Dissector Invitation: Send in your picks for the best and worst media coverage in 2005. See below.

BLOGGERS ON PAYROLL IN IRAQ
WILL DEMS TAKE OVER SENATE?
ROXIE REBORN AT SF’S NEW COLLEGE

The Day after Christmas was a slow news day except for the 21 people who died in yet another attack in Iraq yesterday. CNN was on that case because, as usual, ‘when it bleeds it leads:’

“Violence claimed the lives of 21 people in Iraq, including a U.S. soldier, a university lecturer and a member of a provincial council, officials said Monday.”

While the military conflict continues, the information war is also heating up reports the Washington Post:

“Bloggers, Money Now Weapons in Information War” U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage”

”BAGHDAD — Retired soldier Bill Roggio was a computer technician living in New Jersey less than two months ago when a Marine officer half a world away made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“Frustrated by the coverage they were receiving from the news media, the Marines invited Roggio, 35, who writes a popular Web log about the military called “The Fourth Rail” , to come cover the war from the front lines.

http://www.billroggio.com

“He raised more than $30,000 from his online readers to pay for airfare, technical equipment and body armor. A few weeks later, he was posting dispatches from a remote outpost in western Anbar province, a hotbed of Iraq’s insurgency….

…”I am convinced that information operations from both sides are increasing and intensifying. I think both sides are beginning to understand that this struggle will be waged in both the kinetic and informational realms, but that the latter is the decisive area of operations,” wrote Daniel Kuehl, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington who specializes in information operations. “The insurgents target several audiences, including the Islamic world and the American populace.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/25/AR2005122500659.html

ON THE HOMEFRONT: BUSH TRYING TO INFLUENCE EDITORS

Howard Kurtz of the Post reports:

” President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.

“The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration’s anti-terror tactics.

“Leonard Downie Jr., The Post’s executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest’s Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.

“But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.

Is this bizarre or what? Newspapers will not confirm meetings to their own reporters.

IRAQIS WANT US OUT

Iraqis want US out as soon as possible: US commander

The top US military commander admitted Sunday that Iraqis wanted US and other foreign troops to leave the country “as soon as possible,” and said US troop levels in Iraq were now being re-assessed on a monthly basis.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11379.htm

A POLITICAL VICTORY

Iraqi politics remain a contested battleground too with Sunnis protesting election corruption., Some 90 Sunni candidates have been banished from Politics because of alleged links with the old regime while in Afghanistan has prominent war lords and human rights abusers in its parliament. Kim Peterson writes about that:

”Where is the victory in Afghanistan? The Taliban have been driven from powerand Osama bin Laden and his warriors are in hiding. But Afghanistan remains in turmoil. Has the major US objective been met? The major objective in Afghanistan was to draw Afghanistan into the US orbit for geostrategic military and commercial purposes; among the latter is the laying of pipelines through Afghanistan to the Arabian Gulf. There is no way that under the present circumstances pipelines will be laid down anytime soon.

“The main objective in Iraq is controlling the abundant oil reserves. This has obviously not been attained. So the US has progressed from Korea Syndrome to Vietnam Syndrome to the current Iraq Syndrome…… There is no US victory to be gained from the invasion and occupation of Iraq….”

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec05/Petersen1225.htm

THE WALKING WOUNDED

From Today’s Washington Post:

” The spiraling cost of post-traumatic stress disorder among war veterans has triggered a politically charged debate and ignited fears that the government is trying to limit expensive benefits for emotionally scarred troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/26/AR2005122600792.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

IF LOTT RETIRES, WILL DEMS TAKE THE SENATE?

NationalLedger.com carries a report by Rovert Novak: “Will a Trent Lott Retirement Hand Senate to Dems?

WASHINGTON — Trent Lott within the next week plans to decide between seeking a fourth term in the U.S. Senate from Mississippi or retiring from public life.

That could determine whether Republicans keep control of the Senate in next year’s elections. For the longer range, Lott’s retirement and replacement could signal that Southern political realignment has peaked and now is receding.”

BBC: PINOCHET FIT TO STAND TRIAL

”Chile’s top court has ruled that former military ruler Gen Augusto Pinochet is fit to stand trial over the 1975 disappearance of political opponents.

The supreme court rejected an appeal that the 90-year-old should not be sent for trial because of poor health.

ISRAEL: JUST CONFIRMED– SHARON HAS A HEART

BBC reports: “Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is to undergo a procedure to close a small hole which doctors found in his heart after he had a minor stroke.”

INTEL INSIDE

NY Times: High-Tech Industry in Israel Goes From Bust to Boom

”KIRYAT GAT, Israel, Dec. 19 - Israel’s high-tech sector is having its best year since the dot-com implosion in 2000, and the evidence includes this working-class town, where bulldozers are rapidly clearing acres of land for a huge, state-of-the-art chip-making plant.

“The Intel Corporation, the world’s largest chip maker, announced this month that it would invest $3.5 billion to build a new plant, adjacent to an existing one that makes Pentium 4 chips, at an industrial park in this town in southern Israel, which has long struggled economically despite the money poured into it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/business/worldbusiness/26boom.html

CHINA: (Epoch Times) Chinese Communist Party Tries to Frame Attorney Gao Zhicheng with Money and Sex

”Gao Zhisheng, a high-profile human and civil rights lawyer who recently urged Chinese leaders to end their persecution of Falun Gong, officially declares his resignation from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

(Verna Yu/AFP) reports: Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities been harassing and threatening renowned Beijing human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng ever since he started defending Falun Gong practitioners in 2004. Gao stood up to the pressure from the CCP and sent three open letters on behalf of Falun Gong to the CCP’s highest authorities in December 2004 and in October and December 2005.

“In his investigative reports, Gao brought to light the severe and tragic persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. In response, the CCP escalated its suppression and forced Gao to close his law office in November 2005. This act aroused international concern, and Gao’s story has appeared in news media around the world.”

Conservervatives Claim: “Bush-Bashing Black Charity Sits on Katrina Cash

(CNSNews.com) -The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which slammed the Bush administration for its allegedly slow and racially insensitive response to Hurricane Katrina, has yet to spend any of the estimated $400,000 that it raised for the victims of the Aug. 29 storm.

Is this true?