Iraqi troops mortaring Iraqi protesters!

oh that's why you think bush won the election according to democrating principles and isn't insanly unpopular around the world. you must be getting a completely differnt set of tv channels than the rest of the planet...okay, carry on.

Doughnuts are bad for a pig's health. It makes them fat and stupid.

British source says unaware of any Basra uprising

KUWAIT, March 25 (Reuters) - British military officials said on Tuesday they had no information on any popular uprising in Iraq's second city of Basra, but added that they would do everything possible to encourage such a revolt.

"We don't know anything about a Basra uprising," said a British military source in Central Command in Qatar.

wow, that was really funny...NOT!

You too, it's becoming quite a clutter.

Goes like this:

Normal post
Zim_ignore
Zim_ignore
Zim_ignore
Normal post
Zim_ignore
Zim_ignore
Normal post
Normal post
Zim_ignore
Zim_ignore
Zim_ignore

Ah, the fog of war.


CNN

So who are we supposed to believe. Reuters reporting in Kuwait, or an ITV jounalist talking to the commanders on the spot?

I don't know. How about we just wait and see.

In addition: BBC:



20:25 GMT

Indeed:

British troops withdraw from Basra

The dateline on that article was yesterday.

Exactly.

Now I'm confused. We were talking about an event that is happening today, so why do you bring up "old" news in a way that seems to cast doubt on the current events?

BTW, the dateline on your original post was two hours before the BBC report. Things change fast in war.

My point was that you have to take all those reports with a grain of salt. Sorry if I failed to make that clear.
Propaganda is an integral part of warfare, and is been used by both sides. Conflicting reports are part of the propaganda effort - or 'fog of war' as Simey pointed out. The same facts that you see reported today will change tomorrow, etc. etc.

As for the dateline, this report is even more recent:

Coalition forces face urban warfare in Basra:

The British have three brigades to the south and west of Basra.
All three are now "regrouping" and "attempting to subdue sporadic pockets of enemy resistance" in a bid to consolidate their positions, British spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Ronnie McCourt said..

awwwwww....

I took simey's post to say that facts change fast, and you need to wait to rush to judgement...not that either side was propaganda. The "Fog of War" being a reference to ambiguity not purposeful clouding.

And just because the dateline was later, doesn't mean the info was as up-to-date. It doesn't reference the situation one way or the other. It pretty much regurgitates what your last post does. If you are trying to follow the progress of a report, you need to look at the date-line, but that is not relevent in the article you just linked.

Exactly. The term "fog of war" was coined by Von Clausewitz and refers to confusion. It has nothing to do with propaganda. I Actually, fog of war refers to the confusion suffered by a battlefield commander unable to make proper plans because of conflicting information coming from the battlefield.

The other Clausewiczian observation we should be thinking about in the next few weeks is "friction." Things in war don't go as planned and little mistakes, snags, and errors add up.

Less academically, troops like to say that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The troops themselves say that sh1t happens.

I didn't know that, I thought the term has a much broader menaing... I stand corrected then.

Still: those conflicting reports are often inflated (or diminished) as we all have observed in the last days (Basra taken, then 'regrouping', then 'secured', etc.). Or the SCUDs on Kuwait, or the WMD factory...

Point taken. First reports are almost never correct. Reports come closer to the "truth" after time.

I've also heard that Hamas, Hezbollah and other pro-Saddam terrorists have entered Iraq and begun to supplement the terror troops who have infiltrated the populace. I heard that it was going to happen, but I haven't found any hard news reports on it yet. So a lot of the anti-civilian stuff may be happening because of recruited terrorist types. Perhaps that was behind the boat incident.

I think you mean libel, and it wasn't that either.



Oh gee deekay, let me come up with something as equally clever.

It takes one to know one!


Because he did. Something you have yet to show proof otherwise.

I don't ever recall saying Bush was insanly popular.
Or I am not looking at the TV with my blinders on.

pfft. stfu.



"i know you are, but what am i" *duh*, dumbass



why don't you go ahead and prove that most americans actually DID vote for bush on election day.



no, in your case the blinders are "built in" and say "made by jesus" on them...

How old are you again deekay?
Well gee deekay, how does that prove that Bush stole the election. NO president has won the election on the popular vote. NOT ONE. Why? That isn't how it works. That also wouldn't be fair. Bush won the election just like every other president before him. Through the electoral votes. So if you are going to say Bush stole the election, so did every president before him. You are showing that you really don't know why we use the electoral voting system.

Come back when you have some proof deekay. Otherwise, all you are doing is posting verbal masturbation.