I'm not looking forward to my international flight in two weeks time....

:(

Not that I want to get into a huge debate, but this is simply too broad a statement to make without qualifiers. Is that the picture the media is painting? Abso-fukin-lutely. Do we trust the mass-media? Uhh, we shouldn't. Their accounts of the story, with death toll scoreboard that light up more than broadway on gay-night, are hardly objective honest views of the reality. I like to temper it with accounts from actual soldiers living and breathing life over there, as well as accounts from actual Iraqi's.

I'm not saying we are "winning" or "loosing"...not sure it would even be possible to define either. I think its just difficult to say either way. Especially from way over here. In DL....with WiFi. And A/C. MMM A/C. And great tacos....and delicious boobies. God I love SoCal. All the fast beautiful cars...and women....wait...what was I talking about?

Ah yes....tacos and boobies. Yumm...

Can we actually blame the media for Iraq? I don't think so. They may do crappy things like a death count, but Bush owns how badly Iraq is going. But we're not supposed to be focused on Iraq right now... we're supposed to be distracted by Mel Gibson, Lebannon and this new story today... but that, too, could be the media's fault...

It is within the nature of the media to dwell on the negative. There is nothing news worthy about planes that don't crash. There is nothing exciting about our relationship with Japan. Most of the time, what's reported is what is going wrong.

Everything is not going wrong in Iraq. Where the media is focused - there it is not going well at all, to be honest. Baghdad is a mess. But look at the north. 200,000 Kurds were killed by Saddam, and that region is doing so well that they refer to themselves as Kurdistan and are even trying to promote tourism. Of the 14 provinces, 11 are doing quite well. Three are a mess.

The media will focus on what they find to be interesting at the time. They love dirty laundry. Mel Gibson was dirty laundry.

Lipstick ? Face powder ?

...Next they'll be draining the saline / gel out of breast implants. You can get heaps of liquid on the plane that way......

Afghanastan is still a giant clusterfvck. The taliban is still a huge part of that country if you go outside the city. But we don't hear about that anymore.

Why not?

You know what I'm seeing more and more often? Bush or Rumsfeld paint some rosey picture of what's going on in Iraq, and then a couple days later, a general on the ground there sweating under the collar and choosing their words very carefully so they don't actually say, "Ummm, yyyeah, our commander in chief is full of crap." You're right, it is nice to temper the administrations bs with the reality from those that are actually there making the decissions.

Ya, me too. Totally different picture that is painted for you then the one you see in the media or in a public forum. And different in this case does not mean better.

Support our troops. Bring them home!

What intrigues me is this current batch are home gown - what soured them in thier life in England experience. Thier parent probably fled the oppression they seem to want. Do they feel disconnected from their heritage and are using this to reconnect? Is there no Punk or Gangsta Rap for them to lash out in a counter culture that doesn't involve mass murder? Or are they so disaffected by their lives there that they no longer care?

tangentially - I keep finding the words " Our Precious Fluids" running through my head.

Clearly not...and no one suggested that. Certainly not I. What you can blame them for is the sensationalization of it all and the misrepresentation of reality.

Ok so I know this is an overwhelmingly liberally-biased message board, so anything that is said that could possibly be deemed as supportive of what is seen as an evil republican regime will be struck down with furious anger, but I'll play for a post or two anyway.

Even if the administration is trying to paint a rosey picture over there, and I can't say that I have exactly seen that, the American people would never know about it because the media would not allow that slant. It didn't sell newspapers during Vietnam...and it still doesn't now. I'm sure the administration is trying to spin their successes and minimize their failures. Duh. And that PR BS game should be ignored. The issue I raised is that the media decided for the American people that this is a quagmire and a failure before it even began...and that is how it has been spun. A soliders or regiments succeses are never shown on TV today. Schools that are built, hospitals that are opened, ie...positive news...is never broadcasted. Again, this is not to say that this operation is a failure or a success, but if the tide was shifting, the media certainly would never let us know.

Unfortunately, that sort of mentality is rather silly, overly simplistic, and untimately short-sighted. I don't think I need to get into the reasons as to why. Wether or not you agree with the actions taken, and 99% of those on this board disagree...you can't just abandon those people.