The major broadcast news networks are quietly pulling out of Iraq and have stopped sending full-time correspondents to the country. The total combined minutes they spent covering Iraq also plummeted in 2008. Last I checked, we still had 130,000 troops deployed there, right?
Also, several weird news stories out of Russia and continuing reaction to the situation in Gaza.
And, there is a really shocking study out today on the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education policies. Seriously, you won't believe this. Turns out it doesn't work! Shocker!
I guess the American media has more important things to report on than, oh yeah, that war we are fighting with 130,000 troops:
Quietly, as the United States presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq.
Supposedly the news outlets will be ramping up their coverage of Afghanistan in anticipation of Obama's focus there. So, I guess we are just going to swap one "forgotten war" for another, huh?
Mike Boettcher, a Baghdad correspondent for NBC News from 2005 to 2007, said nightly news segments and embed assignments with military units occurred less frequently as the war continued.
“Americans like their wars movie length and with a happy ending,” Mr. Boettcher said. “If the war drags on and there is no happy ending, Americans start to squirm in their seats. In the case of television news, they began changing the channel when a story from Iraq appeared.”
A year ago, Mr. Boettcher left NBC after the network rejected his proposal for a “permanent embed” in Iraq and he started the project on his own. In August, he and his son Carlos, 22, started a 15-month embed assignment with American forces in Iraq. His reporting appears online at NoIgnoring.com.
Of course you would never know it by watching the evening news, but there is a lot going on in Iraq right now. Turkey has stepped up its cross-border operations into Northern Iraq over the weekend, targeting Kurdish separatists. Iraq has approved a measure that will allow certain non-U.S. foreign troops, including Britain and Australia, to remain after the UN mandate expires. One Iraqi was killed, and several more wounded, when a suicide bomber targeted an anti-Israeli protest in Mosul.
As the Times reports, the evening news spent a combined 423 minutes covering Iraq in 2008, compared to 1,888 minutes in 2007. I understand the argument that there is less violence now and our "appetite" for the war has decreased. But that doesn't excuse the media from performing its job. We can't just close our eyes and pretend that we are not still occupying Iraq with 130,000 troops.
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Have you heard about this? The latest media sensation in Russia is Igor Panarin, the dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's diplomacy academy. Panarin has been predicting since 1998 that the United States will disintegrate in 2010 and is finding his views are gaining in popularity within Russia:
For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.
In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger."
Panarin's scenario involves a civil war in the fall of 2009, followed by the disintegration of the U.S. into six pieces by June or July 2010. Yeah... I'm not really seeing it. But there is one bright spot in his scenario - Alaska would go back to Russia. Do you think Putin would keep Palin on as Governor?
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I lived in Russia for many years, so there are some aspects of that country that don't really surprise me very much. But I admit I did a double-take when I read this:
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was voted Russia's third most popular historical figure in a nationwide poll that ended on Sunday, despite the famine and purges that marked his rule.
The "Name of Russia" contest run by Rossiya state television channel over more than six months closed on Sunday night with a final vote via the Internet and mobile phones. It drew more than 50 million votes in a nation of 143 million.
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Richard Boudreaux at the Los Angeles Times believes that Israel has learned its lessons from the war in Lebanon and is not repeating the same mistakes with Hamas:
As they prepared for lightning airstrikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Israel's leaders drew sobering lessons from their stalemate against another Islamic paramilitary force, Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas.
In that setback in the summer of 2006, Israel rushed to battle without a detailed plan or realistic goals, and was handed its first failure to vanquish an Arab foe in war. Hezbollah not only withstood the 34-day offensive, but it also emerged stronger politically.
Jackson Diehl disagrees, arguing that Israel is making the same mistakes against Hamas that it did against Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, believes the Israeli military response in Gaza represents "severe violations" of international law.
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Back here in the United States, New York Magazine tries to determine what's going on inside Paterson's head as he appoints the new Senator from New York:
The governor has been plenty unpredictable in his political career. But this time it appears he’s attempting to be crazy like a fox. It’s hard to believe he would reject Kennedy after giving her the green light to run around the state. What’s clear is that he’s dragging out the decision, and throwing out alternative possibilities—even far-fetched ones, like Assemblyman Dan O’Donnell and teachers-union chief Randi Weingarten—for a pragmatic reason. “It’s raising the price for the Kennedys—figuratively, of course,” one Democratic insider says. “The longer it goes on, the more nervous Ted Kennedy and the Obama people get.” So, to seal the deal, perhaps they’ll deliver more benefits for Paterson and the state.
Meanwhile, Caroline Kennedy is continuing to get really bad reviews for that New York Times interview. Joan Walsh believes Kennedy came off as "slippery" and didn't answer the questions very well. Others are criticizing her repeated use of "you know"... which she did use 142 times in one interview. I think she just needs maybe a little media coaching?
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In other political news, the Washington Post reports that Terry McAuliffe could raise up to $80 million for the Virginia governor's race. Will this money swamp any potential primary challengers? Not necessarily, considering the fact that Jim Webb was outspent 4-1 in the primary in 2006 by Harris Miller. WaPo credits those "liberal bloggers" with helping Webb overcome Miller's cash advantage.
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Well, this is a shocker:
Teen-agers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study being released Monday.
and:
The study is the latest in a series that have raised questions about programs that focus on encouraging abstinence until marriage, including those that specifically ask students to publicly declare their intention to remain virgins. The new analysis, however, goes beyond earlier analyses by focusing on teens who had similar values about sex and other issues before they took a virginity pledge.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that teenagers are going to have sex. Some may wait until they are married, but many will not. And when they only learn that "sex is bad" and "abstinence is good" and not about condoms or safe sex, then it doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens next either. We need a common-sense sex education policy, not one driven by Republican ideology.
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What's on your mind this morning?