http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418 The media sure has a way of ruining things.&nbsp; Have you ever noticed?&nbsp; I read a story this morning about how Prince Harry's being in the army caused the other soldiers to be more at risk than they otherwise would have been.&nbsp; What a load of crap!&nbsp; What would have caused a situation like that is the media reports telling the world where he was! The media has this 'very special way' of spoiling things.&nbsp; Who cares if this prince wants to be in the army.&nbsp; Is it not reasonable that someone who is qualified and WANTS to be in the army should be able to join?&nbsp; Is that really unreasonable?&nbsp; So, someone like Johnny Depp wanted to serve, and he could, then we should say no because he would endanger the other soldiers?! What we need to do is get the stupid media to stop throwing all this information out all over the place.&nbsp; It makes any plan or move we have obsolete.&nbsp; The day we do decide to leave Iraq will be ridiculous, especially if we are trying to leave in a special way.&nbsp; I can see it now, &quot;Oh, there will be one helicopter leaving out of such and such a street in Bagdad at 11:17pm local time.&nbsp; The pilot of the helicopter is General Petreaus himself and they will be evacuating the following soldiers:....&nbsp; They will fly over this town and that town, etc etc etc.&quot;&nbsp; Or maybe they would say something like &quot;All American troops are scheduled to be out of Iraq by March 5, 2009.&nbsp; The last ride out of the country for the soldiers will be at 2:13am that same day.&quot; If you think these kinds of reports would happen, you need to go turn on the news right now and look at the stuff they talk about.&nbsp; They give away all of the information that is useful to 'the enemy'. Well, this little rambling session was a little drawn out, but I stand by my words. The media sure has a way of ruining things.&nbsp; Have you ever noticed?&nbsp; I read a story this morning about how Prince Harry's being in the army caused the other soldiers to be more at risk than they otherwise would have been.&nbsp; What a load of crap!&nbsp; What would have caused a situation like that is the media reports telling the world where he was! The media has this 'very special way' of spoiling things.&nbsp; Who cares if this prince wants to be in the army.&nbsp; Is it not reasonable that someone who is qualified and WANTS to be in the army should be able to join?&nbsp; Is that really unreasonable?&nbsp; So, someone like Johnny Depp wanted to serve, and he could, then we should say no because he would endanger the other soldiers?! What we need to do is get the stupid media to stop throwing all this information out all over the place.&nbsp; It makes any plan or move we have obsolete.&nbsp; The day we do decide to leave Iraq will be ridiculous, especially if we are trying to leave in a special way.&nbsp; I can see it now, &quot;Oh, there will be one helicopter leaving out of such and such a street in Bagdad at 11:17pm local time.&nbsp; The pilot of the helicopter is General Petreaus himself and they will be evacuating the following soldiers:....&nbsp; They will fly over this town and that town, etc etc etc.&quot;&nbsp; Or maybe they would say something like &quot;All American troops are scheduled to be out of Iraq by March 5, 2009.&nbsp; The last ride out of the country for the soldiers will be at 2:13am that same day.&quot; If you think these kinds of reports would happen, you need to go turn on the news right now and look at the stuff they talk about.&nbsp; They give away all of the information that is useful to 'the enemy'. Well, this little rambling session was a little drawn out, but I stand by my words. en-us <p>You're not the first to curse the news media for confidential divulging military affairs. General William Sherman once said that if he could, he would hang news reporters for spying.</p> http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204573 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204573 <p>You're not the first to curse the news media for confidential divulging military affairs. General William Sherman once said that if he could, he would hang news reporters for spying.</p> <p>I can see why he would say that.</p> http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204577 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204577 <p>I can see why he would say that.</p> <p>TBL, the final exit from Bagdhad is going to look like the exit from Saigon, just not so well planned.&nbsp; I hope they built the helipads on the embassy roof strong enough--but given the unbelievable war-profiteering in Iraq, I doubt it.</p> http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204579 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204579 <p>TBL, the final exit from Bagdhad is going to look like the exit from Saigon, just not so well planned.&nbsp; I hope they built the helipads on the embassy roof strong enough--but given the unbelievable war-profiteering in Iraq, I doubt it.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Here we go again with&nbsp;another ill considered media bashing.</p> <p>Yeah, yeah, the stupid, selfish, rotten, traitorous&nbsp;media just wants to sell more newspapers which cost more to produce than the sales price.</p> <p>We've heard all this uh, stuff&nbsp;before. It was simplistic&nbsp;then and it's simplistic&nbsp;now.</p> <p>In this case concerning Prince Harry, the media, including thousands of&nbsp;print and Internet publications and television outlets,&nbsp;agreed to keep the royal&nbsp;kid's deployment secret, and managed to do so for nearly a year until one cheesy Australian magazine finally leaked the information. Not a great example to illustrate&nbsp;the&nbsp;collective media's alleged lack of patriotism and&nbsp;moral fiber.</p> <p>In fact, thousands of journalists having kept the information quiet for that long is a significant indication of the industry's sensitivity to military matters, especially those which might bring harm to troops or military objectives.</p> <p>The suggestion that the media is traitorously revealing military&nbsp;secrets is equally as absurd.</p> <p>I wonder if accusatory media critics ever consider the fact&nbsp;that&nbsp;during wartime, the military regularly and intentionally leaks disinformation and false intelligence through media outlets&nbsp;for strategic purposes?</p> <p>Does it occur to anyone that a media&nbsp;announced&nbsp;date and time of a military operation might be a counterintelligence move to confuse the enemy and thwart their plans?</p> <p>The fact is, the media has long proved&nbsp;extremely useful in military intelligence operations.</p> <p>Has anyone considered&nbsp;that the information regarding Harry's deployment may have&nbsp;been intentionally leaked by parties wishing to get the kid off the battlefield and out of harm's way before he and his buddies were needlessly killed.</p> <p>Did anyone think the about the resources needed to protect the kid and his platoon mates from targeting by terrorists eager to kill him for maximum advertising exposure and&nbsp;for a&nbsp;better seat at the side of Allah?</p> <p>Things are not always as they may appear to those unwilling or unable to think deeper inside the box as well as outside of it.</p> http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204630 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204630 <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Here we go again with&nbsp;another ill considered media bashing.</p> <p>Yeah, yeah, the stupid, selfish, rotten, traitorous&nbsp;media just wants to sell more newspapers which cost more to produce than the sales price.</p> <p>We've heard all this uh, stuff&nbsp;before. It was simplistic&nbsp;then and it's simplistic&nbsp;now.</p> <p>In this case concerning Prince Harry, the media, including thousands of&nbsp;print and Internet publications and television outlets,&nbsp;agreed to keep the royal&nbsp;kid's deployment secret, and managed to do so for nearly a year until one cheesy Australian magazine finally leaked the information. Not a great example to illustrate&nbsp;the&nbsp;collective media's alleged lack of patriotism and&nbsp;moral fiber.</p> <p>In fact, thousands of journalists having kept the information quiet for that long is a significant indication of the industry's sensitivity to military matters, especially those which might bring harm to troops or military objectives.</p> <p>The suggestion that the media is traitorously revealing military&nbsp;secrets is equally as absurd.</p> <p>I wonder if accusatory media critics ever consider the fact&nbsp;that&nbsp;during wartime, the military regularly and intentionally leaks disinformation and false intelligence through media outlets&nbsp;for strategic purposes?</p> <p>Does it occur to anyone that a media&nbsp;announced&nbsp;date and time of a military operation might be a counterintelligence move to confuse the enemy and thwart their plans?</p> <p>The fact is, the media has long proved&nbsp;extremely useful in military intelligence operations.</p> <p>Has anyone considered&nbsp;that the information regarding Harry's deployment may have&nbsp;been intentionally leaked by parties wishing to get the kid off the battlefield and out of harm's way before he and his buddies were needlessly killed.</p> <p>Did anyone think the about the resources needed to protect the kid and his platoon mates from targeting by terrorists eager to kill him for maximum advertising exposure and&nbsp;for a&nbsp;better seat at the side of Allah?</p> <p>Things are not always as they may appear to those unwilling or unable to think deeper inside the box as well as outside of it.</p> <p>Actually <b>TBL</b>, the Australian (women's) magazine published the information over a month ago, but nobody picked up on it. It wasn't until the "reporter" Matt Drudge posted the "exclusive" (can it be an exclusive if someone else already broke it?) story on his blog that people <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23398837#23398837">noticed</a>. <br /> <br /> I wouldn't go so far to say that the US withdrawl will be covered in quite that amount of detail, but if you want to see what <b>I </b>think it'll be like, you can look at either the US "pullout" from Vietnam (and random's helicopter analogy), or Russia's pullout from Afghanistan. However it happens, there <i>will </i>be shooting in the streets, but it won't be in anger.......</p> http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204643 http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/ThatBonnyLoon/22418/#c_204643 <p>Actually <b>TBL</b>, the Australian (women's) magazine published the information over a month ago, but nobody picked up on it. It wasn't until the "reporter" Matt Drudge posted the "exclusive" (can it be an exclusive if someone else already broke it?) story on his blog that people <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23398837#23398837">noticed</a>. <br /> <br /> I wouldn't go so far to say that the US withdrawl will be covered in quite that amount of detail, but if you want to see what <b>I </b>think it'll be like, you can look at either the US "pullout" from Vietnam (and random's helicopter analogy), or Russia's pullout from Afghanistan. However it happens, there <i>will </i>be shooting in the streets, but it won't be in anger.......</p>