What if I've been wrong about W?

[jaguar]

Like when Libya gave up its WMDs on the heels of the Iraq invasion, just coincidence.

No, there was a direct link there although once again, it wasn't straightforward, the issues to do with the massive nuclear weapons manufacturing equipment trading ring, based on the US's great allay, Pakistan had a role to play. Saudi and Egypt are paying lip service to the US, when either government changes I'll admit you have a point. When. How did the US instigate what is now happening in Lebanon? Some kind of vague 'oh well, the US was democracy, let's all suddenly get really angry and kick out the Syirians'? Or maybe, just maybe, the assassination of a popular political figure provided the catalyst that brought long-held anger to the surface. The US doesn't want democracy in Lebanon, it'd be a disaster, Hezbollah would do very well.

Steyn is noticing that LGF is NOT circle-jerking

I want some of what you're smoking. A not-tiny newspaper referring to a far-right highly questionable blog at all is worrying, considering it legitimate is beyond the pale. I'm well aware he's writing for the telegraph, a second rate hard right concervative newspaper with a long history of going for emotion over facts, it's Sunday Edition in particular is used in some journalism courses as an example of how not to write articles.

BAGHDAD (IPS/GIN) - Voting in Baghdad was linked to food rations, many voters said after the Jan. 30 poll.

Iraqis said that their names were marked on a list provided by the government agency that provides monthly food rations before they were allowed to vote.

“I went to the voting center and gave my name and district where I lived to a man,” said Wassif Hamsa, a 32-year-old journalist who lives in the predominantly Shia area Janila in Baghdad. “This man then sent me to the person who distributed my monthly food ration.”

Mohammed Ra’ad, an engineering student who lives in the Baya’a district of the capital city, reported a similar experience.

Mr. Ra’ad, 23, said he saw the man who distributed monthly food rations in his district at his polling station. “The food dealer, who I know personally of course, took my name and those of my family who were voting,” he said. “Only then did I get my ballot and was allowed to vote.”

“Two of the food dealers I know told me personally that our food rations would be withheld if we did not vote,” said Saeed Jodhet, a 21-year-old engineering student who voted in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad.

However, in a January 29 panel on CNN's International Correspondents program, Julian Manyon, Britain's ITV Baghdad correspondent, revealed that Western TV reporters covering the election were being “limited to filming at only five polling stations”, out of 5244. When the list of “approved” polling stations was published, Manyon added, reporters found out that “four of those five polling stations are actually in Shia areas, and therefore by definition will shed very little light on whether Sunnis vote or not”.

I don't have to make anything up, I just have to read real news, not the thinly vieled lies fed to you by major networks.

[Undertoad]

Well the nice part is that we only have to wait for another round of history to play itself out. I'm content to let another year pass while we see what happens.

[jaguar]

easier than answering isn't it.

[Undertoad]

Let's review your "answer" then:

- Blogs are biased because they aren't journalists.

- US network news, full of credentialed journalists, is biased because its viewers sometimes draw conclusions you don't agree with.

- Opinion pieces in righty newspapers are wrong because the journalists you like say the paper is bad.

Very nice. How many hours of network news do you watch? Can you name the US networks?

[Beestie]

I'd like to know what jag reads.

[jaguar]

Let's take the spin away and look at that again.

LGF is a right wing hate site.
US network news, full of credentialed journalists, do not stand up to this administration. Once like CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC, I don't really watch TV at all but I do keep a weather eye on their websites.

Opinion pieces in second rate right-wing newspapers that refer to dodgy blogs are not a good source to back up your opinion. You should check before you choose to assiciate yourself with such a source, that's the same newspaper that might have endangered the health of an entire generation with it's baseless claims about the MMR vaccine, ultrasound, passive smoking and that's before we get to the xenophobic, racist rantings of Charles Moore and Harry Cummins amongst others on it's editorial pages. The paper you feel is a good source has published such gems as:

All Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics

and

Christians are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of almost every Muslim land and behave with a humility quite unlike the menacing behaviour we have come to expect from the Muslims who have forced themselves on Christendom, a bullying ingratitude that culminates in a terrorist threat to their unconsulted hosts.

not to mention being the mouthpiece of some of the most creative intel service lies:

the Iraqi leader had been providing al-Qaeda … with funding, logistical back-up and advanced weapons training. His operations reached a “frantic pace” in the past few months

That is what I said.

My question was:

How did the US instigate what is now happening in Lebanon?

[Undertoad]

Sorry, I thought you were aware of the neocon argument made as early as 1998 that fomenting Democracy in Iraq would lead to similar fomentation in other Middle East countries through example.

[jaguar]

oh please. Do you honestly think that was the catalyst?

[Undertoad]

"Let's take the spin away and look at that again.

LGF is a right wing hate site...."

Physician, heal thyself.

The Lebanese had plenty of cause to do this before January 30th... but didn't. Why not?

[Undertoad]

Don't like right-wing secondary papers, here's the Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...27.html?sub=AR

If a Middle East transformation begins to gather momentum, it probably will be more messy, and the results more ambiguous, than those European revolutions. It also won't be entirely Bush's creation: The tinder for ignition has been gathering around the stagnant and corrupt autocracies of the Middle East for years. Still, less than two years after Saddam Hussein was deposed, the fact is that Arabs are marching for freedom and shouting slogans against tyrants in the streets of Beirut and Cairo -- and regimes that have endured for decades are visibly tottering. Those who claimed that U.S. intervention could never produce such events have reason to reconsider.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

"Let's take the spin away and look at that again.

LGF is a right wing hate site...."

Physician, heal thyself.

What's the spin in that sentence?

[Undertoad]

Don't like the WaPo? How about yor own Times?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...508354,00.html

President Bush can certainly claim some credit. Two years ago he set out to make Iraq “a dramatic and inspiring example for other nations in the region”. The rosy predictions of his neoconservative supporters have not been realised, but Iraq has become a symbol of the power of the people over the gun.

Even Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader whose fiefdom was once pounded by a US Navy battleship, has conceded that his criticism of US policy was misplaced.

“It is strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq,” the man leading Lebanon’s uprising against Syria said. “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world,” he told The Washington Post.

[Beestie]

Poppycock. Balderdash. Right-wing rubbish. American media buggery. A hand puppet of the Administration. A blog in newsprint. The reporter is Karl Rove in drag.

[Undertoad]

(Brit school uniforms sacrilege for Muslims? I could get behind that idea. I for one was nearly caned for forgetting to wear my school tie. Of course that was 1978. Now non-tie-wearing IS my religion!)

[Undertoad]

Democrat (but pro-war) blogger Michael Totten has an interesting POV:

No one was able to predict the Arab street revolution in Beirut at the time of the invasion or the election in Iraq. The events are related, but their relationship is not a cause-and-effect one.

It’s more nuanced and slippery and unpredictable than that. The fact that some upheaval would erupt somewhere in the Middle East was predicted by lots of people. This wasn’t like predicting “it is going to be warm somewhere in the world at some point in the future.” Any idiot can do that. Rather, it was like predicting a general warming trend in the face of skepticism. There hasn’t been any successful new revolutionary turmoil in the Middle East since the 1970s, and that was in Iran. The Arab Middle East has been revolution-free for longer than that. Yet all of a sudden – bang - right after the Iraqi election, almost on schedule, revolutionary street-level fury toppled a government.

He's cautionary:

I’m not saying we don’t deserve some of the credit. We do. The demolition of Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime and the free election that followed sent a powerful shock wave through the region that changed the emotions, the politics, and the psychology of its people. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking we control the chaos that we have unleashed.