Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing: March 23, 2003 - March 29, 2003 Archives


Got onto this one through Instapundit. I love Dan Abrams even though my wife has the hots for him. I like him even more after reading this.

Dan Abrams of MSNBC is pissed. It's kind of weird to see a television anchorman displaying frustration and disbelief at certain things going on. The whole thing about the Iraqis dressing in civilian clothes and shooting from protected sites has really stuck in his craw. First he hammered Gen. Trainer about it, and the General explained LOAC and all that good stuf, but Abrams just wasn't buying it. It looked to me that he just wanted to blurt out, "Why can't we blow up that mosque, if they're killing Marines?"


Then he had a retired JAG on and hammered him about the same thing. And then I heard something I thought I'd never hear an "objective" journalist say, and I paraphrase, "So our guys have to check with lawyers before they fire back? So we have these self-imposed rules that lawyers impose on our troops and the government imposes on itself and now Marines are dead because of it." That last line was a statement, not a question. The JAG guy's trying to explain about PR and the rest of it, but Abrams was on a roll. "Those Arab TV networks are going to show us supposedly targeting and killing civilians no matter what we do while we follow the Rules of War." It was nothing short of astonishing to hear that. I don't know what prompted all this. Perhaps he saw the tape of the Americans executed and exploited on TV. Who knows? But man, it was something to see.[...]

Sheeit Dan! Why don't you just point at the Al Jazeera guys and say, "These racist religious bigots are going to keep satisfying their audience's thirst for snuff-films, so WTF..."? Suppose that's too much candor to wish for. Earth to Arab World: If the lesson you got from Somalia and Beirut was that showing a few Americans dead on TV was going to make us cut and run, you got the wrong message. I forget now where I read/heard this (maybe I pointed to it, below - I have a memory like a seive) - the USA isn't afraid of fighting and dying. We're afraid of losing. If there's a chance to win, then we will keep going on. Showing our guys getting dragged around, or shot in the head and basically treated in a barbaric manner is just going to PISS US OFF. It's helping the people who don't understand what this fight is about FIGURE IT OUT - including the weasely TV anchors.


As per usual, the xenophobic Arabs are screwing their own again. They'd rather shame the Iraqis into fighting to the death (with whatever dishonorable means they have) than honorably capitulating and getting on with re-building.


OTOH (get ready for this switcheroo), if it somehow appeases their sense of pride, so they can feel like they put up a fight and gave us a what-for before giving up, and so helps them get on with re-building and moving-on, then maybe we can take it. But be very careful. I'd stick to more silly "shooting around in the reeds" charades than showing dead Americans. Know what I mean?