Today marks the 66th anniversary of the sinking of the major German warship Bismarck, concluding a naval engagement that extended over several days and hundreds of miles.
How might this sequence of events have been portrayed by today’s media?
Iraq
A little photoshopping, Scarecrow?
How about them pics! I was half-expecting the final image to show a group of pale, dour-faced cadets standing solemnly behind a blue/green rotting corpse, with a big “WAR IS BAD” banner displayed in the background. Or maybe I am overreacting — the faux-crossprocessed look is big these days.
The actual article isn’t bad. The cadets come across as intelligent, thoughtful and morally serious. I wish more journalists and elected officials were like that.
(via Rachel)
UPDATE: I’ve posted, below the fold, a composite image showing the original photos from the articles superposed over versions of the same photos that I spent a few minutes roughly editing in Photoshop. Even though the photos were made in different settings with different lighting, they all appear more natural after approximately the same types and amounts of color and lighting adjustments (red levels: 1.15; green levels: .85; blue levels: .90; midtone levels: 1.15-1.40). IOW, it appears that the photographer or photo editor dialed in extra blue and green, desaturated the reds and darkened the images overall. There may be another explanation but it sure looks as though the magazine was trying to make these cadets look less than bright-and-rosy. The grim facial expressions add to the negative effect and, consequently, bolster my impression that the image manipulation here was intentional.
UPDATE 2: OTOH there’s this photo from an unrelated article on a newspaper’s Web site. In this case it looks like the photographer inadvertently used the wrong white-balance setting and they ran the photo without correcting the color cast. I’m sure it’s unintentional, since the accompanying article is a favorable profile of the subject of the photo. Could a mass-circulation magazine make a similar error with images used in a feature article? Maybe, but it seems unlikely.
Kerrey’s Clarity
Bob Kerrey’s “The Left’s Iraq Muddle” gives voice to a position we are not surprised to hear from him, but have begun to fear few with a D after their names hold (always with the exception of Lieberman). Clearly prompted by much that he is heard from his own party and from cliches that he knows don’t make sense, Kerrey argues:
American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq’s middle class has fled the country in fear.
With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.
A Crisis of American Generalship
“As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”
From A failure in generalship, by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling. RTWT — this officer probably just jettisoned his career to write the truth as he saw it, so take a look at what he has to say. It is a convincing denunciation of the leadership in the current war in Iraq. Interview with Yingling, here. discussion of the article on Small Wars Council. Hat tip: Zenpundit.
IEDs, Back in the Day
Everything old is new again. Via Richard North comes this interesting discussion of innovative mine-detection and -clearing techniques used by the white Rhodesians against Mugabe’s insurgents.
See also this post and this post for an insightful and much broader discussion of British military capabilities and political/military errors in the Iraq war. (These posts are not recent but remain highly relevant.)