US Military Launches YouTube Channel 348
Jenga717 writes "The US military has launched its own channel on YouTube, in efforts to shift the media's focus of Iraq from a negative to a more positive light, and to 'counter the messages of anti-American sites.' From the article: 'The footage is not picked specifically to show the military in a good light ... and is only edited for reasons of time or content too graphic to be shown on YouTube ... And while all the clips currently posted have been shot by the military's combat cameramen, soldiers and marines have been invited to submit their own clips.' The question is, where are they supposed to submit them? Starting 'on or about 14 May 2007', the Department of Defense will block troop access to Myspace, Youtube, MTV, and more sites, due to a 'growing concern for our unclassified DoD Internet, known as the NIPRNET'." More commentary below.
The troops will be unable to access these sites from any computer on the DoD network, yet are still able to access them from their home computers — which they can't use on the DoD network. So why the censorship? The DoD cites security reasons, but the Commander of Global Network Operations (DoD's Joint Task Force)"has noted a significant increase in the use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites." The PDF released by the DoD reminds troops that this "benefits not only you, your fellow Servicemembers, and Civilian employees, but preserves our vital networks for conducting official DoD business in peace and war." Sounds like quite a sticky situation."
Interesting (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What the Anti-War/Anti-Troops Crowd wants... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll bite...
Who is anti troops? The only people who are anti troops are the right wing nuts that want the troops to die because of their crazy religious beliefs. We all know that during Vietnam a lot of people WERE anti troops. It was a terrible thing but we moved past it. People understand not to blame the troops anymore. It's a really easy way to attack someone to say they are anti troops but it just isn't ever the case any more. By using this arguing tactic you are showing how morally bankrupt you are and how indefensible your position is.
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And it's no surprise that DOD will be uniformly blocking access to these sites, for several years it has been speci
they are still responsible (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What the Anti-War/Anti-Troops Crowd wants... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pardon my French, but these "efforts" are a fucked up mismanaged mess that have slanted all by themselves towards the negative - it's what happens when you roll into a country and toss the government that's been in charge for twenty years without any reasonable plan to end the power vacuum and restore order. What the anti-war crowd wants is for the Bush administration not to fuck this situation up, but it appears to be too late for that. The situation is a mess, it's been handled terribly from every point of view except the military one (I will give them credit - they've done an admirable job when they've had missions to accomplish, the only reason they didn't win the war yet is that the politicians forgot to pin down exactly what "win" would mean in this context, they just thought that things would magically heal themselves and it would be obvious). Yes, America has a badass army that can destroy whatever it wants with very little trouble; unfortunately it also has some mentally challenged leaders that forgot they would need to clean up the mess left by removing an active dictator from a country that's forgotten how to rule itself.
Iraq is no longer a war, after all. A war involves two organized armies having at it, as in with actual commanders and weapons; Iraq is just a bunch of idiots blowing crap up on the roads to scare the people trying to calm things down. We're now trying to quell an insurgency, which is exactly what the anti-war set warned would happen, and warned that we didn't have a plan to deal with. If I recall the response from the Bush administration was that the Iraqis would not do this because they would be so happy to be rid of Saddam. If that had been true, we would have stopped arguing this crap two years ago.
So we're screwed? Should we leave? Who knows...it doesn't appear that things are going very well, which I'm pretty sure even Bush admitted himself, and I really do feel for the Iraqis, so maybe it would be worth sticking it out a little longer to see if we can at least leave things slightly less dangerous than they are now. But as you get yourself all heated up about the anti-war leftist commie shitbag bastards with their patchouli douche and smokable underwear, don't forget this key fact - they were right. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. The entire justification for this war was mistaken, even if it was not an outright lie. Iraq was not even on the radar when it came to being a dire threat to the United States. I know the standard right-wing line from here: Saddam was a bad guy, are you saying it would be better if we left him in power? Well, no, I would never argue the world was better with him, yes, he was a real nasty leader. But there are a lot of bad guys out there. If we start wars with each of their countries just because they're bad guys...well, we just can't, for lack of resources, troops, and morale. There are too many places where we don't like the current leadership, and these kinds of missions do not tend to turn out well, either for our country or theirs. We don't have the energy as a nation to keep reliving the same military regime change nightmare over and over. And the fact is, without the WMD "proof" showing that Saddam was a clear, imminent threat, we would never have gone in because people wouldn't have supported it. Unlike politicians (real or armchair), most real people like to be extremely careful about sending their children off to war, so don't underestimate how totally messed up it is that thousands of our people have now died and killed because of a war that probably shouldn't have started at all.
So whatever...the point of this rant is that the Republicans in control of this war are the ones that messed up - it's ridiculous to point a finger at the media and scream "BIAS!" for reporting on it. You can try to spin this a
Isn't that the definition of.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that called "propaganda"?
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Bob Herbert: (Score:4, Insightful)
More than 90 million Americans, close to a third of the entire population, are struggling to make ends meet on incomes that are less than twice the official poverty line. In my book, they're poor.
The number of poor people in America has increased by five million over the past six years, and the gap between rich and poor has grown to historic proportions. The richest one percent of Americans got nearly 20 percent of the nation's income in 2005, while the poorest 20 percent could collectively garner only a measly 3.4 percent. [nytimes.com]
So, what makes America more secure? "Fighting" "terrorists", or using the 150 Billion to support those at home?
What's your point? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.econlib.org/library/ENC/PovertyintheUni tedStates.html [econlib.org]
The poverty problem is not
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Re:Isn't that the definition of.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Mission Accomplished"
"Let Freedom Reign!"
Who is spouting unfounded propoganda, again?
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If you were to watch any channel other than Fox News during the first part of the war, you would have thought that we were losing - that we were being driven out of the country. Then when the military LIBERATED Iraq from an evil dictator who had mur
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Also, your second paragraph is either an emotional appeal or a non-sequitur. It's perfectly possible to remove an evil dictator from power while also raping, looting and pillaging
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OK, if you are privy to this secret inside scoop that nobody else knows about, maybe you could share with us exactly what about the current situation you find so wonderful.
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The *current situation* doesn't allow them to enjoy this unsolicited "freedom". Huge numbers of refugees who continue to flee Iraq attest to that. Given that we've already been there for 4 years and have achieved so little, it's unlikely that our troops are going to change that in the "near future" either.
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Can you explain precisely how we're winning? We've blown hundreds of billions of dollars, sent thousands of young people away to die, and increased the momentum behind Islamic fundamentalism and terrorist groups.
The Iraqi people have gone from a horrible dictatorship to civil war and chaos, and around 65,000 of them have been killed in the process. (Twenty times more
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What is 'it' that's so worthwhile? Democracy? Because in case you haven't noticed, it's not about to happen there. Iraq is in the middle of a civil war, and whichever side wins is going to royally fuck the other side over. I don't really consider that a worthwhile cause myself.
Perhaps you'd care to spell out what you actually expect to happen in Iraq? Because I foresee a continuing conflict between various factions that will
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Uh . . . I did watch any channel other than Fox during the first part of the war, and I was never put under the impression that we were losing any battles, let alone the war.
But I saw members of the UN inspection team state that they didn't think Sadaam had wepaons of mass destruction. I was presented with ex-generals commenting that we weren't going in with enough troops to ke
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So, does the murders he committed justify the thousands upon thousands [iraqbodycount.net] of people we killed to 'LIBERATE' them?
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You boot-licking Republican cocksucker, you think you have karma to burn? I piss on Steve Jobs in Apple threads, that's some fucking karma!
Ok, seriously, what's with the whiny persecution complex, and where the in Allah's name are you getting your information? People had to turn to BBC and al-fucking-Jazeera to get some real news on the invasion, because all the Americ
Re:Isn't that the definition of.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the invasion worked. No one ever doubted that. The media never questioned the official line right up until Abu Ghraib. Then they said, "What the hell?" just like anyone reasonable person would. Then they decided to report that for all the talk of "supporting the troops," the solidiers didn't have enough armor. It's just that now the official line has diveged so much from reality, you can't ignore it. Do you honestly believe Tony Snow believes himself when he compares Baghdad to when Washington DC was the "murder capital?"
It's convient to say that no one know what's going on, but that's simply isn't true. There's a civil war on, and the situation in Iraq has steadily gotten worse. Hell, Cheney is over there in May 9th and says, "Violence is down fairly dramatically," And then an explosion rocks the very building. This week the State Department said that everyone going outside the buildings in the green zone needs to wear body armor. This is bad. 30 bodies a day are being found. That's the work of militia death squads. Four years ago, we didn't have those problems. The Iraqi Ministry of Education reports [alertnet.org] that only 30% of school aged children attend class, because they're parents fear for their safety. That's down from 75% last year. There's been a steady exodus [guardian.co.uk] of highly educated professionals from that country. We're talking doctors, teachers, people needed to maintain a cohesive society. McCain visits Baghdad and says, "Look I can walk though a market, and the generals don't need armor." He had 100 guards, armor, and attack helicopters with him, to walk through a market that mostly closed becaused no one wanted their picture taken with the Americans. The Army issued a statment saying that McCain was "mistaken" when he said Prateaus would go about Baghdad without armor. McCain didn't even belive himself.
This situation in Iraq is is bad. It is very very bad.
It's very convienent and comforting to believe that Fox is telling the truth, and everyone else is lying, but that simply isn't true. Even if you ignore the fact that Fox News has gone lockstep with the Republican party since its inception; you have the entire world media on one side, and then you have Fox News. Who you going to believe? Well obviously Fox, since everyone hates America, including a majority of Americans.
Fox News demostably has lousy coverage. Numerious media studies have show that people that primarily get their information from Fox News are grossly misinformed. But I'm sure that's just because reality has a well known liberal bias.
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Um, what? I don't know of any channels that gave this impression. I think maybe you need to step outside of the "no-spin zone" and back to reality, where the Iraqi Information Minister was the laughingstock of t
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Now I'm not saying bias doesn't exist in the various media outlets, but of the two entities (media and military) which has a history of, and a purpose for, propoganda?
Saying that the milita
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It is about seriousness, which fosters honesty.
Soldiers are serious.
Media are a joke.
Really -- think about the reportage of technical stories. Can you read a newspaper story about IBM's Cell without cringing at the gross oversimplifications and outright distortions? Reporters are morons, and worse, they lie. Doubt me? Get interviewed!
I have a simple rule about reports from the fronts:
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Like put up Youtube sites depiciting military actions in a positive light?
Circular (Score:2)
I can't help but get the impression that when you use the word politician you mean it in a slanderous manner to describe someone who doesn't share your opinion.
Everyone has an agenda, get over it.
Re:Isn't that the definition of.... (Score:5, Informative)
I have tagged the article as such.
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Propaganda? Na... (Score:2)
And if you get blown up by an IED, just hit replay and you're good to go.
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That depends on how you define it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wars are hard to cover, and the mish-mash conflict/counter-insurgency that is Iraq is no exception. The problems are similar to those of any other big, contentious political conflict, such as elections, only now people are shooting each other, a reporter's access is often limited to a certain area and frequently only to one side, and the emotions run about 100 times stronger.
I like the use of the word "propaganda" in Spanish better, as a word used to describe any advertisement as well as its perhaps less savory meanings. Propaganda tries to influence people, yes, but it can play a role in informing people. A car ad, for example, informs me about say the gas mileage of a car and attempts to convince me to buy the car at the same time. The information regarding gas mileage is accurate and factual, but it is not simply handed to me straight - it's done in a persuasive manner.
News "reporting" has become more of the same, as the 24 hour networks seem to have a system where supposedly unbiased reports - and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're all biased - are viewed, and then commentary from a pundit whose main qualification is having an opinion is solicited, and this commentary runs just as long if not longer than the report itself. I for one am tired of hearing Jack Cafferty, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs (I particularly dislike Dobbs, but that's another post), Hannity and Colmes blabber on.
The problems are not simply ones of bias - it's a lack of depth, and this problem exists on the supply and demand sides as well. American news outlets have consistently cut back on international news for well over a decade now, and other than a few select cities worldwide most simply don't have correspondents overseas. The results of this problem could easily be seen in the recent Israeli-Lebanese (well, whoever exactly the other party was - it was pretty nebulous) conflict last summer. The major wire services, news outlets, etc. simply didn't have many reporters in Beirut to keep track of things. They flew out their usual talking heads and depended on the information of local stringers, who often have their own agendas and biases built in. A textbook example of this would be the Adnan Hajj photography controversy [wikipedia.org] - a local stringer who doctored photos and used misleading captions to get his point across.
Keeping reporters overseas is expensive, and combat embeds - the safest method of transportation for journalists in Iraq - isn't exactly cheap, either. If you notice, television coverage in the U.S. is often interspersed with clips of combat and other footage from the Iraq conflict recorded during the invasion over four years ago. Or from the latest 12 - 24 hour embed a reporter did with a unit, which is hardly sufficient time to get to know things. Troops also hate these short embeds, something I say from personal experience not as a soldier but from long discussions I had with a French friend talking about his military experience in Afghanistan as a unit commander. Reporters often kept his group from getting the job done. After putting up with a few embeds, he told all those who followed that if fighting occurred they were on their own - and he sure hoped they brought weapons and ammunition.
But there's another reason for this lack of depth of coverage: Americans don't really care about what's going on in the world. Fewer than 20% of Americans have a passport at any given time, and I'd wager that 4 years into a massive troop deployment in Iraq more than 50% of the public still couldn't find the place on a map or identify its capital city. Americans tend to have strong moral feelings about war in general, good and bad, but few and far between are those actually informed. This apathy combined with the extremely
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Typical work network rules (Score:2, Interesting)
Gaming sites? Filtered. Hacking sites? Filtered. Gambling and porn as well (I assume, haven't tried those.) Recently, they've figured out how to filter the google cache of pages sometimes, too.
Unfortunately, sometimes t
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If people in Iraq or Afghanistan open internet cafes that don't censor YouTube, and are able to keep them open, then we'll be closer to earning that "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner.
blatant censorship (Score:4, Interesting)
on another note... I'm in the air force, and for quite some time the base network has blocked access to the following (though some of the blocks have since been rescinded):
1.e-bay
2.something awful
3.any flash content
4.any URL with the word "game" in it
5.any URL with the word "forum" in it
6.countless other harmless sites that don't come to mind right now
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As to network access, I'm surprised that Internet access is so prevalent in military offices
dont watch it then (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes. That hardly needs to be pointed out. So, what's your point?
I'm not watching it ... (Score:3, Funny)
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Is that classified? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that the kind of classified information we should not allow the marines to post?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6c4_1176720508&p=1 [liveleak.com]
John Vai
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The situation is d
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The funniest part about this video is when he brags about how he swears at the kids and calls them names in English, and because they can't speak the language, they don't know what he's saying.
And the whole time I'm thinking, "You jackass, you think they're not doing the same goddamn thing to you in Pashtun?"
Editorial decisions (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh really? So what is the criteria then? number of shots on target? cost to the taxpayer of munitions expended? rounds discharged per second?
Entertainment value?
I mean, c'mon, that's just such a silly statement. What other reason can the military ever have for releasing any media at all beyond terse official communiques?
Re:Editorial decisions (Score:5, Insightful)
To recruit.
I've seen TV ads where an FPS turns into the US Army video - albeit a little "Saving Private Ryan" hue to it all - and then a "sarge" shouting about the real challenge.
The people who watch videos on youtube are the target recruiting age demographic.
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Are there blooper reels? (Score:3, Funny)
- accidently shooting your friend in the back
- blowing up children by mistake
- shooting at reporters as they wave the white flag of war... ect
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I'm gonna post these i think (Score:4, Informative)
Rory Bremner gives a hilarious and historical look at the history of conflict in Iraq.
1 Between Iraq and a Hard Place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by43joQLYj8 [youtube.com]
2 Beyond Iraq and a Hard Place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2JCLwhwTmM [youtube.com]
3 Beneath Iraq And A Hard Place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipa8DuKyN6I [youtube.com]
Robert Newmans History of Oil:
1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Ecd6361Ls [youtube.com]
2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZefONsT1E8 [youtube.com]
3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ0RX3vz-Og [youtube.com]
4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLxxybJWVRI [youtube.com]
5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsknJvrfSYA [youtube.com]
WE ARE NOT IN IRAQ FOR OIL !!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWiLshk6fSU [youtube.com]
an interesting lecture by Michael Ruppert: part on starts after brief music:The Truth and Lies of 9-11 A lecture by former LAPD narcotics officer, Michael Ruppert, held at Portland State University in November 2001. He explains how September 11th is connected with oil, gas, heroin, money laundering and the US stockmarket
1: http://http.dvlabs.com/radio4all/ug/ug95-hour1mix
2: http://http.dvlabs.com/radio4all/ug/ug95-hour2mix
This does nothing. (Score:2, Insightful)
The only way that this is about the troops at all is in the sense that they are even there in the first place. This is about the U.S. invading a sovereign nation on false p
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And have you ever considered how oil is crucial to your standard of living? Have you ever considered that if america did not invade iraq to protect oil interests that it would mean givi
War Crimes Clips (Score:2, Interesting)
The famous "Awe Dude" air-strike on a crowd of civilians. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQUK5rA4DaI [youtube.com]
Or this apparent murder of civilians driving by in their cars. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnyjH5wusqs [youtube.com]
Or the Apache killing these unarmed men in a farmers field, working on a tractor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZRyNd6ru8 [youtube.com]
Or executing a wounded Iraqi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W41srr6CQU [youtube.com]
Blowing up Mosque's doesn't look so good either. http: [youtube.com]
Re:War Crimes Clips (Score:5, Informative)
Re:War Crimes Clips (Score:5, Interesting)
I notice you selected the SNIPPED version. Here's a link to the full version.
Watch old boy play "hide the SA7", using his buddies and their equipment as cover. Note the whole interaction between the people, including the initial conversation by the car and the rapid ditching of the weapon in the field. I contemptuously defy anyone to link these behaviors to tractor repair. I work on ag equipment and tractors, and there is nothing among my parts stash or tool collection that is the size and shape of a handheld SAM tube. That is no grain drill section (note the dangling end cap when he runs), PTO shaft, or similar.
http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/001763.html [murdoconline.net]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wdJo-eoLxI [youtube.com] (search 'helicopter kills" and compare versions)
"Or executing a wounded Iraqi"
How would/do/have YOU act/acted when you suspect(ed) an enemy fighter may be "playing possum"?
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/U.S._Navy_finds_soldi
"A known tactic of anti-Iraqi forces (AIF) is to feign injury or death, and the marine could reasonably claim they were still a threat."
"Blowing up Mosque's doesn't look so good either."
Nor does using them for military purposes, which removes their protected status under the GC.
"Or this apparent murder of civilians driving by in their cars."
All we have is a "stovepiped" view from a cam, with no overall context as to what actions were taking place nearby. Note the cameraman, "Doc" comments that no unarmed people were harmed, and he would probably have been in a position to view the cleanup. Those vehicles could have done a driveby or similar off-camera, but we don't know either way.
"The famous "Awe Dude" air-strike on a crowd of civilians."
Post-strike assertions go both ways, but the ground controller called it in during the ground battle.
What did he see that we didn't?
All we see from the video is a group of people moving purposefully in one general direction.
Ideology-based conjecture is not proof.
Mod parent up (Score:4, Informative)
I have a question (Score:2)
So why the censorship? The DoD cites security reasons, but the Commander of Global Network Operations (DoD's Joint Task Force)"has noted a significant increase in the use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites." The PDF released by the DoD reminds troops that this "benefits not only you, your fellow Servicemembers, and Civilian employees, but preserves our vital networks for conducting official DoD business in peace and war." Sounds like quite a sticky situation."
Why the hell doesn't the world's largest military have the bandwidth to support our troops watching YouTube? We have missiles that cost millions each but we can't afford some Internet bandwidth? WTF?
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Because much of their field infrastructure, for obvious reasons of portability, is wireless and satellite based. It takes a little longer to launch new satellites to get more bandwidth than it does to upgrade your DSL service. Yeah, in bases they have decent bandwidth, but the same problems that any other comp
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The war at home. (Score:5, Insightful)
I accept that this may be modded offtopic. It just pisses me off that everyone is pushing their agendas via a medium that has such potential to empower.
The media climate has reached a point where even if I were to put together a youtube series depicting the life of veterans after returning to the states, chronicling both their triumphs and their tragedies, the series would be politicized by all the f*cking pundits and bloggers and politicians to where very few people could view it without preconcieved notions about my own personal opinions about war, politics, and the state of our democracy.
Anyone else out there feel like you can't even trust what you see with your own eyes anymore? Do any other Americans out there feel like it is damn near impossible to speak directly to your fellow countrymen without having your words filtered through the opinions of the talking heads that fill their t.v. screens and babble out of their radios?
Regards.
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You're pissed off that people are using a medium with potential to empower, to empower themselves? Hmmmm. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
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There is no democracy without access to unbiased information. The practice of manipulating information is anti-democracy and anti-America. My point is that information manipulation is now the status-quo.
Americans are not supposed to agree or disagree with governmental agendas, but to set the agendas.
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Impossible (Score:2)
The media is doing exactly what it always has done. Provided facts laced with opinions. This has been going on since the dawn of time. Our jobs as readers are to parse that information as best we can. Reading it is a active, not
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Information is no longer garnered from sources that you can evaluate through direct personal experience with the source. There is no prior period in history where individuals recieved their immediate information via sources that they could not use direct personal experience to evaluate, or to hold accountable for erroneous actions motivated by the receipt of erroneous information.
If I choose to belie
Department of Government Duplication Department (Score:3, Interesting)
isn't it obvious (Score:2)
Where is the channel? Was it removed? (Score:3, Informative)
The article states it is the 16th most subscribed channel on YouTube, but I don't see it anywhere in the top subscribed channel list.
Did the military or YouTube remove it?
Re:The truth (Score:4, Insightful)
How many bad cops are there, really? But there are plenty of people that paint them all with the same brush. I'm not saying that the military is filled with righteous humanitarians who just get stuck in a rough spot every now and again. But the fact is that bad news sells and good news doesn't. When given the choice between bad news and good news, the bad news will win every time. That having been said, I don't think the DoD should be in the business of making sure their side of the story gets told. I know people over there now, and have few friends that have made it back. It's still a war, they're still in the military, and the story isn't going to be all rosy. Or all bad.
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That being said, the people in the military are not actually in a position of authority.
Thus, it's entirely possible to paint the military in a good light while letting the authority decisions be painted in a bad light, and I think that this type of PR works perfectly for their target market: new future soldiers.
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Hunderds of thousands. It's more the norm than an exception. It's like they say, there's a fine line between being a cop and being a criminal. Both careers attract the same sort of people.
Re:The truth (Score:4, Interesting)
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I never quite understood though why a "victory" speech about a war in a virtually landlocked country was made from an aircraft carrier sitting in an ocean hundreds miles away. Besides, according to Bush the people of Baghdad would great us (and therefore him) "with open arms".
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
The last election? (Score:2)
The last presidential election was 2004. Maybe we should've known to kick our current president out by then: I mean, Fahrenheit 9/11 was already released. But, even though things looked b
Re:They don't think? (Score:2)
I'm not following that. (Score:2)
And what about those of us who opposed this war BEFORE we invaded?
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Who the fuck are you? (Score:2)
I was out protesting with MILLIONS of other people.
I wrote letters to my representatives.
Senator Patty Murray voted AGAINST the war.
Fuck your sophomoric "we're all to blame" bullshit. Many of us stood up and opposed this war. We are not to blame. We are still trying to get our troops back before any more of them die.
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The military isn't the one that said that we should invade Iraq. All CIA and defense intelligence reports supported the worldwide consensus that Iraq could be contained and that the WMD reports were not conclusive. But Bush and Cheney's lackeys liberally interpreted those reports and suppressed others to make their case to invade
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Points of view (Score:3, Interesting)
Heres a cute comic that neatly summarizes what I mean: http://xkcd.com/c106.html [xkcd.com]
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Re:See All of you! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:See All of you! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:See All of you! (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I am sympathetic to the idea. Not every soldier that goes to Iraq raps a few women and then guns down some kids. Hell, the entire 'surge' is based around the idea of sacrificing more Americans to save more Iraqis. Right now US soldiers are setting practically undefended in outposts all over Baghdad instead of turtling up in their bases and air striking anything that looks threatening. The point of the shift in strategy was basically to put Americans more in the line of fire and restrain the force they can use so that fewer civilians die. They are focusing on civilian protection instead of force protection.
I don't think people fully realize what this means. We KNOW that more soldiers will die as we expose them in an effort to defend the civilian population. I am sympathetic that the army is a tad irritated at being called baby killers while everyone ignores the fact that they are paying in American blood to reduce civilian casualties inflicted by both collateral damage and intentional terrorist/sectarian attacks.
Now, it can certainly be argued that this is a complete waste of American lives. It can certainly be argued that we would be better off to saying we are sorry for kicking over their iron fisted dictator that kept them you line, write out a big check, and tell them good luck on not committing genocide against each other. That said, give the army some credit. They are being told to pay in their own blood to achieve some political objective. If they want to show that they do more then gun down civilians, let them. God forbid anything other then tragedy be reported from Iraq.
It's the IMPACT, not the number. (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably. But that doesn't matter.
The IMPACT of a single innocent child being killed by our troops outweighs a literal TON of candy and flowers being handed out.
Meanwhile, comments from REAL military leaders
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/12/ap/nati
So dead women and children don't matter to the officers in charge.
Again, read the above link.
The problem is that this is now an occupation. We are occupying Iraq. But we are still treating it as an invasion.
We need to switch our strategy to law enforcement now. No more bombings. No more tanks.
The war is over. We won. But we're still going to lose Iraq because we cannot understand that police work is not the same as calling in another bombing run.
And the fault of that is our government AND the military leadership.
Our troops WILL crack under pressure. We KNOW that. Yet we keep putting more pressure on them because we still believe that Iraq is a "war" when we are really an occupation force.
The military leadership refuses to tell the politicians "NO".
Iraq IS a tragedy.
We paint schools and then shoot the parents of the children because they're traveling too fast when they approach our road block. How is that anything other than tragic?
Our troops are PEOPLE, not machines. They cannot take the continued stress.
And now we're extending their tours.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
First to say that the actions of a few condemn the whole is an idea that is propagated by those who can not adequately create coherent thoughts. It's almost childish. I realise that you may not believe that, but there are others out there who paint the world with such a brush. But based on that, should we start rounding up Iraqis off the street and executing them since some of them are jihadists who aren't content with attacking only the foreign invader
Purpose != Actual Results (Score:2)
Hell, the entire 'surge' is based around the idea of sacrificing more Americans to save more Iraqis
Sure, that's probably one of the reasons why the administration wants to have a new surge of troops. Others are to quell the rising amounts of violence and set an example that America won't accept looking like it lost and is retreating. The actual result of such a surge, though, is most likely going to be a rise in violence. When we phased out of Vietnam, we experienced the bloodiest time of that war.
Re:See All of you! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry for the 3 people you know that came back. I know a few that didn't come back, and I know hundreds who have been over there for months to years. I suppose the fact that I was there makes me a baby killing, civilian raping, prisoner torturing asshole too huh? Well I'm certainly glad that the people like you are far away from the field and with no weapons, the 15-20 iraqi locals riding on a flatbed doing random work on the base (trash, sandbags, etc) all started waving and smiling at our group on my first day there. I would much rather be surrounded by the people that see that the military is doing its best to try and help (far from the politicians goals).
Go watch your local news and see how many 'good deeds' type stuff gets reported, and then see how many murderous rampages and serial killings get reported, and how much coverage each gets. Then ask "gee, I wonder what more people watch and where they get their ratings". Then think for just one moment "I wonder if the news channels are doing the same thing with the war that they do with our local news, showing the most disturbing and horrific things for ratings and glossing over the mundane and good because noone pays attention to it".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a waste of taxpayer resources to have GIs visiting sites such as YouTube, MTV, etc., as these sites are not mission essential.
You can't be serious.
I guess GIs should not be allowed to have any reading material, and music. No DVDs, either. No recreation time. After all, none of those things are "mission essential." The only thing they should be allowed to read is operations manuals.
Yeah, I'm sure that's going to make for happy troops. It's so great to ask these soldiers to supposedly defend America's freedom, while not allowing them to have any of that freedom. Makes total sense. Won't cause lower morale at all. Will help recr