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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 08, 2007
President George Bush is dotting the i's and crossing the t's on his primetime speech to the nation in which he will announce his plan for troop reinforcements in Iraq, or the "surge" as the policy's supporters like to call it. A leader among them is retired general Jack Keane, who repeated his uncomfortable dual role as advisor to the Commander in Chief and consultant for ABC News. ABC and NBC led with the planning for Wednesday's Iraq speech. CBS claimed an Exclusive for its lead about a US special forces air raid on a suspected al-Qaeda cell in southern Somalia.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 08, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SURGE SPEECH SET President George Bush is dotting the i's and crossing the t's on his primetime speech to the nation in which he will announce his plan for troop reinforcements in Iraq, or the "surge" as the policy's supporters like to call it. A leader among them is retired general Jack Keane, who repeated his uncomfortable dual role as advisor to the Commander in Chief and consultant for ABC News. ABC and NBC led with the planning for Wednesday's Iraq speech. CBS claimed an Exclusive for its lead about a US special forces air raid on a suspected al-Qaeda cell in southern Somalia.
CBS' Jim Axelrod used both words, calling it a "surge" and an "escalation--going against what voters said they wanted last November," citing his own network's poll that only 35% of Americans support either a maintenance of current troop levels or any increase. NBC's David Gregory was as carefully neutral as can be using the terms "additional troops" and "an increase." Either way, "2007 is going to be a violent year in Iraq."
NBC's Jim Miklaszewski predicted that Bush will designate a wider enemies' list in Baghdad: "This time US forces will enter Sadr City to take on the Mahdi Army and its 10,000 fighters." ABC's Terry McCarthy (subscription required) recalled that US troops from the Fourth Infantry Division occupied Baghdad's Dora neighborhood in August and "as soon as they left in October, handing over to Iraqis--carnage." Consultant Keane told him that the new plan has GIs staying for an entire year: "We are sleeping in the neighborhood; we are eating in the neighborhood; we are staying 24/7." McCarthy commented: "People in Dora are skeptical." A resident told him: "Only God can solve this problem."
THREE TIMES A CHARM CBS launched a series dubbed Honor & Sacrifice to provide background to the renewed deployment. Katie Couric anchored from Fort Stewart in Georgia where the USArmy's Third Infantry Division is leaving for its third rotation in Iraq. Byron Pitts recalled that for the first deployment "the mission was clear;" during the second tour in 2005 "Iraq had become a more dangerous place--IEDs the new acronym;" the third time "is back to that uncertainty stage," an infantry colonel supposed. The base at Fort Stewart features an Iraq war memorial called Warrior's Walk where each dead soldier from the division is represented by a tree. So far 317 eastern redbuds have been planted, Couric counted.
Couric also interviewed (no link) Gen Rick Lynch, the division's commander. "I think it is a good idea," said the general about the troop "surge"--but what did Couric expect him to say? "If we can create a stable situation in Baghdad, the rest of Iraq will follow," he asserted, although he initially claimed that 18 provinces were already at peace, even with Baghdad still at war. Lynch's rule of thumb is that it takes an average of nine years to be successful in defeating an insurgency, so he estimated that the job is not yet halfway done. Couric did not ask him for the average duration when an insurgency prevails.
HORN OF AFRICA David Martin broke the news of the Somalia raid from the Pentagon for CBS, a story that NBC confirmed in passing later in its newscast. The targeted cell included suspected bombers of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. They were attacked by a commando AC-130 gunship based in Djibouti. The cell members had fled Mogadishu when Somalia's capital fell to Ethiopia and had been followed by unmanned aerial drones, Martin reported. "They started getting good intelligence on their whereabouts over the weekend."
DELTA BLUES Also from Africa, ABC's Brian Ross filed an Investigates feature on the civil strife in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Ross obtained footage from Vanity Fair correspondent Sebastian Junger of the MEND guerrilla movement, protesting the depredation of the region by multinational oil companies. In an e-mail to Ross MEND threatened sabotage in retaliation. Junger reported that MEND is well armed with new machine guns. If MEND coordinates its sabotage with al-Qaeda, crude costs could spike to $100/barrel, Ross speculated.
CONNECTION CORRECTION On Friday, NBC's Brian Williams let stand the explanation by a NOAA meteorologist that this winter's unseasonable weather had no connection to global warming. Robert Bazell's In Depth follow up offered a correction that Williams called "the rest of the story." Bazell called El Nino the "immediate cause" of the warm weather. "Many experts say global warming too plays a part…scientists say many extreme weather events will result from natural causes enhanced by global warming: heatwaves, droughts, hurricanes."
NEED A PICK UP All three networks checked out the new cars at the Detroit International Automobile Show. NBC and CBS focused on the threat to Detroit from Toyota, whose new Tundra pickup truck "wowed," according to CBS' Anthony Mason. "All the highly polished chrome cannot hide the fact that Motown had another horrible year." CNBC's Philip LeBeau reported that Ford Motors' plan is to "study Toyota closely and do what it does right." ABC's Dean Reynolds (subscription required) kept his eye on the future with a survey of yet-to-be-produced concepts.
I WANT ANY TV CBS introduced its new tech correspondent Daniel Sieberg, sending him to Las Vegas for that other major trade show, for consumer electronics. Sieberg concentrated on trends in television sets: pocket sized is less herky jerky; large screens are now as big as 100 inches, for "a cool $70,000;" the two flat screen systems, LCDs and plasmas, "are both coming down in price." Sieberg looked forward to the possibility that Apple might announce a device to make computer content play on those TV screens.
MENTIONED IN PASSING The network newscasts do not assign correspondents to all of the news of the day. If Tyndall Report readers come across videostreamed reports online of stories that were mentioned only in passing, post the link in comments for us to check out
Today's lone example was the 15-year sentence for Moroccan former student Mounir el-Motassadeq in Germany for his conspiracy with Mohammed Atta in the planning of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. CBS assigned Sandra Hughes to Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to implement universal healthcare in California but her report was only brief and so it, too, went unposted online.
CBS' Jim Axelrod used both words, calling it a "surge" and an "escalation--going against what voters said they wanted last November," citing his own network's poll that only 35% of Americans support either a maintenance of current troop levels or any increase. NBC's David Gregory was as carefully neutral as can be using the terms "additional troops" and "an increase." Either way, "2007 is going to be a violent year in Iraq."
NBC's Jim Miklaszewski predicted that Bush will designate a wider enemies' list in Baghdad: "This time US forces will enter Sadr City to take on the Mahdi Army and its 10,000 fighters." ABC's Terry McCarthy (subscription required) recalled that US troops from the Fourth Infantry Division occupied Baghdad's Dora neighborhood in August and "as soon as they left in October, handing over to Iraqis--carnage." Consultant Keane told him that the new plan has GIs staying for an entire year: "We are sleeping in the neighborhood; we are eating in the neighborhood; we are staying 24/7." McCarthy commented: "People in Dora are skeptical." A resident told him: "Only God can solve this problem."
THREE TIMES A CHARM CBS launched a series dubbed Honor & Sacrifice to provide background to the renewed deployment. Katie Couric anchored from Fort Stewart in Georgia where the USArmy's Third Infantry Division is leaving for its third rotation in Iraq. Byron Pitts recalled that for the first deployment "the mission was clear;" during the second tour in 2005 "Iraq had become a more dangerous place--IEDs the new acronym;" the third time "is back to that uncertainty stage," an infantry colonel supposed. The base at Fort Stewart features an Iraq war memorial called Warrior's Walk where each dead soldier from the division is represented by a tree. So far 317 eastern redbuds have been planted, Couric counted.
Couric also interviewed (no link) Gen Rick Lynch, the division's commander. "I think it is a good idea," said the general about the troop "surge"--but what did Couric expect him to say? "If we can create a stable situation in Baghdad, the rest of Iraq will follow," he asserted, although he initially claimed that 18 provinces were already at peace, even with Baghdad still at war. Lynch's rule of thumb is that it takes an average of nine years to be successful in defeating an insurgency, so he estimated that the job is not yet halfway done. Couric did not ask him for the average duration when an insurgency prevails.
HORN OF AFRICA David Martin broke the news of the Somalia raid from the Pentagon for CBS, a story that NBC confirmed in passing later in its newscast. The targeted cell included suspected bombers of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. They were attacked by a commando AC-130 gunship based in Djibouti. The cell members had fled Mogadishu when Somalia's capital fell to Ethiopia and had been followed by unmanned aerial drones, Martin reported. "They started getting good intelligence on their whereabouts over the weekend."
DELTA BLUES Also from Africa, ABC's Brian Ross filed an Investigates feature on the civil strife in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Ross obtained footage from Vanity Fair correspondent Sebastian Junger of the MEND guerrilla movement, protesting the depredation of the region by multinational oil companies. In an e-mail to Ross MEND threatened sabotage in retaliation. Junger reported that MEND is well armed with new machine guns. If MEND coordinates its sabotage with al-Qaeda, crude costs could spike to $100/barrel, Ross speculated.
CONNECTION CORRECTION On Friday, NBC's Brian Williams let stand the explanation by a NOAA meteorologist that this winter's unseasonable weather had no connection to global warming. Robert Bazell's In Depth follow up offered a correction that Williams called "the rest of the story." Bazell called El Nino the "immediate cause" of the warm weather. "Many experts say global warming too plays a part…scientists say many extreme weather events will result from natural causes enhanced by global warming: heatwaves, droughts, hurricanes."
NEED A PICK UP All three networks checked out the new cars at the Detroit International Automobile Show. NBC and CBS focused on the threat to Detroit from Toyota, whose new Tundra pickup truck "wowed," according to CBS' Anthony Mason. "All the highly polished chrome cannot hide the fact that Motown had another horrible year." CNBC's Philip LeBeau reported that Ford Motors' plan is to "study Toyota closely and do what it does right." ABC's Dean Reynolds (subscription required) kept his eye on the future with a survey of yet-to-be-produced concepts.
I WANT ANY TV CBS introduced its new tech correspondent Daniel Sieberg, sending him to Las Vegas for that other major trade show, for consumer electronics. Sieberg concentrated on trends in television sets: pocket sized is less herky jerky; large screens are now as big as 100 inches, for "a cool $70,000;" the two flat screen systems, LCDs and plasmas, "are both coming down in price." Sieberg looked forward to the possibility that Apple might announce a device to make computer content play on those TV screens.
MENTIONED IN PASSING The network newscasts do not assign correspondents to all of the news of the day. If Tyndall Report readers come across videostreamed reports online of stories that were mentioned only in passing, post the link in comments for us to check out
Today's lone example was the 15-year sentence for Moroccan former student Mounir el-Motassadeq in Germany for his conspiracy with Mohammed Atta in the planning of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. CBS assigned Sandra Hughes to Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to implement universal healthcare in California but her report was only brief and so it, too, went unposted online.
