Study: Media Emboldens Insurgents ( IE: Kills American Troops )
U.S. News And World Report:
I’m not even going to comment, because I’ve been directly on the receiving end of these “insurgents” bombs and bullets, and have seen too many young Americans killed by them…the answer to this study’s question is all too obvious, and no study was ever required….caveats my ass…this is a topic that always leaves me in a black rage, too black to really be able to write about it…
Yet, their results show that insurgent groups are not devoid of reason and unresponsive to outside pressures and stimuli. “It shows that the various insurgent groups do respond to incentives and shows that a successful counter insurgency strategy should take that reality into account,” says one of the paper’s coauthors, Jonathan Monten, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
The paper “Is There an ‘Emboldenment’ Effect in Iraq? Evidence From the Insurgency in Iraq” concludes the following:
In the short term, there is a small but measurable cost to open public debate in the form of higher attacks against Iraqi and American targets.
In periods immediately after a spike in “antiresolve” statements in the American media, the level of insurgent attacks increases between 7 and 10 percent.
Insurgent organizations are strategic actors, meaning that whatever their motivations, religious or ideological, they will respond to incentives and disincentives.
But before partisans go wild on both sides of the aisle, here are just three of the important caveats to this study:
The city of Baghdad, for a variety of reasons, was excluded from the report. The authors contend that looking at the outside provinces, where 65 percent of insurgent attacks take place, is a better way to understand the effect they have discovered. Other population centers like Mosul, Basra, Kirkuk, and Najaf were included in the study.
The study does not take into account overall cost and benefit of public debate. Past research has shown that public debate has a positive effect on military strategy, for example, and, in the case of Iraq, might be a factor in forcing the Iraqi government to more quickly accept responsibility for internal security.
It was not possible, from the data available, to determine whether insurgent groups increased the overall number of attacks against American and Iraqi targets in the wake of public dissent and debate or simply changed the timing of those attacks. This means that insurgents may not be increasing the number of attacks after all but simply changing the days on which they attack in response to media reports.
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We have known this for a long ass time. The MSM is a shameful bunch of pigs. They have no problem with putting our men and women in harms way, anything to get their views across. They have been warned that their actions were doing just that on several occasions by people with the balls to tell the truth, they dont listen.
March 12th, 2008 at 2:46 pmthey dont listen.
—————-
They (MSM) don’t listen because THEY don’t care..
March 12th, 2008 at 2:59 pmGood to see that someone is at least doing this research. Now lets send this info to every newspaper and newsroom across this nation and let them see the results of thier actions in cold hard facts. Then we can watch them weasel their way out of the blame for these deaths.
March 12th, 2008 at 2:59 pmOnly a fool or a Democrat wouldn’t understand this. And what do you think it does to dictators around the world with people like Peloser meet with them? Or when John F’n Kerry ket with the Viet Cong?
why do leftists do this, do they hate their country that much?
March 12th, 2008 at 3:09 pmI think the left hates the troops and the country. Hard to understand
March 12th, 2008 at 3:35 pmHave you ever been confronted with something that was so damn obvious and at the same time so shocking, to the point its hard to even imagine?
Thats the feeling that i get with the lefts hatred for this country.
They vote to send this brave military of ours off to war. Then the whole time they are there they hit them with the constant barrage of false accusations and criticism. all the while saying things that sound incredibly encouraging to our enemies. The outright blatancy of it is just hard to wrap your head around. to fully understand or even begin to understand how or why they think the way they do. How they could tread on yet another generation of our finest.
Of course they hate our country. but there is no obvious answer why.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:01 pmI wasn’t even around during the Vietnam War and even I understand that it was the media’s fault we eventually “lost.” The liberal pukes in this country are exactly the type of people General Patton warned would avoid the heavy lifting and weasel their way into leadership positions and turn this country into a land of wimps. Propoganda is one of the most powerful tools in a country’s war arsenal, and that fact that we do not have the American media fighting for America has and will continue to cost us dearly.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:23 pmKurt, I just do not get it either, but I am starting to go beyond caring why and to acceptance of them as the domestic enemy.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:27 pmI wasn’t even around during the Vietnam War and even I understand that it was the media’s fault we eventually “lost.” The liberal pukes in this country are exactly the type of people General Patton warned would avoid the heavy lifting and weasel their way into leadership positions and turn this country into a land of wimps. Propoganda is one of the most powerful tools in a country’s war arsenal, and that fact that we do not have the American media fighting for America has and will continue to cost us dearly.
For those asking: Why? The answer is quite simple. We are all born as group-hug-happy liberals. As we grow older, we learn how life works. We learn that, in order to achieve great things, those things must sometimes be fought for. We also learn that we should never feel guilty for the success our hard work brings us. If you agree that “Liberalism is a mental disorder” (giving Dr. Savage credit there), then it simply follows that their brains are underdeveloped. They never learned how to strengthen their mind, so their lives are still ruled by the same emotional fits that plague little children. Who do little children blame when they don’t get their way? Their parents. Who do adult liberals view as parents? The American government. Therefore, when liberals don’t get their way, America is a big, fat meanie-head.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:40 pmSteve
I hear ya man. Im to the point of not caring either. Just when you try and break it down its so damn unbelievable. Too messed up for the right thinking mind to understand. I find this country and most of the people in it impossible to hate.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:52 pmKurt, get an image of Jack Murtha. Look carefully, after 10 minutes read your last post.
March 12th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Media bad. Media complicent in deaths of military that protect us. The media leaders i.e. NY Times have no shame. They are the domestic enemy that we pledge to fight against when we take our oath of loyality to the Constitution of The United States. 
March 12th, 2008 at 7:10 pmIn summation - media lie, troops die.
Will this report change anything? No.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:12 pmSweet vid, Kerry gets his ass handed to him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1ItPN9_79U
or try here
http://en.sevenload.com/videos/wvZla9h/Confronting-John-Kerry-about-Winter-Soldier-II
March 12th, 2008 at 8:33 pmdeathstar. that was brilliant! good find. Kerry got owned by that guy
March 12th, 2008 at 8:49 pmAnyone have a copy of the actual report/study, I’d like to have that for my perusal/records.
V/r
March 12th, 2008 at 11:42 pm‘
CL Lucas
Maj. USAF
FOB Hammer
liberals hate the country as it si. they are voting for “change” because they want to change this country from a democracy to a marxist regime, so they can have their dreamy utopia.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:55 pmSimply start “encouraging” MSM to go on patrols, strapped to the hood of a humvee. In Vietnam, the Korean marines used to strap VC/NVA
March 13th, 2008 at 4:09 am…to the front of their trucks in convoy. Don’t know how well that worked, but it definately sends a message: You’d rather fuck with the Americans, not us.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:10 am