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| Pentagon: Rumsfeld misspoke on Flight 93 crash |
| Tuesday, December 28, 2004 |
Pentagon: Rumsfeld misspoke on Flight 93 crash
Defense secretary's remark to troops fuels conspiracy theories
From Jamie McIntyre
CNN Washington
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A comment Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made during a Christmas Eve address to U.S. troops in Baghdad has sparked new conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
In the speech, Rumsfeld made a passing reference to United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to stop al Qaeda hijackers.
But in his remarks, Rumsfeld referred to the "the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania."
A Pentagon spokesman insisted that Rumsfeld simply misspoke, but Internet conspiracy theorists seized on the reference to the plane having been shot down.
"Was it a slip of the tongue? Was it an error? Or was it the truth, finally being dropped on the public more than three years after the tragedy" asked a posting on the Web site WorldNetDaily.com.
Some people remain skeptical of U.S. government statements that, despite a presidential authorization, no planes were shot down September 11, and rumors still circulate that a U.S. military plane shot the airliner down over Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
A Pentagon spokesman insists Rumsfeld has not changed his opinion that the plane crashed as the result of an onboard struggle between passengers and terrorists.
The independent panel charged with investigating the terrorist attacks concluded that the hijackers intentionally crashed Flight 93, apparently because they feared the passengers would overwhelm them.
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posted by J.R. @ 9:42:00 AM   |
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| U.S. Troops Strongly Support Bush and the War |
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The majority of U.S. soldiers do not blame President Bush or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for a shortage of body armor in Iraq but instead say Congress should be held responsible, according to a new poll by the Military Times.
Sixty percent blame Congress for the shortage of body armor in the combat zone, reports USA Today in its coverage of the Times survey. In more bad news for congressional Iraq War critics, 63 percent of active duty personnel said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war.
Further confounding media attempts to demoralize the troops, 66 percent of soldiers surveyed say the war is worth fighting.
In addition, 87 percent of soldiers say they're satisfied with their jobs and, if given the choice today, only a quarter of troops surveyed say they'd leave the service. The latter number is particularly impressive, considering that nearly half say they expect to be there more than five years.
The Military Times Poll surveyed 1,423 active-duty subscribers to Air Force Times, Army Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times in late November and early December. The poll has a margin of error of +/�2.6 percent.
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| posted by J.R. @ 9:34:00 AM |
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| Showing bias in Iraq war coverage |
| Sunday, December 26, 2004 |
By Joseph Perkins
A new Gallup survey is rather disquieting for those of us in the media. It finds that not even a quarter of Americans perceive either television or newspaper reporters to have �very high� or �high� standards of ethics and honesty.
There are various explanations for that perception in the eyes of the public. But one major contributing factor is the public�s perception that some of what they read on the front pages of the major dailies or watch on the evening news is politically slanted.
Indeed, the public need look no further than coverage of the war in Iraq to see prima facie evidence of media bias. Take the recent incident involving Edward Lee Pitts, a reporter with the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Pitts sat in on a town-hall-style meeting in Kuwait between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and soldiers awaiting deployment to Iraq.
Rather than simply report the give-and-take between Rummy and the troops, Pitts got himself into the act. He surreptitiously �worked on� questions about vehicle armor with soldiers, questions the soldiers almost certainly would not have asked on their own, that the reporter knew would put the defense secretary on the spot.
Then, as Pitts later boasted in an e-mail, he �went and found the Sgt. in charge of microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out the crowd.�
What was really groovy, Pitts continued, �was that after the event was over the throng of national media following Rumsfeld � The New York Times, AP, all the major networks � swarmed to the two soldiers I brought from the unit I am embedded with.�
Then there�s Kevin Sites, the NBC News correspondent, who was embedded with the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. During last month�s military campaign to retake Fallujah from the insurgents, Sites filmed the shooting of an apparently injured enemy fighter by a Marine.
The footage was broadcast not only here in the United States, but throughout the world. It further inflamed anti-American sentiments in the Arab streets, not to mention among Iraq�s Sunni minority.
Sites denies being an anti-war activist. He professes to be �shocked to see myself painted� that way. Yet, his previous work, featuring photos of captured Iraqis, appears on a Web site entitled �Images Against War.� Surely, the anti-war site did not use the lens-man�s work without his assent.
Finally, there�s the Abu Ghraib story. It made worldwide news after a sensational report last spring on �60 Minutes II,� featuring CBS News �correspondent� Dan Rather, exposing abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of American soldiers.
Now, CBS producers have never broadcasted footage of the various men (and at least one woman) who have been beheaded by insurgents (or terrorists) in Iraq. Yet, they chose to air highly inflammatory photographs showing American soldiers mistreating captured Iraqis.
It would be one thing if CBS had been exposing a cover-up by the Pentagon. But the fact is that, a month before the �60 Minutes II� report aired, the Army announced that 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty for degrading Iraqi prisoners.
As it happens, the Abu Ghraib prison photos that aired on �60 Minutes II� were obtained by CBS News producer Mary Mapes. She�s the same producer who obtained the phony documents suggesting that President Bush did not fulfill his Vietnam-era National Guard obligations.
Of course, Mapes and her colleagues at CBS News would deny being anti-Bush, would deny being anti-war.
Questions about armor plating for the Humvees used in Iraq needed asking. The story about the Marine shooting an apparently injured, apparently unarmed insurgent fighter needed telling. And scandalous treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib needed exposure.
But as Marshall McLuhan, the so-called Oracle of the Electronic Age, famously said: �The medium is the massage.�
Indeed, when stories appear on the front pages of major dailies or air on the evening news offering decidedly negative assessments of America�s prosecution of the war in Iraq, or reflecting badly upon this nation�s men and women in uniform, many Americans wonder about the reporter�s motivation.
In many cases, if not most, the reporter may simply be calling it as he or she sees it. But in at least some cases, it seems, the reporter�s story is driven by anti-war bias.
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| posted by J.R. @ 2:43:00 AM |
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