Wednesday, June 15, 2005
A QUOTE THAT IS NOT REALLY A QUOTE
By chance, I happened to catch the Rumsfeld/Pace Pentagon briefing on FOX yesterday afternoon. Here's what General Pace said on security in Iraq:
Well, he didn't until he appeared on BBC's Newsnight, when he SUPPOSEDLY told us the following -- according to the BBC web site:
Then, seconds later, realizing it is the BBC after all, and that they are only single stroke quotes, I went looking anyway for that exact phrase . . . which had led me to believe, based on the opening lines that followed, that Rumsfeld had said that. No good. It appears NOWHERE in the piece as a Rumsfeld quote. In fact, the following are what the BBC Newsnight site considers the "excerpts" of his Iraq statements:
Back to the BBC. My main gripes:
A) I don't think I'm being picky here. This is important stuff. Quotes are VALUABLE items, and should NOT be abused, or "implied". The phrase is placed in single quotes, yes, but the very first words of the next sentence commence with "US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged. . ." And the implication at a glance a reader gets is that he did say those words. Only later do we realize those single quotes meant he "meant that", but didn't say THAT exactly.
Yet the BBC could also have headlined the piece with a literal quote. How about this?:
Rather . . . B) they were (of course) merely trying (in the "best" of journalistic fashions, of course) to "capture" and "distill" for us dumb readers the "spirit" of Rumsfeld's remarks, and words like "it has been getting better" naturally would not have "summed things up" in quite the same manner.
So, okay, how about it? The "spirit" of his words are meant to reveal what to us? Well, evidently, what Rumsfeld "said" according to the BBC was that two years on the killing is as bad as at the outset, the Iraqi insurgency is proving bottomless, and from those points we are supposed to draw the logical conclusion that therefore the liberation is going nowhere.
As I wrote a few days ago, comparisons should always be used cautiously. But sometimes they are indeed useful. So let's think back a few decades to another war:
From the last quarter of 1942, the Nazis were being rolled back and battered. Any repeat of the Luftwaffe air attack of 1940-1941 seemed impossible. On June 6, 1944, the Allies had landed in Normandy, and the Luftwaffe had already mostly been chased out of the skies of northwest Europe by the huge Anglo-American air forces.
Then, suddenly . . . literally out of the blue: WHAM!:
To British civilians, faced with V2s raining down, personally it didn't matter much that Patton's and Montgomery's soldiers were rampaging across France and Belgium, killing and capturing Nazis by the hundreds of thousands. After all, at home the "security situation" had deteriorated badly when compared to what it had been, say, on September 6, 1940. Hadn't it? ¶ by Robert, Wednesday, June 15, 2005
By chance, I happened to catch the Rumsfeld/Pace Pentagon briefing on FOX yesterday afternoon. Here's what General Pace said on security in Iraq:
Q: Two years-plus since the U.S. invasion, the insurgency seems to be vibrant. Certainly the number of attacks seem to be going up and down, but we're in a period now where they seem to be up. . .Standing next to Pace, Rumsfeld said nothing to contradict or to embelish on any of that.
. . . PACE: Well, we're operating against a thinking enemy, clearly. The numbers of attacks country-wide in Iraq each day is about 50 or 60, depending upon the day. That's not a good number. It's also not a terrible number. It just is a fact. Inside those attacks, the enemy has changed their tactics, techniques and procedures in response to what we've been doing.
There's been a tremendous amount of progress, as I've already mentioned in this discussion. But from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, what our armed forces and their armed forces and their police can do is provide a level of security inside of which discussions amongst various tribes, amongst various political leaders, amongst those who have different views of the way ahead for the country, but peacefully, to discuss it, so that they can get together and do what they're doing, which is write a constitution, have a referendum, vote for their next government, and get on about having a life that they're capable of having.
So the security situation is very important for that. But I would not chase the spikes and dips in the security situation. If you draw a straight line through the middle of that, it's fairly constant. That's not good or bad, it's fact. But inside that fairly constant line there's plenty of opportunity for the Iraqi people to stand up and vote their own futures. . .
Well, he didn't until he appeared on BBC's Newsnight, when he SUPPOSEDLY told us the following -- according to the BBC web site:
Iraq 'no more safe than in 2003'Below is a screen capture (in case they change the page):
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged that security in Iraq has not improved statistically since Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003. . .
Now, what does that title and those introductory lines indicate to you? That's right, that Rumsfeld said those words verbatim. Indeed, when I first read this page, I thought, "Wow! He said what?"
Then, seconds later, realizing it is the BBC after all, and that they are only single stroke quotes, I went looking anyway for that exact phrase . . . which had led me to believe, based on the opening lines that followed, that Rumsfeld had said that. No good. It appears NOWHERE in the piece as a Rumsfeld quote. In fact, the following are what the BBC Newsnight site considers the "excerpts" of his Iraq statements:
The insurgency... built over a period of time and it has had its ups and downs. Clearly, they made an effort during the election period, 30 January, to try to derail the election... A lot of the bad things that could have happened have not happened.It requires Sky to tell us more clearly:
There's clearly people coming in from other countries - from Iran and from Syria - and through other borders... With respect to the insurgency, I would say Syria [is the most unhelpful to the new Iraq]. With respect to an effort to try to influence what's taking place, Iran is doing that.
[Iraq] is an important country with intelligent people, water and oil... [The war] was completed with dispatch, and with minimal collateral damage, and with minimal loss of life.
[As for holding talks with the insurgents], it's more the Iraqi government side and the insurgents as opposed to our side, and the answer is there are continuing contacts... The task is to not get people way in the far end, who have blood on their hands over here, it's just to get everyone to keep moving in the right direction towards support of the government.
. . . He told Sir David Frost in an interview for BBC Newsnight that Syria was fuelling the rebellion.Which jibes pretty much with what General Pace told reporters at the Pentagon -- with Rumsfeld at his side.
Sir David asked him whether the security situation had improved since the day after the war ended.
Mr Rumsfeld said: "Well, statistically no. But clearly it has been getting better as we've gone along.
"In other words, at the end of the war the army fled, was captured.
"The insurgency then built over a period of time, and it has had its ups and downs."
He added: "A lot of bad things that could have happened have not happened.". . .
Back to the BBC. My main gripes:
A) I don't think I'm being picky here. This is important stuff. Quotes are VALUABLE items, and should NOT be abused, or "implied". The phrase is placed in single quotes, yes, but the very first words of the next sentence commence with "US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged. . ." And the implication at a glance a reader gets is that he did say those words. Only later do we realize those single quotes meant he "meant that", but didn't say THAT exactly.
Yet the BBC could also have headlined the piece with a literal quote. How about this?:
Rumsfeld: "it has been getting better"Stop laughing. They really could have. But they would not have, because they don't "believe" that.
Rather . . . B) they were (of course) merely trying (in the "best" of journalistic fashions, of course) to "capture" and "distill" for us dumb readers the "spirit" of Rumsfeld's remarks, and words like "it has been getting better" naturally would not have "summed things up" in quite the same manner.
So, okay, how about it? The "spirit" of his words are meant to reveal what to us? Well, evidently, what Rumsfeld "said" according to the BBC was that two years on the killing is as bad as at the outset, the Iraqi insurgency is proving bottomless, and from those points we are supposed to draw the logical conclusion that therefore the liberation is going nowhere.
As I wrote a few days ago, comparisons should always be used cautiously. But sometimes they are indeed useful. So let's think back a few decades to another war:
The Blitz is the title given to the German bombing campaign on British cities during World War Two. . .After May 1941, it was pretty clear Britain would not be invaded. After the US entered the war in December, prospects for victory improved. Indeed, victory, Winston Churchill felt, was no longer in much doubt.
. . . The attacks started on September 7th 1940 and continued to May 1941. . .
By May 1941, 43,000 had been killed across Britain and 1.4 million had been made homeless. Not only was London attacked but so were many British cities. Coventry and Plymouth were particularly badly bombed but most of Britain’s cities were also attacked – Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool etc. . .
From the last quarter of 1942, the Nazis were being rolled back and battered. Any repeat of the Luftwaffe air attack of 1940-1941 seemed impossible. On June 6, 1944, the Allies had landed in Normandy, and the Luftwaffe had already mostly been chased out of the skies of northwest Europe by the huge Anglo-American air forces.
Then, suddenly . . . literally out of the blue: WHAM!:
. . . On June 15th, 244 V1's were launched from 55 sites. 73 hit Greater London and 71 hit areas outside of London. 100 V1's failed to get across the Channel. It was the start of a major offensive. On June 17th, Hitler flew to northern France to congratulate Wachtel and he ordered that all the 'cherry stones' (Hitler's nickname for the V1) should be targeted at London and nowhere else. On June 18th, one V1 hit the Guard's Chapel at Wellington barracks and killed 121 people and wounded 68 others. London was about to experience another terror. By the end of June 18th, 500 V1's had been fired in total. . .And the V2 was much scarier because. . .
. . . By July 5th, 2,500 people had been killed and even the Air Ministry in the Strand had been hit with 198 people being killed in that attack. . .
. . .But London was to face an even more terrifying weapon - one that could not be seen or defended against - the V2. . .
The V2 was the first of the true rockets - part of Hitler's revenge (Vergeltungswaffen) weapons - the secret weapons he had promised his generals would win the war. Whereas the V1 could be seen and attacked, the V2 was effectively invisible after it had been fired. The first Londoners knew about a V2, was when it exploded. . .The war was visibly being won, and yet Londoners were finding rockets landing on their heads:
. . . These weapons spread considerable fear in London. In response to them the government used its intelligence units to convince the Nazis that the government had moved its base from central London to the Dulwich area of London. This worked and the V2’s were targeted towards Dulwich. About 1000 V2’s were fired at Britain before their launch sites were overrun by the advancing Allies. In total they killed or wounded about 115,000 people. . .So, was the "security situation" in summer 1944 "worse" than it was in 1940-41? Well, yes in some ways, and also clearly, no. No, in the sense that the war was being won; but definitely YES if you just had had a V2 wipe out your neighborhood and kill your entire family.
To British civilians, faced with V2s raining down, personally it didn't matter much that Patton's and Montgomery's soldiers were rampaging across France and Belgium, killing and capturing Nazis by the hundreds of thousands. After all, at home the "security situation" had deteriorated badly when compared to what it had been, say, on September 6, 1940. Hadn't it? ¶ by Robert, Wednesday, June 15, 2005
