I'm pretty sure that my aunt is going to stop including me in her mass emails. She sometimes has trouble typing (no thanks to bad MS days), so most emails are some kind of forwarded warning, interesting news blip or shared accomplishment (e.g., "Daniel got a 100 on his science test!").
And she fell out of the habit of confirming the warnings/news bits on snopes or hoax finder.
I don't like to see crap info or fear perpetuated, so I always check out whatever appears to be bogus . . . and 9 times out of 10 I have to do a Reply All and let everyone know it's bogus to do my part in putting a stop to it. That's always embarrassing, though, when someone comes back at you with a "you sent out crap info"--I was the perpetuator twice and that was enough for me--and here I am calling out my aunt. Okay, I'm NOT acting against my aunt, I know that, I'm just against whatever false information is being circulated but I feel a little crummy about it all the same since most of them come from her with good intentions in mind.
Today she sent 'round a news blip that seemed a little too biased for news and I did my usual research to confirm that this questionable article was 100% true--and it didn't hold up. And I feel like I'm the bad guy. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's just going to stop emailing me all together. . .
If you're curious, here's the text from the forwarded email in blue (my Reply All is below in red text):
Subject: Shocking Good News
Ready for a shock? Below is an article from the London Times about our military. Interesting, it is! Our media coverage is shameful!
Winning Isn't News By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.
London's Sunday Times called it 'the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.' A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.
The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.
We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.
Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there. Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.
Sunday Times (London) reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.
Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved 'satisfactory' progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks 'a big change for the better from a year ago.' Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates, which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad, an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.
But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, 'the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks 'that signaled political progress.'
The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.
Copyright 2008 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.
Addendum: The reason you haven't seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple--journalism is 'dead' in this country. They are controlled by Liberal Democrats who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful Republican initiated response to 9/11.
Okay, I'm NOT going to give you a hard time about this because you DID look on snopes to make sure this wasn't an email hoax and that's awesome. . . but I'm pretty sure this is a bit of opinion fluff that's being circulated as news--the way it's written openly smacks of propaganda (but skilled propaganda! There're just enough vague truths to it to make the rest believable if one is willing to believe it all--it's how the best cons are perpetrated, and no, I'm not going to tell you what cons I've pulled off, so don't ask). I found it suspicious that the writer leaned so heavily on what sounded like a news-media conspiracy theory against the republican party, so I did a search to see if I could find better information (after all, you'd think the republican party would be more inclined to push this information out to the general public to help sway the vote in their party's favor for reelections this past year). And you know how I like to question EVERYTHING . . . .
NOBODY has anything on this article except a couple of republican conservative chat rooms that mention it, and outside these the article doesn't seem to exist, even on Investor's Business Daily's website archives (which revolve around stock trends and market analysis and I couldn't find a single article like this on the subject of politics), or on the London Times website/archives. I find it unbelievable that NO reputable world media source has picked up on this--clearly the "liberal democrats" are not only in control of the American news media, but also the majority of world. Wow!
I believe someone's found an op/ed (opinion/editorial) and sent it 'round as if it was news . . . the tip offs on that being how "al-Quaida" is spelled in this supposed news article, when both IBD and the London Times spell it "al-Quaeda," and the mention of Fox news (a media source that has garnered a reputation for biased and embellished news reporting) as well as "parts of the foreign press" that 10 minutes of internet searching didn't reveal a single possible source (and you know how strong my google-force is). My guess is the "foreign press" mentioned are esteemed news sources like the Weekly World News (they had a great article on the Bat Boy this week! http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/mutants/bat-boy-rides-new-years-ball/).
:)
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