[Rhodes22-list] Politics Geraldo Rivera reports

[ed kroposki]

Hey mark, check this out in scopes.  It was just sent to me.

The buildings that AREN'T burning in Iraq
 
"They have a saying in the news business," Geraldo Rivera related this
week. "Reporters don't report buildings that don't burn." And with that
introduction, he told a TV audience about the story that is being
systematically denied to our entire nation: the success story of
post-Saddam Iraq.
 
Are we losing some soldiers each week? Yes,. Is there some frustration
in the public about electricity and water service? Yes. Are some Saddam
Hussein loyalists throughout the land, making trouble? Yes. Has this
opened a window for some terrorist mischief? Yes. But that's ALL we
hear. No wonder the country is in a mixed mood about Iraq. If you hear
about the buildings that are not burning, though, it is a different
story indeed.
 
Rivera is no shill for George W. Bush. But Bush, Condi Rice and Colin
Powell together could not have been as effective as Geraldo was Thursday
night on the Fox News Channel's Hannity and Colmes program.
 
"When I got to Baghdad, I barely recognized it," he began, Comparing his
just-completed trip to two others he made during and just after the
battle to topple Saddam. "You have over 30,000 Iraqi cops and militiamen
already on the job.
 
This is four months after major fighting stopped. Can you imagine that
kind of gearing up in this country? Law and order is better;
archaeological sites are being preserved; factories, schools are being
guarded." But what about the secondhand griping that the media have been
so efficiently relating about power, water and other infrastructure?
 
"To say that Iraq is being rebuilt is not true," answered Rivera. "Iraq
is being built. There was no infrastructure before; we are doing it. I
just think the good news is being underestimated and underreported." At
this juncture, one must evaluate how to feel about the voices telling us
only about the bad news in Iraq, whether from the mouths of news anchors
or Democratic presidential hopefuls. At best, they are underinformed. At
worst, their one-sided assessments of post-Saddam Iraq are intentional
falsehoods for obvious reasons. 
 
If I hear one more person mock that "Mission Accomplished" banner
beneath which President Bush thanked a shipload of sailors and Marines a
few months back, I'm going to spit. That was a reference to the ouster
of Saddam's regime, and that mission was indeed accomplished, apparently
to the great chagrin of the American left. No one said what followed
would be easy or cheap, and that's why the dripping-water torture of the
cost and casualty stories is so infuriating. Remember we pay our
soldiers whether they are in Iraq or in Ft Bragg, North Carolina. We
should all mourn the loss of every fallen soldier. But context cries out
to be heard. Our present news media is not performing this task. As some
dare to wonder if this might become a Vietnam-like quagmire, I'll remind
whoever needs it that most of our 58,000 Vietnam war toll died between
1966 and 1972, during which we lost an average of about 8,000 per year.
That's about 22 per day, every day, for thousands of days on 


 
Local elections are under way across Iraq, Rivera reported. "Where Kurds
and Arabs have been battling for decades, things have been settling
down. Administrator Paul Bremer is doing a great job." So does Geraldo
think his media colleagues are intentionally painting with one side of
the brush? "I'm not into conspiracy theories, but there's just more bang
for your buck when you report the GI who got killed rather than the 99
who didn't get killed, who make friends, who helped schedule elections,
who helped shops get open for business, who helped traffic flow again.
 
"The vast majority of Iraqis are very happy to have us there. I would
like to see a bit more balance." This needs to be reported to the
American Public who are presently being duped. I expect the dominant
media culture to nitpick and attack Bush, and Democrats to blast him
with reckless abandon. But when that leads to the willful exclusion of
facts that would shine truthful light on the great work of the American
armed forces, that level of malice plumbs new depths."
 
If you have a friend that is looking for the truth, pass this on.