Friday - August 05, 2005

Viewpoint: Media Bias

just finished reading this story about the Department Of Defense being forced to release pictures of flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The DoD was forced to do this because of a lawsuit filed by Ralph Begleiter under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA). Now, I don’t know for sure what Mr. Begleiter’s political leanings are but I can guess, considering he worked for many years as a corespondent for CNN and currently is a tenured professor at the University Of Delaware, teaching journalism. My guess, based on that and his background is that he leans strongly to the Left in his opinions. A journalism major who worked at CNN and is now a tenured professor at an elite East Coast univeristy. Three strikes and he’s out.

For the record, I managed the team of developers and database administrators who built the FOIA tracking and monitoring software for the US Air Force back in the early 90’s (if you’re in the USAF and using that software, please don’t call me - I just did what I was told to do). As such, I gained a lot of insight into the FIOA law and all the intricacies of its implementation. The requests have to be recorded diligently and follow-ups maintained and archived until the end of the world. Every path the request takes and all persons signing off on release of documents has to be recorded. Redacted information has to be maintained side-by-side with the released information in case of further legal entanglements.

As far as I’m concerned FOIA is a piece of crap law that should never have been implemented. We all want a certain degree of transparency in our government so we can keep an eye on the critters who are spending our money up in DC but again (as I have asked here many times) where do we draw the line? There are certain pieces of information that, if released, can cause damage to our country through leaking valuable information or just having a bad effect on morale of our troops and their families. The latter is what, in my opinion, Professor Begleiter’s lawsuit has accomplished.

No one wants any of our troops to die in battle, especially their families. What purpose does it serve to show flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers? Is it a sign of respect for the brave troops who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country? I wish that were so but it ain’t necessarily so (with apologies to George Gershwin). No, you hear the Liberal Left (and Professor Begleiter) say that war is evil and we should not be in Iraq and by showing the coffins of the dead, they can remind Americans of the tragedy of war and hopefully change US policy with these constant reminders of the cost of war, and get our troops back home before more get killed .... .... .... That, of course, is rampant bullshit.

Perhaps there are a few idealists on the Left who believe that party line. If so, they are being misled by the elites of academia and entertainment as well as the Democratic Party. The real purpose of filing lawsuits to gain possession of these pictures and display them all over the media is simple: to discredit George W. Bush and the Republican Party. To hear it from them, the entire Democratic Party and all of the media were opposed to this war from the very beginning, even as all those Democratic Senators stood on the steps of the Capitol just after 9/11 and sang “God Bless America” before going inside and voting the President power to take the war to the enemy and providing massive funding to do so (everyone except John Kerry, who still hasn’t decided whether he voted for it or against it or when he did either).

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this FOIA request is a sucker punch directed at the troops, their families and the American people, in general, especially those in red states. The object is to lower morale back home as well as in the barracks overseas. It has to be hurting the troops because you know their families are writing them with the news from home and they have to watch their dead comrades in arms being blasted across the TV screens back home and they have to be wondering if they’ll be next.

So what does Professor Begleiter and the Liberal Left have to gain from this abuse of FOIA (and that’s all it really is, an abuse of the law for personal gain)? They want to destroy the war effort, plain and simple and what they hope to gain is even simpler: discrediting President Bush and the Republicans so the American people will vote in the next elections for the Democrats who would never have gotten us entangled in this mess and who have a better plan for America than the evil anti-abortion, religious fruitcake, fascist Republicans.

What’s the difference between a Leftist college professor with an agenda and a terrorist “insurgent” in Iraq? Not much. Not much at all.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/05/2005 at 11:53 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials •  
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