Monday, May 01, 2006

Wingnuts gone wild! Uncensored!

I feel better now. Al Qaeda has been defeated. At least, that is the assessment provided here by Harold C. Hutchinson. (No. It's not a Stephen Colbert parody.)

... al Qaeda has been defeated in Iraq, and is now retreating to lick its wounds where it can. If it can.
Ummm... ok. That would mean this is not true.

Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of U.S.-led troops in Iraq, said that despite political progress and the growing competence of Iraqi security forces, troops are still fighting a bloody insurgency.
Not to worry. We are informed that the al Qaeda underestimated this:

In 1993, CNN was the only 24-hour news network. In 1996, two other 24-hour news networks were founded, MSNBC on July 15, and Fox News on October 7. These started to establish competition. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Fox News began pulling ahead of the other two networks, largely because it was taking a position that was seen as being reasonably supportive of the American efforts.
Fox news defeated al Qaeda? Do you mean like some of these guys? They wouldn't know a war from an ass-pimple. But alas, I'm being unfair. Here. Pick any one of the 462 items which document the fact that just one of Fox News pundits is a complete liar.

Kinda goes with the reasons for going to Iraq in the first place.

In 2004, a few bloggers were able to start the chain of events that led to Dan Rather's retirement from CBS. In 2006, bloggers are now an acknowledged player on the media battlefield. These efforts were dismissed by al Qaeda, and as a result, while al Qaeda hit its target, the effect was grossly minimized due to the fact that the "silent majority" now had tools by which they could be heard. The media created a false picture after the 1968 Tet Offensive, but was unable to do the same in Iraq.
Hmmm. Where do I start? Let's start with media false pictures.... right here. Let's end there and not mention the Instacaptainpajamaline football crowd. Oh, ok. Blogs do have some effect.

The third mistake was to wage a campaign of terror against Iraqi civilians. This was intended to intimidate them into at least acquiescing to al Qaeda's presence, if not supporting al Qaeda at all. It didn't work. Instead, as the car bombs went off , and drew CNN headlines in the United States, al Qaeda managed to become more and more unpopular with Iraqis. Even the Arab Sunnis began to view the Americans, who had displaced them from the power they had held under Saddam, as a better option than supporting al Qaeda. Eventually, the Sunnis joined the democratic process and when that happened, al Qaeda's eventual defeat was assured with increasing Sunni participation over three elections in the space of less than a year.

What about the Shi'a? Oh... he forgot about them. They hate the Sunni. Al Qaeda didn't have to do much to kick that one off, but for what it's worth take a read of this. Sometimes a little research pays off. For what it's worth, if you get your information from somewhere other than Fox News, you can actually learn more.

OK, hotshot. Where is he?

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