Scribbling Monk

The Soviet Kara-class guided missile cruiser Petropavlovsk menacing U.S., Korean and Japanese ships searching for remains of Korean Air Flight 007 in international waters off the coast of Moneron Island in September 1983.
(U.S. Navy photo by the author)


A satellite image showing construction of the tunnel entrance to the underground buildings of the Natanz uranium processing plant in Iran. (Courtesy of DigitalGlobe and GlobalSecurity.org)












One of 12 cartoons published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in October 2005 when a Danish author complained that he could find no-one to illustrate his book about Muhammad.







One of many protest signs in London after two Danish imams traveled to the Middle East with copies of the published cartoons — and several more offensive images they added to the mix — to incite a reaction.






So, what do these photos have in common? Each represents a threat to freedom. They also represent a threat that was not accurately reflected in the mainstream media even though most Americans recognized the threat.


At 7:45 a.m. Sept. 2, 1983, I called my wife from the office and asked her to pack my seabag with cold-weather gear and I’d be by to pick it up on my way to board the USS Sterrett. I couldn’t tell her when I’d be back or where I was going, though she could probably guess by the morning’s news. Korean Airlines Flight 007 had disappeared after crossing Soviet airspace the night before.

Trucks from the Naval Magazine were loading Sterrett when I arrived. Marines guarded the trucks, a sign of their unmentionable cargo and the seriousness of Sterrett’s mission.

President Ronald Reagan called the downing of a civilian aircraft a "crime against humanity [that] must never be forgotten." Six months earlier, on March 8, 1983, he correctly labeled the Soviet Union an Evil Empire.

Our mission turned from rescue to recovery, then to showing the flag. Ultimately it was the latter that was most important. The airliner had crashed between Moneron and Sakhalin islands in Soviet territorial waters. At the time Soviet aggression and the spread of communism, though very real threats through the mid-1980s, were seen by the media as something only right-wing nutjobs worried about. The reality I had witnessed from the decks of our ships and in many other encounters proved otherwise.

The U.S. task force stood fast in the Soviet’s back yard. Our ships were outnumbered and overflown daily by Soviet military aircraft. There were tense moments when violence seemed eminent but we didn’t back down.

On June 12, 1987, Reagan, standing at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin said:

There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

As news of that speech ran on CNN some fellow journalists at the paper where I worked ridiculed Reagan and expressed their belief that communism will always be with us. I dissented and received a measure of the ridicule heaped on Reagan.

Reread or listen to that speech now and hear truth born out by the passage of years. The wall did come down. Millions are now free. Communism is in decline. Reagan and the United States took a stand against tyranny and for freedom.

On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian students under orders of Ayatollah Khomeini seized the U.S. embassy in Teheran and held 52 Americans for 444 days — until the day Reagan took office. One of the ringleaders was Iran's current president.

In 2002 an Iranian dissident group revealed Iran’s progress toward attaining nuclear weapons including a vast uranium procesing plant at Natanz. Their claims and others’ call for action were muted in the press and little substantive action has been taken. Nuclear weapons in the hands of the world’s leading terror sponsor should concern everyone and should be prevented even at extreme cost.

When Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons depicting Islam’s founder there was some short-lived protest but nothing compared to the large-scale demonstrations that spread over the Muslim world in January and February. Threats were made, embassies burned, people died.


Unless the world’s citizens learn the lessons of the past and stand firm for the cause of freedom this sign will be the future.

The warning voice has been raised. History shows freedom can be won and must be preserved. It’s up to the people to listen and act.





About 2,100 years ago an inspired man had this to say about people power:

“It is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.”

Chance seems to be about a pre-teen in human equivalent years. His adult teeth are all in and he's looking more like an adult than a puppy. The funniest thing is his bark, sometimes high-pitched and sometimes surprisingly deep. He likes to bark a lot when his favorite people, that's anyone he's ever met, come in the front door.

Another of his favorite things is to chase and toss an old five quart ice cream bucket.



Such games are hard work, especially for a dog and his boy.

As new revelations like this from FrontPage come to light regarding Saddam and his affinity for weapons of mass destruction and relationship with Al Qaeda I'm sure the mainstream media will acknowledge their rush to judgement.

BWAAAHAAAAA HAAA HAA!

The preferred tactic is already tested and proven by the MSM's favorite president, Bill CLinton. Declare the "revelations" to be "old news" and keep on truckin' with some new way to slam Bush, Republicans, the military or conservatives in general.

Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda were hinted at in the 9-11 Commission report but new information further illuminates the connection.

Iraq was in contact with Dr. Muhammad al-Massari, the head of the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR). The CDLR is a known al Qaeda propaganda organ based in London. The document indicates that the IIS was seeking to “establish a nucleus of Saudi opposition in Iraq” and to “use our relationship with [al-Massari] to serve our intelligence goals.” The document also notes that Iraq was attempting to arrange a visit for the al Qaeda ideologue to Baghdad. Again, we can’t be certain what came of these contacts.

Just recently, however, al-Massari confirmed that Saddam had joined forces with al Qaeda prior to the war. Al-Massari says that Saddam established contact with the “Arab Afghans” who fled Afghanistan to northern Iraq in 2001 and that he funded their relocation to Iraq under the condition that they would not seek to undermine his regime. Upon their arrival, these al Qaeda terrorists were put in contact with Iraqi army personnel, who armed and funded them.

Obviously, this paints a very different picture of prewar Iraq than many would like to see.

Interestingly enough, the existence of this document was first reported by The New York Times in the summer of 2004, several weeks after the 9-11 Commission proclaimed that there was no operational relationship between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda. For some reason, the Times decided to sit on the document while splashing the 9-11 Commission’s conclusion on the front page.

But that conclusion is now more tenuous than ever. Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator who served as a 9/11 commissioner, told Eli Lake of The New York Sun that the document is a “very significant set of facts.” While cautioning that it does not tie Saddam to the September 11 attack, Kerrey said that the document “does tie him into a circle that meant to damage the United States.”

Hugh Hewitt nails it in this post about the mainstream media's coverage of a handful of generals calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign. Many of the reports site the few dissident generals but ignore the far larger number of flag-rank officers who stand in support of Rummy.

Why doesn't the MSM give similar credence to dissidents within its own ranks? Where are the stories about Bernard Goldberg and others who point out problems within the industry? Goldberg is one of the most prominent but there are many others in all corners of the industry pointing out the opportunities for mainstream media to correct itself. Unfortunately, when it comes to bias, most are ignored, marginalized or villified.

Just how many conservatives or military veterans work in the media? Not many by my experience. Doesn't diversity include the diversity of thought and experience too?

One particularly talented fellow I worked with left the industry over biased abortion coverage. Rather than listen to his concerns, the paper where he worked lost thousands of subscribers who saw the same bias and chose not to support it.

St. Paul Pioneer Press associate editorial page editor Mark Yost, in an editorial titled “Why they hate us,” pointed to the disconnect between media reports and direct reporting by soldiers in the field as a reason for public dissatisfaction with and disdain for the mainstream media. For his efforts Yost was pilloried by a host of newspaper notables including Clark Hoyt and Heather Allam, fellow Knight Ridder employees.

Why was Yost villified rather than engaged by the likes of Hanna Allam, Clark Hoyt and many other journalists?

By way of a tally, Yost, widely supported in his views by webloggers and other average citizens, is holding fast to his job. Our soldiers continue to make progress in Iraq, which has now held three elections. And Knight Ridder will cease to exist this summer when it's sale is finalized.

Yost spoke the truth. Military members at best ignore the mainstream media. Many actually have a deep detestation for the media. Sunday I had a long conversation with a soldier on leave from Afghanistan. He stopped paying attention to the media several deployments ago while serving at Guantanamo Bay.

A favorite theme in the media proclaims that illegal immigrants only take jobs Americans won't do. Tonight, on the way home from work, I tuned in to Jerry Doyle as he interviewed Linda Swope of Complete Employment Services Inc. in Alabama.

According to Swope, the American citizen workers, most of whom are black, were hired for $10 an hour and commuted approximately 50 miles each way. After working for a short time they were told by supervisers to leave because "Hispanic" workers had arrived and were working for lower wages.

The Washington Times also interviewed Swope for a story about U.S. citizens, many displaced or put out of work by Hurricane Katrina, who lost jobs to illegal immigrant workers.

"After Katrina, our company had 70 workers on the job the first day, but the companies decided they didn't need them anymore because the Mexicans had arrived," Mrs. Swope said. "I assure you it is not true that Americans don't want to work.

"We had been told that 270 jobs might be available, and we could have filled every one of them with men from this area, most of whom lost their jobs because of the hurricane," she said. "When we told the guys they would not be needed, they actually cried ... and we cried with them. This is a shame."

Mrs. Swope said employment agencies throughout Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi faced similar problems, when thousands of men from Mexico and several Central and South American countries -- many in crowded buses and trucks -- came into the three states after Katrina, looking for employment and willing to work for less money.

The number of foreign workers who flooded the area after the hurricane has been estimated at more than 30,000. Many of them have been identified by law-enforcement authorities and others as illegal aliens.

This is just one example according to the Washington Times.

Government estimates put at 400,000 the number of jobs lost in the Gulf region as a result of Katrina, which displaced more than 1.5 million people, and many of those workers left the area to seek employment elsewhere because available construction, laborer and cleanup jobs in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi had been filled by foreign workers, including illegal aliens.