Enemies real and imagined

[Desperadoe]

Ok, now I know that the end must be near. I never, ever read anything that this crazy Kathleen Parker writes but I clicked on this without seeing the byline. I just cannot believe that she wrote this. I must be missing the punch line where this is all the "liberals fault"............because, otherwise, she actually makes sense.....naw, can't be!


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Turns out news of a key capture and killing was terrorist-generated fiction. If they can invent phantom foes, maybe we can invent victory.

Just when you thought the war in Iraq couldn't get any stranger, a high-ranking al-Qaeda figure who was first captured and then killed - his body displayed on state-run TV - turns out to have been a fiction.
He didn't exist.

The apparently invented character called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was known as the head of the Islamic State of Iraq - believed to be a front group for al-Qaeda.

He wasn't captured, as was reported previously. He wasn't killed May 1 by hostile fire from U.S. forces, as reported in a May 3 New York Times story. He wasn't even real, according to the U.S. military.<snip>

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20070723_Enemies_real_and_imagined.html

[Demeter]

1. Read 1001 Arabian Nights

The hero is always a thief, a liar, a trickster, and his victims may or may not be the bad guys (like a Robin Hood scenario alternating with a Sopranos one).

It is a foreign land and a different culture. And Bush and Cheney and their cohorts, who have NO culture and no homeland, have no clue.

[Igel]

2. I must be missing the punch line where this is all the "liberals fault"

There's no punch line saying 'it's all the liberals fault'; there is a punch line saying, 'liberals are being duped'. Well, 'liberals' aren't the only group; it's just the US-specific application that implies 'liberals', as well as a fair number of 'moderates' and even some 'conservatives' ... no doubt.



"What we have here isn't a failure to communicate, but an excessive ability to communicate without the ability to differentiate between what is real and what is merely perceived. The world of virtuality has lifted war from the trenches into the realm of the imagination....

"In the virtual world of myth and viral propaganda, Osama bin Laden achieves immortality and the war on terror becomes a clash of phantoms. If our enemies can invent people and organizations, perhaps we might begin to invent victory.

"We are limited only by our imagination - or defeated by a lack thereof."

[Uncle Joe]

3. I just take this

as a subtle attack against the Internet.

"What we have here isn't a failure to communicate, but an excessive ability to communicate without the ability to differentiate between what is real and what is merely perceived. The world of virtuality has lifted war from the trenches into the realm of the imagination."

I believe what Kathleen Parker craves is the one way communication, where she and her like could inform the American People as to what reality was, without question.



This next part would be funny, if it weren't so sad.

"Nations have always employed propaganda in war, though the United States isn't very good at it. We don't like propaganda much - the American media are contemptuous of "disinformation" - and almost think of it as dishonest compared to the virtue of hands-on courage. But virtuality has amped up the reach and power of information and disinformation, and we're losing that battle. Today, entire universes of perception can be convincingly created and integrated into the global psyche."

How many people believed Al Gore actually claimed to have invented the Internet as if he were in a laboratory, in large part because of the Washington Post, among many others in American media? It wasn't the virtual world which did the damage with "disinformation" regarding him or the ignoring of contrary evidence to justify the war with Iraq. If you believe the Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet, among many others was just harmless slander, you must be happy with Bush and our current situation in the real world such as Iraq, not to mention the virtual world. I believe the American People don't like propaganda much and are contemptuous of disinformation, however the American Media; they're a different story altogether.