Monday - July 20th 2009
By Louise
Hour One: "Can Doing What Seems to Be the Right Thing Turn Out to Be the Wrong Thing?" Thom debates protectionism with journalist Danny Schechter www.newsdissector.org
Hour Two: "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan" Thom talks with award winning independent journalist Dahr Jamail www.dahrjamailiraq.com
Hour Three: "The Dark Side of the Department of Justice" Harper's Contributing Editor/Attorney Scott Harper guests with Thom www.harpers.org
Guest: Fox News military analyst, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters is here and he refuses to apologize for asking the Taliban to execute the 23 year old GI they are holding prisoner
Comments
#2
Brian,
Yikes!
What a horrible interviewee!
I think this is the guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Peters
He only made it to Lt. Colonel which, in my observation, is just high enough for military guys to THINK they are military experts.
#3
Golly . . . I'm getting cranky and preachy . . .
#4
Check out this wiki entry on Ralph Peters
- - -
In a 2009 article for The Journal of International Security Affairs titled "Wishful Thinking and Indecisive Wars" [7] Peters' advocates the ruthless use of United States military power, declaring "If you cannot win clean, win dirty." Peters' also raises the controversial possibility of directing the United States military to attack journalists. Peters writes, "Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media."
- - - -
Of course, the usual caution with wikis should be considered but this guy seems like creepy dude.
#5
>> Richard Adlof July 20th, 2009, 11:02 am
>> Golly . . . I’m getting cranky and preachy . .
Actually, I thought you were very nice to the "Your boy Obama" caller.
Nicer than me!
#6
col Peters uses the same style that other right wing talkers use they try to talk down to you. just like medved does they try to show that you are angry
#7
to l grace; i regreat the remark i made but these right wing s fall in the same stle of debate. instead of exchanging thoughts they go after the person they debate
#8
OK, flame me for it ... but I sometimes like Medved. I can't explain it but I can handle his arrogance.
But this Peters guy was just plain rude.
#9
sorry Thom for making that one comment about col. peters. it won't happen again. i wrote before thinking
#10
L. Grace,
I think you were responding to my post about the caller who said "your boy" rather than to something Richard wrote. I have searched this page over and over for "your boy" in Richard's comments and can't find it.
You're right that calling a black man "boy" is a long standing put down. If the caller had said, "that boy" I would have agreed with you. But "your boy" is a common catch phrase in American culture and it just means that you're asserting some kind of relationship between two people. The fact is, that "your boy" and "my boy" are used a lot in the black community.
In my experience, boy isn't used that much in reference to black men any more. When it is, it's used directly to them as a put down or it's used as "that boy". On the other hand, the phrase "white boy" is frequently used by people on the left (Mike Malloy, for example) and often as a put down.
I can't read the caller's mind. He may very well have racist feelings. But hearing the term "your boy" in the context we heard it doesn't give me enough information to accuse the caller of being a racist.
"Your boy" has a specific cultural meaning that is without racial connotation and the caller might have used it had John Edwards been president.
#11
did col. peters see active duty. or was he always behind a desk ? did he only serve during peace time? he enlisted in1977
#12
re: Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was killed by Omar Sheikh
My initial response, which I haven't changed, was that Bhutto misspoke and David Frost (who was interviewing her) either didn't catch it or let it go as a misstatement.
Bhutto only said it once. I don't know of any reputable confirmation of the statement (some people call it a claim).
It's also possible that Bhutto believed that Omar Sheikh killed bin Laden, but then we don't know where she got her information from.
I think Bhutto probably meant to say that Omar Sheikh killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, a crime he confessed to and was convicted of in 2002. I did a little searching on the web and found that I’m not alone in saying that she probably meant to say Omar Sheikh killed Daniel Pearl. It was a well known case.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed later confessed to killing Pearl, but that was under torture. KSM confessed to almost everything including crushing my favorite cookies after he was tortured. (I do admit that I found my cookies were crushed.)
I often feel that we on the left, just like those on the right, have a tendency to jump to conclusions with very little verifying information; sometimes with none.
We also have a tendency to forget that people sometimes say something other than what they mean to say. We all do it. Sometimes we catch our misstatement and sometimes we don’t. Some right wingers love to point out that Barack Obama once said that he visited 57 states during the primaries. They ask how he can President if he doesn’t know how many states there are. Do you think he doesn’t know how many states there are? Isn’t it more likely that he misspoke rather than he doesn’t know how many states there are? If you’ve seen the clip, you see him pause after saying 50, and then he says 7 “with one more to go.” Don’t you think he meant to say 47 states with one more to go meaning the 48 contiguous states of the United States?
When we misspeak, we can understand that we made a mistake. When others misspeak, it might not even occur to us that that’s what happened, especially if the misstatement supports a line of thinking we hold. If the possibility that it was a misstatement is pointed out to us, we often reject it if we are emotionally committed to the implications the statement would have if true.
We have to try to keep our minds open. We have more than enough verifiable evidence to support the basis of our progressive views.
#13
All I can say it re: Lt. Col. Peters - I'm glad it was Thom interviewing him, and not me. My blood was boiling at the end of it.
If Peters thought he was going to win over any converts with his treatment of Mr. Hartmann, well...that would speak to the reason why Peters couldn't remove "Lt" from his precious rank.
#14
I think Thom let that idiot Peters get away with one today when he agreed that our military suicide rate was "lower than in civilian society". In fact he Army's confirmed rate of suicides in 2008 was 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers; and according to a Pentagon report released in 2007, the overall suicide rate for the United States was 13.4 per 100,000 people in 2006. And that figure was before reports of a record pace of suicides for the Army during the first 6 months of this year.
While it would be difficult to compare civilian rates with those of the military because of demographic and stress factors, interviewers should call Peters on that "lower than in civilian society" comment - it's nothing more than a Right-wing bluff.
#15
Gene (although I doubt that you'll be back to read this),
Thom is a bright guy, a very bright guy. But do you really think he has every detail and fact at his finger tips and at the tip of his tongue?
I criticize Thom all the time, but not for a slip of the tongue or a debating point missed. I try to aim my criticisms at things he says, not things I think he should have said.
P.S.: Sometimes the host has made a decision not to challenge a point for a reason we don't know. Sometimes Thom actually tells us after a segment that there was a point he thought of making and decided not to for such and such reason. Sometimes that reason is that he figures we listeners are smart enough to figure it out for ourselves. Sometimes Thom is so naive.
I see criticisms like this all the time Thom (or fill in the blank) let so-and-so get away with, or off too easy, or should have said.. blah blah blah. It's easy to be an armchair quarterback, but think of what it's like to be doing these interviews in realtime. The host wants to take the conversation one way, the guest may want to take it another direction. It can be a back and forth battle. And there's one thing that listeners who make this kind of criticism don't seem to think of since they never mention it. To the listeners, the show is only what we hear come over the airwaves. To the host, it's what comes over the air (which he/she is actively involved in creating on the go, but also many things that are going on off the air. One of the biggest things they have to be aware of is the clock. There's always a break coming. How long until the break. I want to get this point in or ask that question, the guest is trying to get his/her point in. The break is coming. At some point in the segment, the producer starts giving the host time cues, "60 seconds", "30 seconds", etc. Every long once in a while someone messes up and those time cues can be heard over the air.
It's easy to critique when you're looking from the outside and maybe never have known what it's like to be on the air live. And it's easy to point out the one or two points we think the host should have made. But can you be sure that you would have made any or all of the other points the host made had you been in that situation?
There's a character from literature of the theater, but I can't remember the name. This character would always think of the perfect response after the conversation was over. Even the best of us do it sometimes. The hosts of these shows make it look so easy because they're smart, talented and have gotten better by doing show after show after show. Throw you or I into that situation and it probably won't seem so easy.
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col ralph peters suck my peter