Here’s how the NY Times gives context in a news story on President Obama’s recent quick visit to the troops at Bagram:
…
Wrapped in a tight cocoon of secrecy and security, Mr. Obama landed at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, on a pitch-black evening and told thousands of American service members who greeted him that they had begun to turn the tide in a war that has frustrated commanders and soldiers alike for nearly a decade…The president’s remarks offered a more positive assessment of the situation on the ground than he has in some time, influenced perhaps by the optimism expressed in recent weeks by his commanding general, Gen. David H. Petraeus. American military forces have tripled, to 100,000, on Mr. Obama’s watch, and he has vowed to begin reducing the number of troops next July.
But others in Washington and Kabul have been more skeptical of the claims of progress, noting the unabated and pervasive corruption of Mr. Karzai’s government, the resilience of the insurgency despite escalated attacks and the debacle of recent peace talks that turned out to be held not with a senior Taliban leader but an impostor…
Mr. Obama’s visit came at a pivotal moment in the war on both sides. In Washington, the administration is completing a review of the surge and counterinsurgency strategy that the president approved a year ago, although officials played down its import. “I don’t think you’ll see any immediate adjustments,” Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president’s top Afghan policy adviser, told reporters on Air Force One.
In Kabul, an election held on Sept. 18 has yet to result in a sitting Parliament, as Mr. Karzai has neither endorsed nor condemned its outcome. And State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made public on Friday laid bare the unvarnished and dubious view of American diplomats toward Mr. Karzai and his government. The cables questioned whether Mr. Karzai will ever be “a responsible partner” and depicted him as “erratic” and “indecisive and unprepared.”..
Fair enough I’d say. Now compare with what appears in the Globe and Mail’s, er, report; I’ve emphasized certain words:
…
Tellingly, Mr. Obama – who sent a surge of thousands more U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan – omitted any mention of his promise to start pulling troops out next summer…The President’s unannounced visit after a 13-hour flight, came only days after leaked documents confirmed the endemic corruption that infests the Karzai government and the grave doubts senior U.S. military officers and diplomats voice privately about the chances of success in the war. His visit also came on the 3,344th day since the U.S. attacked the Taliban regime in October, 2001.
After more than nine years of fighting – already six days [what's this fixation on days?] longer than the failed Soviet Union effort to subjugate Afghanistan – Mr. Obama claimed the surge had turned the tide…
But later this month, General David Petraeus, whom Mr. Obama hailed for changing “the way we fight wars and win wars in the 21st century” is expected to deliver a sombre assessment to Congress, warning that much dying lies ahead before Afghanistan’s unreliable army and corrupt police can take over the country’s security.
Mr. Obama made only passing reference to the grim reality that U.S. combat deaths – and the toll on Afghan civilians, Taliban fighters and coalition contingents – have soared in the past year to the highest levels of the war…
At home, the Afghan war is increasingly unpopular. A clear majority of Americans want a pullout of the more than 100,000 U.S. troops currently carrying the combat load in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the resurgent Taliban control much of the country.
An unpopular war with no clear exit strategy and no way of determining victory hangs darkly over Mr. Obama’s presidency.
Although he claimed that the U.S.-led coalition has swelled to 49 countries [is that number true or not? if it is there is no "claim"] – up from 43 when he took office – the soldiers in Bagram knew that few nations are willing to commit troops to combat. There is spreading war-weariness even among the few fighting allies, such as Canada and the Netherlands, both of which are quitting combat. Meanwhile, major European powers such as Germany, Spain and Italy continue to keep their thousands of troops far from the raging Taliban insurgency in the south.
Get the picture the Globe’s authors, Incorrigible Paul Koring and Susan Sachs, want you to have? Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. The piece is simply a deliberate and disgraceful, agenda-driven, effort to undermine Canadian support for the NATO mission.
As I keep saying the Globe is no longer a newspaper, see here, here and here. And it stinks. Gives renewed meaning to the phrase “committing journalism”.
Mark
Ottawa
The Canadian media is a disgrace, and the Globe isn’t even the worst. The gold medal for biased agenda-driven journalism goes to the Toronto Star, the CBC picks up the silver, and the Globe gets the bronze.
Take a look at the Globe’s increasing use of the picture of PM Harper as seen through the flames and tell me that’s not indicative of how the G&M sees the PM and the CPC.
The (Montreal)Gazette isn’t far behind. It recently started its story on the Vaughan by-election by reporting that the Conservatives had stolen the election.
The thing is the Globe has pretensions to being Canada’s version of the Gray Lady. Hah!
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/009349.html
Link to Globe piece no longer works, more of the text here:
http://forums.air-force.ca/forums/index.php?topic=59465.45
‘Passing the torch to a new generation
Globe and Mail, April 28, by Editor-in-Chief Edward Greenspon [now departed, the whatever has only got worse under John Stackhouse-- see http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/discussions/editor-in-chief-john-stackhouse-on-the-redesigned-globe-and-website/article1739764/ ]
http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070428/GREENSPON28/Comment/comment/commentColumnistsHeadline/4/4/7/
Quote
When reporter and author David Halberstam, one of my journalistic heroes, died in a California car accident this week at 73, I couldn’t help but think of Graeme Smith, The Globe and Mail’s 27-year-old correspondent in Afghanistan. Mr. Halberstam first came to prominence as an uncompromising truth-teller in Vietnam, a war that ended four years before Graeme was born.
But they shared a penchant for independence of mind and courage in pursuit of the truth. Mr. Halberstam, a great one for the blend of anecdote and analysis, would have loved the stories his peers told of him this week, such as the time a general berated the assembled press for a perceived transgression and Mr. Halberstam’s arm shot up in response: “General, you don’t understand. We are not corporals; we don’t work for you.” Another former colleague remarked on his contribution in establishing the vital importance of bearing witness with one’s own eyes. “He didn’t accept the word of generals and admirals. He stayed the course and kept the faith. He was more honest with the American public than the government.”
Just substitute the word Canadian for American in that last sentence and you will arrive at the essence of The Globe’s reporting this week on the government’s indifference to human-rights abuses of Afghan detainees.
When Graeme began his seventh rotation through Afghanistan in March, Globe foreign editor Stephen Northfield told him to ignore everything but the most urgent breaking news and devote himself to finding the detainees turned over by Canada. Stephen wanted to pursue a path laid by Globe Washington correspondent Paul Koring. Paul has long specialized in military and security matters and, by dint of this experience, first recognized that Canada was headed for big trouble in its handling of prisoners in Afghanistan.
He broke the story in March, 2006, of a little-known agreement between the Afghan security forces and Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier. Paul immediately understood that turning detainees over to the Afghans, with their spotted human-rights record, would drag the Canadian government into an endless swamp, especially since Canada had not insisted, as had others, on the right to monitor the fate of the transferred prisoners.
Graeme, who is virtually unique in Afghanistan in that he works both inside the wire with the Canadian military and regularly ventures out on his own, used his Afghan contacts and deep knowledge of the country to track down 30 individuals, the majority of whom had been captured by Canadian soldiers and turned over to Afghan authorities. Their tales, chillingly consistent, often involving beatings, whippings, choking, electric shocks and other medieval forms of torture [emphasis added], shocked official Ottawa and most of the nation when the story appeared on Monday, the first day of our new design.
But our guys weren’t finished yet…’
Mark
Ottawa
Somebody told me on another blog that both CTV and the Globe were conservative/right wing oriented news organizations.
I snorted my beer out my nose when I read it.
“Get the picture the Globe’s authors, Incorrigible Paul Koring and Susan Sachs, want you to have? Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. The piece is simply a deliberate and disgraceful, agenda-driven, effort to undermine Canadian support for the NATO mission.” IMO, “journalists” Koring and Sachs are throwing their sabots into the machinery of Afghan liberation and democratization. When did such disgraceful behavior become acceptable journalism?
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