Rusted Sky

Three Major Terror Busts in Iraq -- Iran, Syria Connections Exposed, Say U.S. Officials

U.S. forces have arrested the two leaders of the network believed responsible for the brazen raid in Karbala by terrorists disguised as Americans, in which five U.S. soldiers were kidnapped and later killed in January, U.S. military officials said today.

In operations over the past several days in Basra and Hillah, coalition forces captured Qais Khazali, his brother Laith Khazali and several other members of the Khazali network, a splinter faction of the Mahdi army.

Senior U.S. military sources tell ABC News that hard evidence linking the Khazalis to the Karbala raid, including the ID cards of several of the dead American soldiers, was recovered at the scene.

The coalition also found evidence linking the men to Iran and to an arms smuggling operation that included the high impact Explosively Formed Projectiles, or EFPs, according to U.S. officials.

It's interesting news that requires a re-examination of the tenets that Iran isn't involved, therefore no news.

Instead, the breaking news of the hour according to MSNBC? UK troops held by Iran, NY State says rodent poison found in pet food that killed several animals, and Iraq's deputy PM wounded in an attack.

My father said the other day if we tried to fight WW2 the same way we're fighting this war, with no news allowed from the MSM except BAD news, we'd have given it up as unwinnable in '43. Part of it may be a holdover from Viet Nam, where the media diligently earned a great mistrust from the military - but as Michael Yon points out it out here and here the Army isn't making it easier for the folks who WANT to put out an unbiased account, or positive info on the troops. Or any info at all on that matter.

RUBS

Raw, Unedited, Barely Spell-checked

22 March 07

The great difficulty in filing stories from Iraq is leading me to experiment. We are into the fifth year of the war Iraq, yet no comprehensive system exists to help media communicate to people at home. Raw information only trickles back from Iraq because the flow is strangled. That we are into the fifth year of war here, yet there is no filing center on even the larger bases is telling. Telling, perhaps, that information flow to America has never been a priority, or perhaps the priority has been to squelch it. The system of elaborate excuses is the only part of it all that is well-refined.

....

RUBs will amount to little more than a stream-of-consciousness note…tapped out as quickly as I can, and posted without checking nary a tense or, comma.

For the first RUBS, let’s start with day to day stuff. I’ve been evicted from a trailer due to lack of space (something I cover more in a dispatch ready to launch tomorrow). Billions of dollars are spent on the war each month, millions of dollars fly around here like sparrows, yet there are no designated places for journalists? While so many soldiers and their families shout for coverage from Afghanistan (remember that place?) and Iraq, I can sometimes be found from midnight to sunrise sitting outside, trying to transmit photos through a wireless network that only works sometimes. RUBS will be mostly sans photos.

And honestly after having been continually shafted and denigrated by the media, can you really blame the military for not exactly going out of their way to provide access? If everything you're going to do is going to be spun in the worst possible light to fit current media templates of "Bush Bad, War Bad, Insurgents Misguided Kids Who Just Need Understanding, Soldiers Bad and Evil" with a side dose of Abu Ghraib, why allow anyone at all? Michael Yon posted on the problems HE had with the MSM in Michael Yon : Tabula Rasa which details his background and why he got into reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan.

When my writings about Mosul started to attract a huge readership, the MSM press took notice, though not always with Tony C’s collegial tone. Many “professional journalists” sneered at my work. The most common criticism was that I lacked “objectivity” because I called enemy fighters “terrorists” when they used car bombs to blow up civilians, or because I openly admitted that as an American, I hoped “our side” would win. I seemed to get particularly bad marks for describing the outcomes of combat missions with terms like: “killed the enemy,” “shot the terrorist,” or “captured the suspects.” But in the context of the war as I was seeing it, the terminology was accurate.

Objectivity. What a wonderful way to justify ignoring what you don't want to report.

What's it going to take to get folks in the media to realize we're literally in a battle for the future of a lot of the freedoms we take for granted, and that some are so ready to give up if a PC multicultural stink is raised? What will get the media to realize that their quiet tearing down of our military while pointedly ignoring things done by insurgents is not conducive in the long run to their survival as anything but a mouthpiece for the people who would cut their unbeliveing throats without a second thought?

Another 9/11? A suicide bomber attack on the NY Times? Maybe nuking New York? (And won't the 'truthers' have a friggin' field day in THAT event!)

We're in a fight for our lives, for our cultures. And some prefer to obsess over hangnails, refusing to look up and acknowledge the wider conflict.

J.