at-Largely

CNN's John King Calls Off Wedding, Moves In with Map (satire)

Posted by Brad Jacobson

John King, chief national correspondent for CNN, broke off his engagement to colleague Dana Bash Thursday after revealing a months-long affair with his interactive election map.

Wolf Blitzer, lead anchor for the network's 2008 election coverage, said he'd grown increasingly uncomfortable with King's infatuation over his touchscreen sidekick. But Blitzer claimed he didn't know until the Pennsylvania primary that King and his "magic map" were counting more than votes.

"We were all very excited about Pennsylvania. Another big night for the best political team on television. But the truth is," explained Blitzer, "viewers only saw John with his map on-camera. Off-camera, he didn't leave her side. John didn't step away for refreshments the entire evening. Not even for a Skittle." Blitzer, suddenly visibly upset, composed himself before adding, "Later that night, long after Pennsylvania had been called for Clinton and most of us had already gone home, one of our producers brought a Krispy Kreme over to John. She found him with his pants around his ankles and his hand on Florida. I won't get into what was resting on New Jersey."

Little is known about the coquettish wall map. Her interface is called Perceptive Pixel Multi-Touch Screen. King and the "magic wall," another one of her nicknames, only began working together on January 8, the day of the New Hampshire primary. But their chemistry blossomed with each successive night of primary and caucus coverage, each passionate wave of King's hand, each poke and tap into one of our nation's voting precincts.

Still, most friends and family were shocked. Mr. King and Ms. Bash, whom he also met on the job at CNN, seemed very much in love and looking forward to their future together. A Catholic, King even converted to Judaism for his now former fiancée. In a February interview with The Forward, he compared the excruciating pain of his adult circumcision to sitting through the 2005 Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, starring Rosie O'Donnell and Harvey Fierstein.

Yes, We Do Body Counts

Posted By Cernig

Over at Salon today there's a disturbing story of the kind of hyperkinetic and ultimately harmful counter-insurgency tactics which are being driven by a top-down demand for results in Iraq. The article explores the events surrounding the murder of an Iraqi farmer by a U.S. sniper team and relates it to pressure for body counts by commanders who then walk away untouched by the legal fallout of their subordinates' actions.

A review of thousands of pages of documents from the legal proceedings obtained by Salon shows that in the months prior to [the Iraqi farmer, Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi]’s death, the young snipers, already frustrated by guerrilla tactics, were pressed to their physical limits and pushed by officers to stretch the bounds of the laws of war in order to increase the enemy body count. When the United States wallowed in Vietnam’s counterinsurgency quagmire decades ago, the same pressure placed on soldiers resulted in some of the worst atrocities of that war.[…]

The pressure from above for more bodies was also toxic in Iraq, where the isolated, outnumbered and outgunned snipers of the 1st Battalion had to make split-second life-or-death decisions. When those decisions landed them in a military court, it was the lowest-ranking soldiers, not the brass, who paid the price, and a sergeant who said he was pushed into taking a fatal shot who wound up with a long prison sentence. It was battalion commander Lt. Col Robert Balcavage, who pushed for a higher body count, who initiated the prosecution of three of the battalion’s snipers.

The original article is several pages long and bears reading carefully. Matt Duss at The Wonk Room observes:

I think we’ve seen this “dead bodies=success” mentality bleed out into pro-war blogs as well, where the numbers of insurgent dead are credulously relayed and uncritically reported as progress, irrespective of the collateral damage incurred in those deaths and of the galvanizing effects that this has on support for insurgency. (Of course, if you’re someone who believes that trying not to create more insurgents is irrelevant to the task of counterinsurgency, then no big deal. I suppose one could always apply the Bush Doctrine on the ground in Iraq, and justify the murder of Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi on the theory that he might, one day, have joined the insurgency. But then you’d have to kill his son, and then all his friends, too. Nice war we’ve got going here, huh?)

The murder of Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, and the atmosphere in which it occurred, is reminiscent of the Abu Ghraib abuses. In both cases, a high-pressure environment, hazy rules of engagement, and pressure from above to produce usable intelligence/dead “insurgents” led to atrocity. In both cases, the lowest men down were punished for carrying out the directives of their commanders (and Commander-in-Chief), while those commanders were left untouched.

And Phil Carter observes, by email, that "the fog of war, stresses of combat, and specific issues with discipine in specific units are all factors" which "are pushing troops to the edge and beyond." It appears that the Vietnamization of the military is inevitable whenever the officer corps is decimated by principled junior officers quitting after multiple stressful tours, leaving too many tough guy/big ego/inferiority complex guys in command who are unfit for leading COIN operations. The moral is to not get into wars of choice in the first place, but the damage may take a generation to repair.

Leading Newspapers Perpetuated Obama-Muslim Myth on Day of IN Primary

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Media Matters posted a piece yesterday afternoon about how the right-wing Washington Times earlier in the day "quoted [an] Indiana man saying Obama is 'a Muslim' without noting the assertion is false."

A fine catch.

Media Matters also smartly showed how a responsible journalist reports such incidents:

By contrast, after quoting the same man in its own article, the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "Obama has never been a Muslim, but bogus e-mails accuse him of being a Muslim who put his hand on a copy of the Quran to be sworn into the U.S. Senate and refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance."

An additional search, however, reveals the decidedly more credible Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Baltimore Sun also reported the same scene without pointing out the man's claim was false. Except they published their reports on May 6, the day of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. Specifically, the failure of these newspapers - two of which, along with The New York Times, are considered our nation's papers of record - to clarify the man's misstatement was potentially directly damaging to Obama's chances in Indiana. Whereas yesterday's Washington Times piece, published in a disreputable rag the day after the Indiana primary, might impact voters' opinions for the general election and, possibly, still undecided superdelegates.

Here's the breakdown:

Let's go to the movies...

Who wants to go to the movies? Well, here is an interview I recently did with John Cusack about his new film War Inc., and contest information if you want to go to the screening - courtesy Raw Story:
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Want to attend a screening of War, Inc. for free with two Raw Story writers? Want John Cusack to see your talent as a limerick writer? See details at the end of the interview.

Actor, writer, director John Cusack has a lot to say about the Iraq war and the current state of US politics. Although he frequently uses such forums as the Huffington Post to express his criticism of the Bush administration, it is in his new film, "War Inc." in which he really pulls out all the stops to shine a damningly aggressive light on the privatization of war.

Cusack sat down with Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna to discuss the film, his political views, and his take on the state of mainstream media, which he feels has failed in its role as the public watchdog.

"I think in a way you can almost respect the criminals more than the enablers in some sick way -- I mean, I think what the Bush administration has done is criminal, should be treated as a crime, but the idea that people who call themselves journalists let these lies go on unchecked and endorsed them time and time again is [unpardonable]. Don't get me wrong, I think great journalism is heroic, I am in awe of great journalists."