If you are, indeed, Bennet Kelly, I am certainly glad you found this site to post your stuff. I have seen some of your work at HuffPo and always enjoy it.

Tom

we are one and the same, although I am not the priest whose books they advertise next to my name on HuffPo. That was my uncle.

I know! I didn't think it was possible either! But then the NYT told me so this morning! Cool, right?

"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/world/middleeast/21security.html"

Just look at the picture!!! The surge has worked! Kids are in playgrounds! Soon there will be victory, baby!

It'll be just like in Afghanistan! That victory was AWESOME, dude! Remember that?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9807E4D71E30F933A25750C0A9649C8B63"

Strangely, the Times doesn't.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/opinion/20fri2.html

But anyway, they are totally going to report what Petraeus is going to "report" to the Nation -- in sober, careful, somewhat tentative, yes, but hopeful words : Victory in Iraq may finally be on its way.

The Bush Administration hasn't won the peace in Louisiana yet, - still a need for troops there, three years after Katrina, still haven't quite sorted out the security situation IN AN AMERICAN CITY AFTER THREE YEARS - but it's very important for us to realize - the New York Times believes - that the Administration is making things better in Iraq.

http://www.washblog.com/story/2008/6/21/165142/553

There is plenty of fault for both major parties in sending this country on an invasion of Iraq. No justification, just fault. The congress and the president, democrats and republicans, teamed up on this one.

You are right that Congress deserves blame for doing exactly what the media did - failing to critically evaluate White House claims on Iraq (or even read the classified analysis provided before the vote). That is true of both Democrats and Republicans.

But I think misleading Congress and the American people in making the case for war is a far greater offense and one that history will always remember and never forgive.

When the best analysis is a Lara Logan appearance on The Daily Show, you know the media consists of cowardly fuckwads.

The Administration's "succeeding in Iraq", "winning", "mission accomplished" has always been based on rhetoric or the use of carefully planted phrases. The Bush Administration took precautions to pursue media complicity to avoid publishing pictures of death or personal destruction in Iraq and to instead focus on carefully crafted articles that always presented the military conflict in terms of saving western civilization from terrorists. The US consumer never fully witnessed the death and destruction of war--like in Vietnam and therefore accepted what was communicated by press secretaries, members of the military, government agents (Bush, Powell, Rice, etc). Embedded journalists coexisted with government agents and elevated their stature and utility to the American public through exaggeration of their war-torn experiences and observations in the "war" zone--when for the most part American journalists were kept well within the confines of the green zone beyond conflict areas. This was not the case for many BBC reporters and civilian Iraqis who worked during the day in the Green Zone. They tell a different story--one that Kirchick would label as cowardly and dishonest. The US media whores in their quest to become the next Rather or Murrow during wartime scaled the divide that up until 9-11 existed between the media and government. The dividing wall presupposed a level of objectivity and distance. The quid pro quo complicity embedded network and cable journalists alike--became a cadre of "Super" journalists. However, the objectivity, the invisible division, the questioning voice was lost. Thus it is easy to see someone such as Kirchick become "embedded" with his pronouncement that anyone who claims that Bush lied is "cowardly and dishonest." Cowardly? Dishonest? The press has turned a complete 180 degrees in its condemnation of the public and any unembedded journalist that would merely ask a question that Rather, Murrow, Jennings, Conkrite and a host of other newsreaders would have unabashedly asked forty years ago. How then does one begin to question the actions of authority if a different viewpoint becomes accepted as cowardice by the main stream media? How too does one speak out about the lack of clear or consistent information if this becomes accepted as dishonesty? Doesn't this closely resemble fascism. The occupation of Iraq has become a rhetorical war of words that will not be won by the massive build-up of troop levels on the ground. Only when the media becomes "unembedded" and removes complicity with the government will the war be won.