WB: Pity Party – Moon of Alabama

July 25, 2006

WB: Pity Party

Billmon:

Perhaps we can assume that Ricks, like the child who touched the hot stove, is now once burned and twice shy. But what about his colleagues — the ones out there now writing down whatever propaganda bullshit an Israeli general or embassy military attache is pushing their way? How many years will we have to wait before they let us know they got it all wrong?

Pity Party

Posted by b on July 25, 2006 at 05:14 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Damn…lol

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 25 2006 5:39 utc | 1

Here’s the answer to his colleagues writing garbage from Northern Israel/Southern Lebanon. All journalists in N- Israel are Required to be accompanied by Israeli police. Nothing can be printed that hasn’t been cleared by Israeli military censors. No mention can be made of any mililtary targets hit by Hezbollah. So, for example, we hear of crashing helicopters rather than helicopters shot down by Hez-.
Further Israel has spent the last several days gunning them down. In one case when 2 were tog. & the helicopter gunship only managed to shoot one, the other was immediately run down by a nearby jeep. A local Al Jazeera office was ransacked & all their equipment destroyed. (Rpt. from there by journalist on Pacifica radio today.) Fair to assume that Washington said you can keep on keeping on, but keep it out of the press. Solution – Murder Journalists…

Posted by: jj | Jul 25 2006 6:07 utc | 2

Well Maestro, amusing as hell.
And you think you are a fucking journalist.
Where were you in 2004?
Hiding behind the curtain?
Doing some amusing little machinations back there too, me thinks.
I wanted to engage you once or twice about some issues, back then, but you just couldn’t seen to bring yourself to come out from behind that curtain.
Then you got a case of the vapours, and up and disappeared, for the longest time.
Highly amusing.
I am sure Tom Ricks is quaking in his boots about what a pissant like you thinks.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Jul 25 2006 6:57 utc | 3

Great piece, Billmon! Right on! I especially like comparing what Pravda folks got with Robin Wright, etc. I’m a former corporate journalists (from way back in the day, as in 20 years ago.). The profession was sliding then, but in the last ten years, it has jumped the shark big-time.
Keep at ’em! Thank God for the blogs and the pushback. These guys are pathetic! Pathetic!

Posted by: Midwest Meg | Jul 25 2006 7:31 utc | 4

Ricks is pro-invasion and occupation. He also cares mainly about the opinions of soldiers, and little about the opinions of any Iraqis who don’t prove their worth by cooperating with the occupation. Even the surveys done by American and British companies report that most of the Arab Iraqi majority don’t want
the Anglo/American/Australian + paid window dressing soldiers there. The Kurds want the occupation of the Arabs, but not themselves. Ricks cites the same reasons for staying that were used to justify ‘staying the course’ in the latter years of the Vietnam War, the ‘bloodbath’ and ‘domino’ theories. Well, to avoid the former we could bring in yet another immigrant wave of collaborators in a failed imperial project.
The latter reason, of course, is only the specious accusation of planned aggression from an aggressor. Let the Americans take their rival oil control monomaniac Saddam with them and get the hell out of someone else’s country.

Posted by: Multisect | Jul 25 2006 10:50 utc | 5

But leaving aside the fact that it’s a little late now to be running corrections… there’s also the question of where Ricks got his new perspective on the war. Was it from interviewing yet another group of military officers — this lot angry and embittered by their experiences in Iraq? If so, how do we know Ricks hasn’t given them the same uncritical hearing he gave their overly optimistic colleagues in Iraq?
That’s exactly right. Ricks was on Meet the Press the other day saying that we can’t just leave, and we’ll have to occupy Iraq another 10 to 15 more years. Ricks has just gotten smarter about anticipating the official line, since in 2 years time we’ll have all these leaks from the new president about what a fiasco Bush left him with.

Posted by: Vin Carreo | Jul 25 2006 11:09 utc | 6

Bamboozlement vignette:

Tom Ricks of the Washington Post arrived in country, and came to my wing, the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, today. I met him and Capt Tune at the Combined Air Operations Center, prepared to take them to meet some aircrew (pre-briefed with talking points, of course), and then planned to escort them to my wing commander, who is very media savvy and charming to the media (fighter pilot!)…
…We made-up the lost five minutes driving to the aircrew interviews – the pilots were great – hit all the key messages, and later the commander once again proved to be an articulate, inspritational spokesman.

The Ernie Pyle of the PR junket…

Posted by: Sven | Jul 25 2006 12:51 utc | 7

It has to be said.
Flash Harry, how much do you spend in $$$ terms on Billmon Times?
So what the fuck he didn’t respond, yes a great loss to blogging back in 2004, but, it’s just an online diary…….. and Billmon reads the runes……. sensible demo”crat”s don’t want to take over Bush’s legacy, until he loses like the loser he is.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 25 2006 18:17 utc | 8

great catch sven

Posted by: annie | Jul 25 2006 18:54 utc | 9

i think one of the kindest things that could be done for the lebanese outside of a complete cessation of the israeli war machine is to send al the scribblers & babblers from cnnskybbc straight into iraq – they’re so close anyway – & they need to see what happening on the ground in baqba for example or tikrit or mosul or basra
perhaps someone could suggest a hotel for them in baghdad
they have played their part in the construction of hell – they should live there some time

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 26 2006 2:34 utc | 10

I agree with Cloned Poster, of course. The difference between b, Billmon, Juan Cole, the other first rate bloggers and myself, aside from the fact that they are better focused, sharper analysts, and better stylists than I am, is… nothing.
They are not knocking down the “big bucks” doing the work they’re doing, freely sharing with all of us.
They have no official capacity or extraordinary powers… certainly no responsibility to scratch my itches or address my concerns.
They are just bozos on the bus, like myself. Just more talented. They owe me nothing.
I am indebted to them for whatever information, enlightenment, even entertainment they have shared with me.
Thank you b, Billmon, Juan Cole, et al.
I am very grateful for your exertions on all of our behalfs. You’ve filled the vaccuum left by the departure of “real”, that is paid, journalists.
And the love of the amateur for his life’s calling only points up what the “real” journalists are up against. I don’t think they’ll ever be able to come back, as long as folks like b, Billmon, and Juan Cole continue, as Tiger Woods is wont to do on the links, to give them free lessons in their trade.
These three and some few others that I know of are playing a whole other game

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 26 2006 11:45 utc | 11

@JFL, what you said.
And to that list I would add the informative, thoughtful and considerate posters here at the moon. It’s great hanging out with you, despite the inevitable frustration and despair when discussing yet another example of the world taking a turn for the worse.
Yes, JJ, I think the internecine squabbles flare up when we are forced by events to confront our own impotence and vulnerability to savage acts and arrogant deceit. It scares all of us. I can’t remember who said it, but breathe.
I high recommend a great interview (transcript) on DNow! with Yonatan Shapira, a former helicopter pilot who is organising resistance within the Israeli military, working to help Israeli terror victims and also a founder of Combatants for Peace, an organisation bringing former combatants from both sides of the Palestinian war together to talk and work for peace. He was so articulate about his own evolution to his current position and how difficult it was to overcome his cultural biases that he quite took my breath away. He speaks of being summoned for a private chat with General Halutz – the man now in charge of the Israeli army and invading Lebanon, when he had organised a group of Israeli Air Force pilots to sign a declaration refusing to participate in aerial attacks on Palestinian territories. He says that General Halutz “told me how he sees the different value of human beings, when Israeli citizens is on top, then Israeli soldiers, then Palestinian civilians and then Palestinian fighters.”
On the current situation my only contacts are personal. We have a good friend from Lebanon that is very frightened for her family. We hosted several Israeli visitors as WWOOF’ers this past year, and they were wonderful people – genuinely troubled by what their country is doing in the occupied territories and willing to hear all viewpoints including mine, which is that they are brutally replicating the apartheid of South Africa.
On the other hand, I have relatives in the US that are Jewish, and won’t listen to any criticism of Israel at all, immediately labelling it (and me) anti-semitic and revisionist because what I say contradicts what they were told at synagogue and in high school civics – the last place they learned any history.
You guys (and gals?) are better sources than anything I pay for, and I buy information for a living. For the self-important assholes… well, that is why I have a pagedown key. Hope they get something out of it too.
This was going to be a short post, but… special thanks to b…

Posted by: PeeDee | Jul 28 2006 10:08 utc | 12

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