{"id":3768,"date":"2003-03-31T08:41:04","date_gmt":"2003-03-31T13:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=3768"},"modified":"2003-03-31T08:41:04","modified_gmt":"2003-03-31T13:41:04","slug":"things_im_not_b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/31\/things_im_not_b.html","title":{"rendered":"Things I’m not blogging about"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot I’m not blogging about (no, really) about the Iraq War. There’s a lot of rhetoric being tossed around as fact, a lot of speculation <\/a>being tossed around as graven in stone, and a lot of bullshit that’s either horrible to contemplate or horrible to be spreading rumors about.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what the supply lines are like. Neither do you.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if the planners in the Pentagon are tearing up all their old plans, frantically improvising new plans, and cursing Rumsfeld under his breath. Neither do you.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if Iraqi civilians are being (relatively) low key toward advancing Coalition forces because they’re inwardly seething at American imperialism or inwardly terrified that some Ba’ath party functionary is going to shoot them and their children if they step out of line. Neither do you.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if there are huge fights and blame-fests going on behind closed doors at the White House. Neither do you.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if Saddam is dead or alive. Neither do you.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if this war is going to be over in a month, or in ten years. Neither do you.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot (as Andrew Sullivan <\/a>put it this morning) of “Are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.”<\/i> going on in the media, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

And, as SDB <\/a>noted over the weekend, the need of networks to justify news coverage (and get big ratings), and the need of journalists to earn their keep (and maybe get a Pullitzer Prize) means that a lot of coverage about the war — particularly “It’s all going to hell in a hand-basket”<\/i> sorts of stuff should be treated with the same grains of salt one would apply to early Presidential Primary coverage: tons of speculation, lots of “he didn’t beat the point spread, his candidacy is in serious trouble”<\/i> nattering, and not a lot of hard information.<\/p>\n

I’ve stopped rabidly watching the cable news, just for that reason. And I’ve seriously tapered back on the blog war news sites, too (like Command Post<\/a>). There’s both too much information and not enough information. Who fired that missle? Who won what battle? How many were killed? What’s the rank of the person who was captured? <\/i> There have been few of these peripheral stories that have gone without major revision or retraction over the past week-plus, and that’s a sign that leaping on any particular story here without having some feeling that the data is good, that the analysis is sound, that the bias of the reporting source (governmental or media) is taken into account, is not only of little value, it can be actually counter-productive.<\/p>\n

Yup, there’s lots I’m not blogging about. But I’d give a pretty penny (or perhaps an internal organ) to set the Wayback Machine forward <\/i>a decade or five, to see what I should <\/i>have been discussing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot I’m not blogging about (no, really) about the Iraq War. There’s a lot of rhetoric being tossed around as fact, a lot of speculation being tossed around…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":26867,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/06\/when-arguments-get-loud.html","url_meta":{"origin":3768,"position":0},"title":"When arguments get loud","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 6-Mar-12 7:25am","format":false,"excerpt":"\"We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.\" -- Thomas Mann #ddtb Embedded Link Mann, Thomas - Buddenbrooks, 8.2 (1902) [tr. Lowe-Porter (1924)]\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":136838,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/25\/fleeing-to-a-better-life.html","url_meta":{"origin":3768,"position":1},"title":"Fleeing to a better life","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 25-Jun-18 11:11pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Consider the irony. A country famously founded by a search for a better life -- freedom of conscious, economic opportunity, etc. -- has no clue why people flee here.Anti-immigration folk have focused on bogus results -- \"they're stealing our jobs [that none of us want to work in]\" and \"they're\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44018,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/31\/been-there-tossed-and-turned-that.html","url_meta":{"origin":3768,"position":2},"title":"Been there, tossed-and-turned that","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 31-Jul-14 8:23am","format":false,"excerpt":"Way too many times.(h\/t +Harold Chester)Reshared post from +Hennie Kriel View this post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/waking.jpg.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2912,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/09\/05\/sop_for_your_tl.html","url_meta":{"origin":3768,"position":3},"title":"SOP for your TLAs","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 5-Sep-02 7:09am","format":false,"excerpt":"Ever heard of the tag in HTML? Me neither....","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23578,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/09\/whod-have-thought-bachmann-was-so-progressive.html","url_meta":{"origin":3768,"position":4},"title":"Who'd have thought Bachmann was so … progressive?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 9-Nov-11 1:37pm","format":false,"excerpt":"You know, with that whole If anyone will not work, neither should he eat thing? Since there's a logical corollary that goes with that:\"Because if Bachmann was arguing that every American capable of working has a responsibility to work without also arguing that every such person has the right to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6824,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/12\/24\/sharp_eyes_all.html","url_meta":{"origin":3768,"position":5},"title":"Sharp eyes all around","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 24-Dec-04 2:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Interestingly, neither I, nor any of a number of people who were actually aware of the dates of our vacation at Walt Disney World, noticed that I had dated the...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}