I unwilling to condemn or hail either article. I bet that both have at least elements of truth to them, but that was not my point to begin with. I criticized you because you criticized one article for poor sourcing while putting forth another article with equally poor sourcing.

Anonymous sources are part of journalism today, but that doesn’t mean that articles using them are bad or good. Often they contain part of the truth but almost never the entire truth.

I never said that Alain Gresh’s article was some paragon of journalistic integrity or veracity.

I linked to it as more of: “If you believe that Guardian article, how about you try this one out…”

With that said, I still think the Gresh article is on a level of magnitude higher than the Guardian article in terms of sourcing.

I’m willing to condemn both, are you?

What people? Name them please. Soltanieh we already know about.

One report “citing” another report is not sourcing. It may be good enough for a high school term paper, but does not provide any credibility unless the primary sources for the cited work do. And that’s why your article and the Guardian article are no different in terms of their anonymous sources. Both rely on them. That you disagree with the content of one article and agree with the content of the other says a lot about your capacity for confirmation bias but says nothing about the validity of either article’s sources and therefore the validity of either article.

Never argue with a moron; they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Then of course there is the ABC News report which makes the same claim citing anonymous US and Pakistani “officials.” And then there is the Seymour Hersh article who calls is source an anonymous “government consultant.”

So where exactly, besides the honorably Ali Akbar Soltanieh are your non-anonymous sources again?

The Democrats can’t do anything meaningful to limit the war without considerable bipartisan support.

This is repeated widely, but it’s simply not true. George Bush can’t force Congress to give him a bill and he needs money to finance his strategy. Congress only needs a majority to pass a bill, and if Bush vetos it, they only need a majority to pass another bill. In short, if Bush continued vetoing bills he’d be cutting off his own funding.

The Democrats are worried they’ll be blamed if he doesn’t accept their terms, but they don’t actually need bipartisan support.

“Entropy obviously didn’t read the article,” said a senior Pentagon official.

After the 06′ election they knew that the GOP in Congress were starting to believe that the war was lost, and were hoping to pick up their support on some of these bills. But the GOP has decided to give Bush until September- so there really isn’t that much that can be done until then. Somehow as the ‘08 election nears, the GOP will have to make it look like we can’t leave no matter what.

Iran probably realizes this (unlike most in the West and US, who still cling to the notion that “Iraq” is “nation.” Iran likes working through proxy forces and it’s primary goal is not to control all of Iraq (which they realize is impossible), but to use those proxy groups to contain spillover and establish a buffer between the Sunni’s and the border. Iran my try for a proto-state in the south a la Hezbollah, but that will be a long and difficult road for them.

Chris provides the comic relief in this thread, railing against the anonymous sources in one article while touting (as he has in several threads now) a theory of US support of anti-Iranian proxies based on a host of presumably different anonymous sources. What’s good for the Goose is apparently not good for the Gander.

I’m actually quite happy with the Democrats for their actions. They raised the issue, got a huge amount of discussion going, and then in the end allowed the practical concerns of the nation to trump their ideologies.

I’m not sure what practical concerns you’re thinking of. It’s almost universally accepted that the current course of the war is going badly. There has been virtually no political progress in Iraq, the parties remain divided and the security situation remains dire.

If Congress thinks that the current strategy is doomed to failure (and both Republicans and Democrats seem to share this view), then it’s their obligation to force a change. Congress cannot claim credit while watching a disaster unfold. This isn’t Bush’s war. It’s ours.

Whether you think the current policy is a mistake or not, they’ve done nothing to change it. There will be no change on either the political or the military front. The Democrats haven’t even bought themselves a seat at the table. The president decided to ignore them and they caved in.

They are fighting each other, after all, not just the U.S.

Well, I find it possible that they could form a temporary alliance across Sectarian lines because of the extreme hatred of America. However, it definitely doesn’t seem like a good long term plan. If the succeed they loose because 500 years of disagreement can’t be solved by one common enemy. The smart thing to do would be to keep America around, and focus on using the blinding hatred it produces to try and reach some sort of religious compromise over the underlying dispute.

Speaking of compromise, I’m actually quite happy with the Democrats for their actions. They raised the issue, got a huge amount of discussion going, and then in the end allowed the practical concerns of the nation to trump their ideologies. Over the past 6 years, we have had too much ideology and not enough practicality. Changing one ideology for another doesn’t really change that equation.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-11_1_05_PEB.html

The only quote with a source is from an Iranian official.

Simply insane. That reporter should be fired immediately.

Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.

Michael, who are the sources? Where is the proof?

Stop mistaking gossip and U.S. government propaganda as “journalism.”

How about you write a post on TMV about how the U.S. is conducting its own proxy war inside of Iran?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051707G.shtml

Numerous sources confirm that the United States has intensified its aid to several armed movements with an ethnic base – Azeris, Baluchis, Arabs, Kurds: minorities that together represent about 40 percent of the Iranian population – with the objective of destabilizing the Islamic Republic. In this context, ABC television revealed in the beginning of April that the Baluchi group, Jound Al-Islam (”The soldiers of Islam”) which had just led an attack against the Guardians of the Revolution (about twenty dead) had enjoyed secret American assistance. A report by the Century Foundation (1) reveals that American commandos have been operating in the interior of Iran itself since the summer of 2004.

[B]y any reasonable metric, the Democrats have already won this debate. The problem is that this president is immune to normal political pressures.

Anonymous Liberal is being silly here.

Bush doesn’t have to feel the need to concede. Wars cost money. He’s not immune from reality. If the Congress doesn’t give him a check, he can’t fight his war. Arguing they’ve won the moral battle, but won’t actually do anything about it is absurd.

This was a huge defeat for the Democrats who will apparently vote for a bill that could just as easily have been passed by Bill Frist’s Congress.

They’ve guaranteed that instead of resolving this question, now, we’ll be having this debate all over again in September, at which point Bush will again promise to veto any restrictions the Congress tries to set. And of course, he’ll have every reason to believe that he’ll be successful.

The Democrats picked up the Republican’s rubber stamp and rendered themselves irrelevant. Life is about to get much harder for them from here on out.