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Subject: Media Gotcha Distorts National Security Challenges
SYSOP    5/19/2015 10:08:34 PM
 
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muskoka    brain dead questions   5/20/2015 9:05:27 PM
Austin, I was talking to my wife the other night at dinner about these media questions and I used this example of why I thought them so brain dead:  A few days before Dec 7, 1941 the Roosevelt Administration sent a cable to Pearl Harbor that was meant to be a warning of possible military action by the Japanese but it was phrased so poorly the recipients were left bewildered as to what to do.  Q: Knowing we what we know today, if you were the person who had to write that cable in 1941 would you have written it in the same bewildering way?
 
Ummm, give me a moment here to think....   Jeez.
 
That said your concluding questions  are the right sort of questions to ask... but that requires having a brain and so that explains why the media is asking what they're asking and not what you've suggested.
 
 
 
 
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ker       5/22/2015 11:36:42 AM
What if we had not invaded? That question has been greatly distorted by the unexamined assertions. Neather Iraq or America were at peace before OIF.
 
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CJH       5/24/2015 4:48:00 PM
IIRC, pre-2003(/ 2004) there never was expressed significant doubts about WMDs in Iraq in the media or in Congress. The opposition to our invading Iraq was mainly justified on the belief that the sanctions regime was better than military action. The objection to letting sanctions work was that Saddam's producing a nuke would render sanctions moot and also that Saddam was progressively compromising the sanctions regime. As Iran has more or less openly pursued a nuclear arms capability, I wonder, had Saddam continued to be in power, how anyone could expect Saddam to just sit there while his neighbor to the east made nuclear weapons without making his own. I also wonder how it is continually posited that Iraq could become a "failed state" only if Saddam's regime was succeeded by an American imposed one and not by one headed by a son or a crony. I still believe that the world's leftists' critical response to Saddam's removal has been motivated by their personally identifying with Saddam and with his methods. That is, I believe the sometimes bitter criticism is solely left wing ideological. Left wingers would rule the US in the same way as Saddam ruled Iraq if we let them get away with it. Therefore, their criticism is not worth listening to.
 
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