The shock and awe campaign of several retired Generals to force Rumslfeld’s resignation has failed.
The whole thing may have been a mistake, the result of hubris and arrogance. And whoever led this dismal failure should be fired.
A war – any war – generates obituaries. But writing an obituary column is different from reporting a war.
In his press briefing of April 21, 2006, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch laid out the difference, for anyone who cared to listen.
By J.D. Johannes
Bruce Kesler, writing in Editor & Publisher asks, “Is the Media Covering Iraq On the Cheap?”
As one who has been an embedded reporter in Iraq, I would answer in the affirmative.
Kesler writes, “Ironically, the same media that criticizes the U.S. for sending too few troops to stabilize Iraq send too few reporters to cover much more than the dramatic bombings around Baghdad.”
In his WaPo column, “Bush’s Thousand Days,” former Kennedy advisor turned liberal hagiographer, Arthur Schlesinger, argues that Bush improperly led America into a preemptive war.
Schlesinger cites Lincoln, Truman, Eisenhower and of course, JFK (How could he not cite JFK.) as Presidents who had the opportunity to use preemption but wisely chose not to.
But there is one problem with Schlesinger’s column: The Facts.
Political Breakthrough in Iraq : Al-Maliki to Head New Government
On Sunday (April 23rd), two stories …
Since the odds of your hearing anything remotely intelligent on this subject from MSM are nil, here’s a primer on the issues involved.
The Washington Post printed a long page-one story about the costs of waging the War on Terror.
We at America’s Majority prefer to think of it like this:
Up Armored Humvees straight from the factory: $150,000 each
M-4 Carbines: $1,000 each
Side arm, Shotgun, Body Armor, cool looking Ballistic Sunglasses $5,000 per grunt.
Not being a Dhimmie….priceless.
In his recent Op-Ed in the Washington Post, retired Army General John Batiste said:
“We went to war with the wrong war plan…Previous planning identified the need for up to three times the troop strength we committed to remove the regime in Iraq and set the conditions for peace there.”
There is one problem with Mr. Batiste’s statement about the previous planning: It was mathematically impossible.
Conservative commentators often complain that MSM doesn’t report the “good news” from Iraq. And that is certainly true. But military bloggers have a larger complaint: namely, MSM doesn’t report the war.
To MSM, attacks on coalition positions are news. But the stabilization of neighborhoods, cities, and whole provinces is not news. Insurgent operations are news. But coalition operations are not news, or at least are not broadcast news. Political failures in Baghdad are news. Political successes, in Baghdad or the provinces, are not. Dead MNF troops are news. Dead insurgents… who cares?
When a serviceman gets back from the front and flips on the networks, his main thought isn’t “Where’s the good news?”
It’s “Where’s the war?”
“Battle for Iraq — New Violence, more American casualties,” intoned the announcer on NBC Nightly News, Sun. April 16, 2006.
“This was an especially deadly day in Iraq,” explained host John Seigenthaler. “Word [is] tonight that 4 U.S. marines have been killed, and at least 35 Iraqis died in several different attacks.”
Richard Engel, reporting from Baghdad, elaborated the theme. “[E]ven though U.S. plans call for American troops to step back, and let Iraqi troops take the lead, U.S. casualties continue to rise.”
“So is America getting a fair picture of what’s actually happening in Iraq?” asked NBC’s David Gregory. This was the hook, the lead-in, to a televised segment in which conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham faced off against Democrat consultant James Carville on how the American press has covered the conflict in Iraq.
Ingraham, who whose talk show originated from Iraq February 5 through February 11, asserted that MSM’s monomaniacal obsession with insurgent acts limited Americans knowledge of facts on the ground.