‘Selective Quotation’ as your latest note. Although I don’t fault you for that, as I like quotes too. So my latest note? ‘Knee Jerk’.

Not at all. That is not the function of this site. I think Howard Kaloogian in California truly understands soldier issues and should be elected, but you don’t see me pining for him here. The reason is because I’m not about endorsing political candidates for office. I get emails all the time from great politicians and their campaigns, but I don’t publish them. I think the closest I came was a reference to an email from Joe Wilson in this very post.

It’s not just the undercount. That’s just another marble on the scales. I’m really just not interested in pushing anyone else’s agenda.

But, all I was trying to say was that doing so might make your blog inclusive enough to actually communicate outside a group of people who probably all already have plans to vote a straight party ticket in November or in 2008. Wouldn’t you like to be able to say something about candidates in the next election _of any party_, “Hey, this guy over here seems to respect the troops and have some real ideas for what to do in Iraq,” or, “This woman is fighting hard to restore veterans benefits which have been cut,” and have somebody listening other than those people.

If all it took was looking at your post from someone elses perspective and toning down some of the rhetoric, is that too high a price?

As far as the Walter Reed thing goes. I see that as another example of you over reacting to news reporting. I hang out on another website that is probably liberal enough to make some people’s teeth hurt. But we hate those Westboro assholes as much as you do. We typically just post the pictures unaltered though It tends to make us mad enough to spit.

It’s unfortunate that there was an undercount of people there for the counter-protest but that happens all the time. I don’t think most reporters are necessarily good at estimating crowds. Why conflate a low count on that and reporting on the Westboro people were carrying with biased reporting? By far, most people who see a picture or read in the newspaper what is on the signs are going to be horrified. They will be glad that somebody showed up to tell them what for and they’ll see the same picture I see when I bring it up in my browser. A man standing in front of all the other protestors, he’s identified as Bill Barnette and he’s holding up a sign that supports the soldiers. The Westboro nuts are way in the background. In fact, one of the Free Republic members gets the last word in in the article. That’s not biased reporting CJ, it’s just reporting.

There’s an old quote, and I wish I could attribute it correctly but I don’t know who said it, “Everything in the newspaper is correct, unless you happen to know something about it.” It has been true for every story I’ve ever read where I actually had some involvement in what was being reported upon. They were all wrong to some greater or lesser extent.

Come on Beth, I didn’t write that page or title it, I can’t pick the title he used. If you can find the same material elsewhere or get the author to change his/her title please do so. Objecting to a nit like that is, I don’t know, somewhat like “OUT OF CONTEXT”.

This is my site. I am not a credentialed media outlet. I’ve stated from the very beginning that my intention, goal, and mission here is to bring out the GOOD NEWS of our efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the greater war on terror. If you’re looking for bias in that respect, you won’t find it here. I make no hidden agenda that I’m here to be fair. When I see stupid things happen that affect that good news IN MY OPINION (like the paultry sentences given to Abu Ghraib soldiers and the fact that their commanders walked free) I mention that as well. But, make no mistake that those areas are well covered by the MSM.

I am an independent myself, not a Republican. I’ve been invited to Republican events, but I’ve also asked hard questions to those Republicans. I’m not a Democrat either. But, I can tell you that I’ll be slamming them more because I’m in the military and they could not care less about us IN MY OPINION. Eight years of Democratic rule only got us 9/11. There was no backbone. Even the Republican leadership before that didn’t do much to curb terrorism. This is the first president in my lifetime that has stood up to the worldwide bullies. So, I support that.

The New York Slime is just that…Slime. The same with the Washington Compost. There were easily 35 people at Walter Reed during the hateful Westboro idiots rally and yet the Compost downgrades our contributions to “20 or so”. Those people are out there supporting soldiers EVERY Friday night, but no mention of that. Nope, let’s cover people with signs that read, “Thank God for Maimed Soldiers”. If my characterization of these “respectable” newspapers as “slime” and “compost” gains an approving nod, great. Again, I’m not here to be balanced. I’m here to give a “Soldier’s Perspective”. I happen to be that soldier.

While I highlight news items, this is not a news site. It’s an opinionated blog. It’s also here for entertainment. I like to do things that have nothing to do with the military or politics. I screw with those darn email fraud criminals. I tell funny stories about my son. And I publicize my nerdiness is picking up pennies from the ground.

Anon:
“so we’re all “angeredâ€? that you post some good things are happening in Iraq as well.”
– CJ wrote: ‘the post that angers liberals and peaceniks.’ He is basing that on his own past experience. How do I know this? I read the comments in every one of his previous IED reports. And he didn’t say ‘all’- you wrote that, and you come across as somewhat angry and more significantly, condescending (a la ‘Over Your Head’), which is an instant killer for civil discourse and debate. Putting the word “angered” in scare quotes in an attempt to distance yourself from the word only works if the body of your work backs it up. It doesn’t.
As for the condescension, using phrases like “obviously, yes” in response to a question, “Let’s look at your last argument” as if you were given the position of teacher to someone’s assigned role of student, and “Perhaps if I actually quote that page rathering than asking that you go read it…” – also teacher to student.

“You see, you’re basically using argument techniques like LUNATIC FRINGE, where you argue that anyone who disagrees with you ….. in fact wants all our soldiers to die horrible deaths.”
-actually, CJ didn’t say that, you did. He wasn’t using LF, and ‘Distorted Active Listening’ here, you were.

“You might find this page helpful to you. I guess you could either use it for further hints as to how to mis-characterize anything anyone says who disagrees with you, or perhaps, just perhaps, you could see where you are doing some of these things in your own text:”
– a tricky combination of ‘Listen up’, some ‘Distorted Active Listening’ again, (“anything anyone says” – Lunatic Fringe still fits) and a bit of ‘even you’ (implied, I’ll admit, by the “perhaps, just perhaps (even) you could see…”

————-
Let your own words hoist you by your own petard. They fit you, Anon, much better:
“And you …(I took out the “sir”, NCOs will respond to that with the fact that they actually work for a living, huh, CJ? ) seem to follow the page (you) pointed (CJ) to like it’s a textbook. Maybe that should tell you something about how little you are listening, how much you villify anyone who says something you don’t like, or how little you’ve thought about your own position.”

Mirror, mirror…

CJ, on the other hand, opens HIS OWN blog up to commenters from both sides. I read about 30 blogs in rotation and I can only think of a handful of those that are as accomodating with varying levels of civility in debate. The rest demand more rigid standards of their commenters at all times or they simply won’t post their commments. Either way is within their scope, as well as his. CJ is after all “the person running this site” as you yourself wrote.
He does not EVER deserve to be lectured on his own blog with “And above all, drop the BS rhetoric about how anybody who doesn’t agree with you is either ignorant or a traitor. Get it.”
No, YOU get it. ‘It’ being your own blog as CJ suggests if you like the idea so much. How dare you? I know, ‘Selective Quotation’ throughout and a very deliberate ‘Bombast’ as a final note. It just felt lovely to say.

I predict your ‘Denial of a Valid Conclusion’ any time now.

I wish I knew a solution, I don’t. We’re in this awful situation and we’re going to have to get out of it together. Here’s a quick set of suggestions though that might make things significantly better:

1) Realize that anyone who disagrees with you isn’t your enemy and you don’t have to use nonsense phrases like “The land of fruits and nuts”, “The post that angers liberals and peaceniks”, “New York Slimes” for (New York Times). See, when you do that, you communicate to your choir. No doubt you’ve got a dedicated audience who would sign up to hear that crap all day long but they also listen to Rush in the afternoon, watch only Fox News, and the latest Ann Coulter sits on their bedside table. Your good news hits only their ears. If you really want to communicate anything to anybody outside of a fan base for bashing, turn it off.

2) Drop the idea that you are a lone voice shouting out against the “main stream media”. The main stream media is going to report on the biggest story for any given day. Today it was probably the suicide bombing nuts in Baghdad. Anything you can provide is an addition to that information, not something that should be reported instead of it. Without the left wing bashing, there might be lots of news outlets interested in reporting on a round up like yours. I’d try communicating with one of them, it’s very interesting material.

3) Recognize that even among Democrats and Independents we get that we can’t just pack our bags, say, “Good luck,” and walk out the door in Iraq. Doing so would be a national disgrace. So realize that many of these people are actually calling for very different things than an immediate pullout. For example, a change of leadership starting with Rumsfeld and continuing on through anybody he hand picked in favor of somebody who said, “Maybe we should prepare for a lengthy stay,” or “We’re going to need more troops.”

Bigger changes are probably going to take until 2008.

When someone almost ruins your business, you let them go and find new management. You don’t tell the people who almost ruined it to “fix it”. Nobody in the current administration from the topmost levels down has any ideas on what to do differently, nor do they have a shred of credibility left with the U.N. or other nations who could help us in Iraq.

4) Sorry you don’t like that I post anonymously. That’s a choice. My grandfather and father were in WWI and WWII respectively and I feel like they fought for just those kinds of freedoms. I’ll use them if I like. If you chose to turn off that capability, oh well, I can live without posting here. If it makes it easier to see me as a single entity I guess I could adopt a pseudonym.

P.S. The good/bad website was just an idea. As for doing it myself, I could except that I have no original source of any information. You can at least supply some portion of the news yourself rather than relying on external sources for all news. That makes you a more trustworthy source than me.

What you’re basically saying here is that there is no way to disagree with you without being on a “lunatic fringe”, I think. I’m not sure. What was your point anyway? You brought up the dead PROBLEM but the not the dead SOLUTION. What is that solution then, in your non “lunatic fringe” opinion?