Eddie,

I'd like to read the link you provided, but opening-- says :message 404--the page can not be found........
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'private opinions have in no way distorted her coverage'--I'd like to see the context that was quoated from--that's interesesting wording (Clintonese?) Is a 'private e-mail to a friend' considered "coverage" that journalistic ethics would apply to?
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The point of posting her article about Afghanistan is to reveal the she certainly DOES alow her opinions to distort her coverage.

I suppose Farnaz Fassihi and those who thinks she has crediblity would prefer that Afghanistan went back to the 'good ole days' before the EVIL and Imperialist United States invaded it. When women couldn't receive an education, work, drive or vote and could be STONED to DEATH in a public forum if they went in public without being completely covered by a Berka. When the Taliban and Al Qaeda had complete freedom to plan, organize and train to Terrorize and Murder the Infidels.

Rory, try this link:

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000650551

Evidently, her e-mail was a private e-mail that someone took upon themselves to release to the general public. Not surprisingly, she is on "vacation" until after the US elections. The WSJ editorial policy subscribes to the same notion of "fair and balanced" as Fox News.

Eddie,

Thanks for re-posting the link.
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How many articles did Farnaz Fassihi write about Islamo-fascists murdering and terrorizing in Iraq or anywhere else for that matter PRIOR to our invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq to remove Saddam and his regime?

I'm just curious because Al Qaeda and Islamic extremists were such a fun loving. positive and peaceful group prior to OUR 'taking he genie out of the bottle'.

Where was her outrage to the Rape and Torture Rooms that Saddam and his regime systematcally used?

Where was her outrage at the 300,000 bodies that have been found in the 'Killing Fields' (men, WOMEN and CHILDREN that were MURDERED by Saddam and his regime)?

If one is truley concerned about the welfare of a people or country, ones concerns and outrages about living conditions/human rights have to be consitant to have crediblity. It seems to me that Farnaz Fassihi is only 'concerned' when the United States is invloved and the seed of democarcy is taking root.

KK,

So glad you could 'enlighten' us with your 'qualified' opinion that my opinion is, "unqualified".
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Perhaps you thought like Farnaz Fassihi that the world and Iraq were better off with Saddam in power as Michael Moore portayed Iraq prior to the invasion as a blissful land of rainbows and joyful children happliy flying kites.
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Whether someone supported the invasion or not--We're there.

Pulling out, cutting and running without helping to stabilize the country first would be the worst possilble thing we could.

The Islamo-facsist insurgency that are there now are from other countries--They hated America , demoracy , Christians and Jews long before we invaded Iraq (there was no genie that was let out of a bottle) and we would of had to deal with them eventually.

Have you ever been camping in the mountains along side a river and had your campsite invaded buy Wasps during the day looking for mud? It sucks! I learned along time ago that if you take a little meat and put it on a paper plate on the shore down river a ways, that the Wasps will leave your campsite and hang around the paper plate.

Iraq has become the paper plate with meat on it and the Islamo-fascists are the Wasps.

For the first time we're waging an Offensive game plan against the terrorists, rather than the Defensive war that Clinton waged (that Kerry would emulate) that led OBL and others to think we were a 'paper tiger' that would not fight and enboldend them to plan and carry out the atacks of 9/11/01.

The area is now a magnet (paper plate with meat on it) for the same type of Islamic extremists that killed approx. 3000 American men women and children on 9/11/01. They need to be killed or inprisoned. They're being killed daily in Iraq and their abilty to plan, organize, recrute and execute their murderous hatred here in America is being severly limited.

Would you rather that all of the Islamo-fascists in the middle east and elsewhere had time, money, numerous bodies and energy to attack us at will?
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There is no country called 'Al Qaedaonia' wth Osama bin Laden as president--if there were, we would have invaded it and taken down/out OBL.

This war was waged on us--Not by a country, but by the followers of a warped version of Islam that is generationally ingrained to large segments of the Middle East and exported throughout the world.

The best chance we have for long-term peace in the region or elsewhere is to let the idea and practice of representative government, free markets, freedom OF religion and the pursuit of happiness grow in Iraq and hopefully blossom into neighboring countries.

TIMES NEWS TRACKER

Topics Alerts
Bush, George W
Woodward, Bob
Suskind, Ron

Iraq

Does President Bush even tip his hat to reality as he goes breezing by?

He often behaves as if he sees - or is in touch with - things that
are inaccessible to those who are grounded in the reality most of us
have come to know. For example, with more than 1,000 American troops
and more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians dead, many people see the
ongoing war in Iraq as a disaster, if not a catastrophe. Mr. Bush
sees freedom on the march.

Many thoughtful analysts see a fiscal disaster developing here at
home, with the president's tax cuts being the primary contributor to
the radical transformation of a $236 billion budget surplus into a
$415 billion deficit. The president sees, incredibly, a need for
still more tax cuts.

The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, by Osama bin Laden
and Al Qaeda. The president responded by turning most of the nation's
firepower on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. When Mr. Bush was asked by the
journalist Bob Woodward if he had consulted with former President
Bush about the decision to invade Iraq, the president replied: "He is
the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher
father that I appeal to."

Last week the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv
University said in a report:

"During the past year Iraq has become a major distraction from the
global war on terrorism. Iraq has now become a convenient arena for
jihad, which has helped Al Qaeda to recover from the setback it
suffered as a result of the war in Afghanistan. With the growing
phenomenon of suicide bombing, the U.S. presence in Iraq now demands
more and more assets that might have otherwise been deployed against
various dimensions of the global terrorist threat."

There are consequences, often powerful consequences, to turning one's
back on reality. The president may believe that freedom's on the
march, and that freedom is God's gift to every man and woman in the
world, and perhaps even that he is the vessel through which that gift
is transmitted. But when he is crafting policy decisions that put
people by the hundreds of thousands into harm's way, he needs to rely
on more than the perceived good wishes of the Almighty. He needs to
submit those policy decisions to a good hard reality check.

Here's one good reason why:

Dr. Gene Bolles spent two years as the chief of neurosurgery at the
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, which is where most of
the soldiers wounded in Iraq are taken. Among his patients was Pfc.
Jessica Lynch. In an interview posted this week on the Web site
AlterNet.org, Dr. Bolles was asked: "What kind of cases did you treat
in Landstuhl? And these were mostly kids, right?"

He said: "Well, I call them that since I'm 62 years old. And they
were 18, 19, maybe 21. They all seemed young. Certainly younger than
my children. As a neurosurgeon I mostly dealt with injuries to the
brain, the spinal cord, or the spine itself. The injuries were all
fairly horrific, anywhere from the loss of extremities, multiple
extremities, to severe burns. It just goes on and on and on. ... As a
doctor myself who has seen trauma throughout his career, I've never
seen it to this degree. The numbers, the degree of injuries. It
really kind of caught me off guard."

If you're the president and you're contemplating a war in which
thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of these kinds of injuries
will take place, you have an obligation to seek out the best sources
of information and the wisest advice from the widest possible array
of counselors. And you have an absolute obligation to exercise sound
judgment based upon facts, and not simply faith.

In a disturbing article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, the
writer Ron Suskind told of a meeting he'd had with a senior adviser
to the president. The White House at the time was unhappy about an
article Mr. Suskind had written.

According to Mr. Suskind, "The aide said that guys like me were 'in
what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people
who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of
discernible reality.' " The aide told Mr. Suskind, "That's not the
way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we
act we create our own reality."

Got that? We may think there are real-world consequences to the
policies of the president, real pain and real grief for real people.
But to the White House, that kind of thinking is passé. The White
House doesn't even recognize that kind of reality

A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) shows that supporters of President Bush hold wildly inaccurate views about the world. For example, "a large majority [72 percent] of Bush supporters believe that before the war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."[1] Most Bush supporters [57 percent] also believe that the recently released report by Charles Duelfer, the administration's hand-picked weapons inspector, concluded Iraq either had WMD or a major program for developing them.[2] In fact, the report concluded "Saddam Hussein did not produce or possess any weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade before the U.S.-led invasion" and the U.N. inspection regime had "curbed his ability to build or develop weapons."[3]

According to the study, 75 percent Bush supporters also believe "Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda."[4] Most Bush supporters [55 percent] believe that was the conclusion of the 9/11 commission.[5] In fact, the 9/11 commission concluded there was no "collaborative relationship" between al-Qaeda and Iraq.[6]

Bush supporters also hold inaccurate views about world public opinion of the war in Iraq and a range of Bush's foreign policy positions.[7]

Sources:

1. "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters," Program on International Policy Attitudes, 10/21/04
2. "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters," Program on International Policy Attitudes, 10/21/04
3. "Iraq's Illicit Weapons Gone Since Early '90s, CIA Says," Los Angeles Times, 10/07/04,
4. "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters," Program on International Policy Attitudes, 10/21/04
5. "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters," Program on International Policy Attitudes, 10/21/04
6. "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed," Washington Post, 6/17/04,
7. "The Separate Realities of Bush