam's capture).
It rose in Falujah, and fell again, and will probably fall through the summer
only to rebound prior to the elections (in this, it is eerily similar to the
Philippines in 1900). In the end, however, the crescendos of violence will
lessen as time passes (that is, of course, if the "occupying power" is
winning). We'll have to wait and see. Personally, I think the
guerrilla/terrorists blew it big time in Falujah, Al Sadr is doing now, by
concentrating too much, and so allowing them to be much more easily (and
conveniently) killed. An embarrassment to the U.S. and Coalition, yes, but I'd
rather be embarrassed than dead. One thing about guerrilla wars is that one
does not always know one is winning until the fighting is over. It is too
gradual. One may argue that McKinley's victory in the 1900 election was the
straw that broke the camel's back during the Philippine Insurrection (Because
Aguinaldo and the insurrectionists were depending heavily on the "anti-war"
William Jennings Bryan's victory, but the nastiest fighting (Samar and
Batangas) still lay ahead, and the war wouldn't end for another year and a
half.


You have really stretched some of your arguing points beyond the point
of credulity of late.

Why? I'm just asking for some consistency. One minute it's a successful
and mostly peaceful occupation: the next, it's a furious insurgency with
guerillas behind every rock.

I have not seen those claims made.

I'm willing to believe one, or the other, but not both at the same time.

Then you need to enlarge your imagination. g It is indeed both only not
everywhere. The pacification process is underway, but by no means complete
(obviously). Some places being more dangerous than others. That is the way of
guerilla wars, especially those seeing insurgent actions after a conventional
defeat. The Southern states in the American Revolution, France 1870, South
Africa 1899-1901, and the Philippines 1899-1902 all refer.

--
Regards,

Michael P. Reed

In article , Presidente
Alcazar wrote:

On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian
wrote:

Never mind that, Mr Brooks. It is appallingly apparent that the US, for
reasons that are not at all clear, is screwing things up in Iraq. It
was never going to be easy (as G Bush said himself, in what I snipped
above). Now I know as a matter of personal experience that the US is
by no means unsupplied with intelligent and indeed honourable officers
and NCOs: what the hell is going wrong?

Asymmetrical warfare requires asymmetrical media coverage.

Well, we certainly have that, as you go on to point out. My own belief
is that television journalism, even under far more rigorous editorial
regimes than we see today, is *inherently* dishonest. A good moving
image can *steal* a thousand words. That there is real and active
dishonesty out there just makes things worse.

I very much fear, Gavin, that there's going to be a lot of tiresome
agreement in what follows.


snippaggio

This is a victim-culture bonanza, with the media shoe-horning
everthing into their pre-existing shorthand cliches of "Palestinian
intifada" and "Vietnam quagmire". We're in the land of hysteria and
hyperbole, with every Iraqi an innocent victim (even those
volley-firing rocket-propelled grenades from ambulances and
suicide-bombing the UN) and every American a brutal,
firepower-addicted oppressor.

And Looniemouth Flakjacket, wearing a Shirt of Many Pockets, reporting
from just outside a booze-filled hotel "near the front". Looniemouth
Flakjacketess is even worse.

The Abu Ghraib thing was
disgusting, but the US Army is in the midst of cleaning out its own
house (although the cost of those shameful digital photos will yet be
paid by honest troopers in the future); what about the several
nonsenses around Fallujah? Political **** showering combat commanders?

Actually, for once the US commanders deserve some credit for trying to
sort out something on the ground that came short of decisive military
action to conquer the town, with all the catastrophic political damage
that would have caused. On the other hand, the failure of the US
forces as a whole to grasp the importance of avoiding alienation of
the local population,

And this is where I find myself worrying rather more seriously than
about irresponsible and often downright lying meeja hype. I also worry
(private sources) about gunship attacks on radar-tracked mortar-launch
sites in Baghdad, to name but one.

And I worry a lot about the sort of stuff that notorious pinko leftie
loonie TMO picked up on here a week or two ago; small numbers of combat
troops with the obligation to defend a huge logistics tail, and
shamelessly competing agencies trying to control the whole ****aree.


no matter how irrational and prejudiced those
locals might be, is a real failure. Couple that to the idiotic
slackness about post-war planning,

Quite.

and the institutional arrogance
that "we don't do occupations" (well, you should have learned before
embarking upon the occupation of 25 million Iraqis...) and there are
plenty of grounds for legitimate criticism of the American approach.
But not as much as could reasonably sustain the mass of critical
reporting that actually surrounds their efforts.

Quite squared.

snip

Take a long, hard look at the stats of who is killing who, Alan. The
media perspective is "American military repression": the dead are
revealing that the real story is Iraqis killing each other. But they
generally don't meet the demands of media preconceptions, and so they
get airbrushed out of the picture.

Iraqis killing Iraqis? Quick, blame the Americans.

Sure, but perhaps more to the point: US forces in Iraq, that is, combat
troops (in fact I think the figures work if you include every
hamburger-tosser and supply-truck driver) compared with the population
are far, far fewer than the British Army in NI. And we all know how
problem-free that game was.

I've been staggered by the extent to which media coverage has simply
amounted to the media satisfying their own wihsful thinking, whether
al Jazeera acting as the mirror of Arab prejudices about the
intolerability of American violence against fundamentalist thugs and
the invisibility of Iraqi responsibility for anything that happens; or
British and American newspapers slavishly sucking up staged photos of
soldiers abusing or raping Iraqis.

A very real problem in both the US and the UK is the lack of not only
politicos but also journalists with any military experience or indeed
any willingness to learn. Compare and contrast the nasty stories that
came out of the Korean war, with the nonsenses we see now. Consider
(just one among many possible examples) the meeja's idea of "heavy
fighting".


The Amnesty and ICRC reports are a
good case in point: try and compare the coverage of successful
reconstruction and aid efforts with the Abu Ghraib frenzy. Now, I'm
not arguing that one cancels out the other, but this does seem to be
the media position which can't address anything other than American
excesses and abuses to the exclusion of all else.

I happen to know (private sources, but there are plenty public ones if
you look around; and you certainly do have to look around, which makes
your point) that a lot of good people are actually out there trying to
reconstruct the **** out of the place, but the "abuses and excesses"
are not all meeja imagination. The importation of all manner of neo-sub
Schwarznegger "security consultants" being just one example. You really
don't need guys with major dick problems walking around with
fluorescent "Shoot Me!" signs on their foreheads.
More important, there does seem to be a lack of what might be called
grip, which undoubtedly reflects TMO's point about competing agencies.
In that sense, at least, there are Vietnam resonances.

But not otherwise. This thing simply cannot fail; the consequences
would be utterly appalling, and I wish gloating meejists would realise
it. But they're careerists, wannabee celebs. You can't expect much from
someone whose idea of integrity is a fully-functioning gold Amex card.

The last I heard was that civilian deaths in the past year were
estimated at 10,000, or 60,000 less than Saddam was believed to murder
on an average yearly basis according to the last HRO/NGO report I
read. That doesn't excuse Anglo-American errors and abuses, but it
does raise serious questions about the sense of proportion and moral
credibility of pundits who think that the current situation, bad as it
is, is similar or worse to what happened under Saddam.

Quite cubed.

--
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water" Ibn Khaldun

My .mac.com address is a spam sink.
If you wish to email me, try atlothian at blueyonder dot co dot uk

: I work worldwide and have to deal with such frequently. One guide I have
: used for years is "Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands: How to do Business in 60
: Countries". Aside from providing useful info on business and personal
: customs, it also discusses cultural orientation such as cognitive
: styles. Let me quote from their section on Saudi Arabia (since they
: don't have an 'Iraq' section):
: "Saudis find it difficult to accept any outside information that does
: not reflect Islamic values... Generally, a Saudi's faith in Islamic
: ideologies shapes the truth, but it is also affected by the immediate
: feelings of the participants. Objective facts seldom overrule one's
: thinking."

Of course the term "cognitive dissonance" was originally used to
describe behaviors manifested by "modern/western" people, but it certainly
has its place in many if not all cultures.
The above says that "objective facts" are overruled by the Saudis
"faith" and that "truth" is subjective. Funny, I'd swear that there are a
lot of fervent Christains out there who are just the same way...

regards,
--------------------------------------------------

Alan Lothian wrote in message ...
In article , Presidente
Alcazar wrote:

On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian
wrote:

Never mind that, Mr Brooks. It is appallingly apparent that the US, for
reasons that are not at all clear, is screwing things up in Iraq. It
was never going to be easy (as G Bush said himself, in what I snipped
above). Now I know as a matter of personal experience that the US is
by no means unsupplied with intelligent and indeed honourable officers
and NCOs: what the hell is going wrong?

Asymmetrical warfare requires asymmetrical media coverage.

Well, we certainly have that, as you go on to point out. My own belief
is that television journalism, even under far more rigorous editorial
regimes than we see today, is *inherently* dishonest. A good moving
image can *steal* a thousand words. That there is real and active
dishonesty out there just makes things worse.

I very much fear, Gavin, that there's going to be a lot of tiresome
agreement in what follows.


snippaggio

This is a victim-culture bonanza, with the media shoe-horning
everthing into their pre-existing shorthand cliches of "Palestinian
intifada" and "Vietnam quagmire". We're in the land of hysteria and
hyperbole, with every Iraqi an innocent victim (even those
volley-firing rocket-propelled grenades from ambulances and
suicide-bombing the UN) and every American a brutal,
firepower-addicted oppressor.

And Looniemouth Flakjacket, wearing a Shirt of Many Pockets, reporting
from just outside a booze-filled hotel "near the front". Looniemouth
Flakjacketess is even worse.

The Abu Ghraib thing was
disgusting, but the US Army is in the midst of cleaning out its own
house (although the cost of those shameful digital photos will yet be
paid by honest troopers in the future); what about the several
nonsenses around Fallujah? Political **** showering combat commanders?

Actually, for once the US commanders deserve some credit for trying to
sort out something on the ground that came short of decisive military
action to conquer the town, with all the catastrophic political damage
that would have caused. On the other hand, the failure of the US
forces as a whole to grasp the importance of avoiding alienation of
the local population,

And this is where I find myself worrying rather more seriously than
about irresponsible and often downright lying meeja hype. I also worry
(private sources) about gunship attacks on radar-tracked mortar-launch
sites in Baghdad, to name but one.

And I worry a lot about the sort of stuff that notorious pinko leftie
loonie TMO picked up on here a week or two ago; small numbers of combat
troops with the obligation to defend a huge logistics tail, and
shamelessly competing agencies trying to control the whole ****aree.


no matter how irrational and prejudiced those
locals might be, is a real failure. Couple that to the idiotic
slackness about post-war planning,

Quite.

and the institutional arrogance
that "we don't do occupations" (well, you should have learned before
embarking upon the occupation of 25 million Iraqis...) and there are
plenty of grounds for legitimate criticism of the American approach.
But not as much as could reasonably sustain the mass of critical
reporting that actually surrounds their efforts.

Quite squared.

snip

Take a long, hard look at the stats of who is killing who, Alan. The
media perspective is "American military repression": the dead are
revealing that the real story is Iraqis killing each other. But they
generally don't meet the demands of media preconceptions, and so they
get airbrushed out of the picture.

Iraqis killing Iraqis? Quick, blame the Americans.

Sure, but perhaps more to the point: US forces in Iraq, that is, combat
troops (in fact I think the figures work if you include every
hamburger-tosser and supply-truck driver) compared with the population
are far, far fewer than the British Army in NI. And we all know how
problem-free that game was.

I've been staggered by the extent to which media coverage has simply
amounted to the media satisfying their own wihsful thinking, whether
al Jazeera acting as the mirror of Arab prejudices about the
intolerability of American violence against fundamentalist thugs and
the invisibility of Iraqi responsibility for anything that happens; or
British and American newspapers slavishly sucking up staged photos of
soldiers abusing or raping Iraqis.

A very real problem in both the US and the UK is the lack of not only
politicos but also journalists with any military experience or indeed
any willingness to learn. Compare and contrast the nasty stories that
came out of the Korean war, with the nonsenses we see now. Consider
(just one among many possible examples) the meeja's idea of "heavy
fighting".


The Amnesty and ICRC reports are a
good case in point: try and compare the coverage of successful
reconstruction and aid efforts with the Abu Ghraib frenzy. Now, I'm
not arguing that one cancels out the other, but this does seem to be
the media position which can't address anything other than American
excesses and abuses to the exclusion of all else.

I happen to know (private sources, but there are plenty public ones if
you look around; and you certainly do have to look around, which makes
your point) that a lot of good people are actually out there trying to
reconstruct the **** out of the place, but the "abuses and excesses"
are not all meeja imagination. The importation of all manner of neo-sub
Schwarznegger "security consultants" being just one example. You really
don't need guys with major dick problems walking around with
fluorescent "Shoot Me!" signs on their foreheads.
More important, there does seem to be a lack of what might be called
grip, which undoubtedly reflects TMO's point about competing agencies.
In that sense, at least, there are Vietnam resonances.

But not otherwise. This thing simply cannot fail; the consequences
would be utterly appalling, and I wish gloating meejists would realise
it. But they're careerists, wannabee celebs. You can't expect much from
someone whose idea of integrity is a fully-functioning gold Amex card.

The last I heard was that civilian deaths in the past year were
estimated at 10,000, or 60,000 less than Saddam was believed to murder
on an average yearly basis according to the last HRO/NGO report I
read. That doesn't excuse Anglo-American errors and abuses, but it
does raise serious questions about the sense of proportion and moral
credibility of pundits who think that the current situation, bad as it
is, is similar or worse to what happened under Saddam.

Quite cubed.

competing agencies, the US Department of Justice has opened up a
potential battleground with the Department of Homeland Security by
means of the weapon of choice, Television. Yesterday the Attorney
General flanked by one tall and one short bozo proceeded to announce
the need to find seven people who have been known as al Qaeda members
since at least 1998. They may or may not be in the US, one commentator
on this morning's TV said he saw at least 12 of them while coming to
work in New York. "Nation in peril" is a a good rallying cry if you
have nothing more to offer, warmed over stale news fills the 24-7
schedule as well anything of value.

Jack Linthicum wrote:
Alan Lothian wrote in message
...
In article , Presidente
Alcazar wrote:

On Tue, 25 May 2004 21:44:59 +0100, Alan Lothian
wrote:

(Snip)

competing agencies, the US Department of Justice has opened up a
potential battleground with the Department of Homeland Security by
means of the weapon of choice, Television. Yesterday the Attorney
General flanked by one tall and one short bozo proceeded to announce
the need to find seven people who have been known as al Qaeda members
since at least 1998. They may or may not be in the US, one commentator
on this morning's TV said he saw at least 12 of them while coming to
work in New York. "Nation in peril" is a a good rallying cry if you
have nothing more to offer, warmed over stale news fills the 24-7
schedule as well anything of value.

The short bozo was the Director of the FBI. I couldn't identify the tall
bozo....could you?
(^-^)))

George Z.

Chad Irby wrote in message om...
In article ,
"Tamas Feher" wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3741223.stm

Several hours worth of home video tape showing the wedding has been
recovered.
+
Half-hour news video, showing the dead, including children and the very
guy who filmed the home video above.

Well, the video shown on the BBC shows *a* party or wedding. It could
have been shot at any time over the last year or more, as far as that
goes.

BBC is the remorse of the world!

They're certainly a reason for remorse in the UK. The BBC used to be
pretty good, until they let their new coverage quality slide so much.


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=5239376

You certainly have to admire the 9 members of the band who died after
the video was shot and the tenth who lived to verify their presence.
That's sacrifice. Literally.

"Basem Ishab Mohamed, the drummer, identified the organist as Mohaned,
brother of a noted Baghdad wedding singer Hussein al-Ali, who also
performed at the wedding. Both were killed when U.S. aircraft struck
in the early hours of Wednesday, he said. " from the cite above