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Subject: Aiding and Abetting the Enemy: the Media in Iraq
    1/20/2005 9:21:19 AM

By LTC Tim Ryan, CO, 2/12 Cav, 1st Cav Div

All right, I've had about enough. I just read yet another distorted and grossly exaggerated story from a major news organization about the "failures" in the war in Iraq. "The most trusted name in news" and a long list of others continue to misrepresent the scale of events in Iraq. Print and video journalists are covering only a small fraction of the events in Iraq and more often than not, the events they cover are only the bad ones. Many of the journalists making public assessments about the progress of the war in Iraq are unqualified to do so, given their training and experience. The inaccurate picture they paint has distorted the world view of the daily realities in Iraq. The result is a further erosion of international public support for the United States' efforts there, and a strengthening of the insurgents' resolve and recruiting efforts while weakening our own. Through their incomplete, uninformed and unbalanced reporting, many members of the media covering the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy.

The fact is the Coalition is making steady progress in Iraq, but not without ups and downs. War is a terrible thing and terrible things happen during wars, even when you are winning. In war, as in any contest of wills with capable opponents, things do not always go as planned; the guys with the white hats don't always come out on top in each engagement. That doesn't mean you are losing. Sure, there are some high profile and very spectacular enemy attacks taking place in Iraq these days, but the great majority of what is happening in Iraq is positive. So why is it that no matter what events unfold, good or bad, the media highlight mostly the negative aspects of the event? The journalistic adage, "If it bleeds, it leads," still applies in Iraq, but why only when it's American blood?

As a recent example, the operation in Fallujah delivered an absolutely devastating blow to the insurgency. Though much smaller in scope, clearing Fallujah of insurgents arguably could equate to the Allies' breakout from the hedgerows in France during World War II. In both cases, our troops overcame a well-prepared and solidly entrenched enemy and began what could be the latter's last stand. In Fallujah, the enemy death toll has already exceeded 1,500 and still is climbing. Put one in the win column for the good guys, right? Wrong. As soon as there was nothing negative to report about Fallujah, the media shifted its focus to other parts of the country. Just yesterday, a major news agency's website lead read: "Suicide Bomber Kills Six in Baghdad" and "Seven Marines Die in Iraq Clashes." True, yes. Comprehensive, no. Did the author of this article bother to mention that Coalition troops killed 50 or so terrorists while incurring those seven losses? Of course not. Nor was there any mention about the substantial progress these offensive operations continue to achieve in defeating the insurgents. Unfortunately, this sort of incomplete reporting has become the norm for the media, whose poor job of presenting a complete picture of what is going on in Iraq borders on being criminal.

Much of the problem is about perspective, putting things in scale and balance. What if domestic news outlets continually fed American readers headlines like: "Bloody Week on U.S. Highways: Some 700 Killed," or "More Than 900 Americans Die Weekly from Obesity-Related Diseases"? Both of these headlines might be true statistically, but do they really represent accurate pictures of the situations? What if you combined all of the negatives to be found in the state of Texas and used them as an indicator of the quality of life for all Texans? Imagine the headlines: "Anti-law Enforcement Elements Spread Robbery, Rape and Murder through Texas Cities." For all intents and purposes, this statement is true for any day of any year in any state. True -- yes, accurate -- yes, but in context with the greater good taking place -- no! After a year or two of headlines like these, more than a few folks back in Texas and the rest of the U.S. probably would be ready to jump off of a building and end it all. So, imagine being an American in Iraq right now.

From where I sit in my command post at Camp Fallujah, Iraq, things are not all bad right now. In fact, they are going quite well. We are not under attack by the enemy; on the contrary, we are taking the fight to him daily and have him on the ropes. In the distance, I can hear the repeated impacts of heavy artillery and five hundred-pound bombs hitting their targets in the city. The occasional tank main gun report and the staccato rhythm of a Marine Corps LAV or Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle's 25-millimeter cannon provide the bass line for a symphony of destruction. Right now, as elements from all four services complete t

 
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professional    RE:Aiding and Abetting the Enemy: the Media in Iraq   2/10/2005 11:57:22 PM
one could agree with all this and still ask why we're spending billions to set up a radical islamic regime that will reflect Iranian politics?
 
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S-2    RE:Aiding and Abetting the Enemy: the Media in Iraq   9/17/2005 3:05:42 PM
I'm writing in reply some nine months after the original post, yet I feel moved to respond to one of the most significant posts that I've ever read. LTC Ryan, I feel your frustration with the (American) media. I've never been to Iraq, but I've served our nation as an artillery officer in the eighties and early nineties. I have undergraduate degrees in political science and history and a masters in international business management. I offer my credentials only to provide some background to my perspectives. First, let me congratulate and thank you for your post. It took much of your valuable time, was coherant, immensely thoughtful, and very welcomed. I assume (yeah, I know, assumptions make...of you and me)that your comments reflect the views of most of your peers to a great extent, as they do for me. My knowledge of insurgencies is cursory, so I hardly qualify as an expert. I've read Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China", "Ho Chi Minh on Revolution", "Street Without Joy" and "Hell In A Very Small Place-The Battle of Dien Bien Phu" by Bernard Fall. I've further read some odds and ends about the SAS in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Oman. I clearly have an interest in these issues, I suppose, that exceeds most American citizens, but perhaps no better than some of your more learned correspondents posted to Iraq. Here are my impressions of the war from afar. You say that we chose the "build cheap, but well" option. I question that premise, as I don't believe our senior leadership was really prepared for the ground realities facing them in Iraq in mid-April, 2003. Our immediate post-war actions were neither aggressive, assertive, nor clear in our intent. We did fail to impose civil order, secure military facilities and ASPs, secure the national borders, and establish the CPA as the "only voice of importance" for the indefinite future immediately in Iraq. I believe that these four failings at the NCA level led to the rise of the insurgency. I'm unsure to the extent that our senior civilian and military leaders really understood the nuances that lay behind the tribal, ethnic, and religious forces that all play into the Iraqi mosaic. As an example, something as obvious and basic as the "gun culture" that is so prevalent in arab society, would clearly pose issues to our troops establishing good order on the streets. In short, we started behind the eight-ball, and we've been racing since to catch up. Do you trust the Iraqi Army? I don't, based on the media that I've read. Remember, I grew up watching the news of our failed "Vietnamization of the ARVN army" in the sixties and early seventies. A lot of effort by good American and Vietnamese men to build an army amidst war and a corrupt, semi-feudal mandarin society/government largely disconnected from its constituency that failed in April, 1975. What's my point? You know better than I that our Army, more than anything, is an institution whose values, ethics, and skills have taken decades to develop and shape the forces which we employ today. The transformation of the Iraqi Army will absolutely take ages, and we will need to stay in a LARGE PRESENCE, for that to happen. It ain't just the "warrior ethos" etc., but the mundane facts of a modern military, i.e. supply NCOs that know and care about supplying their men, accurate maps of the nation. This is only a small part of the reality of Iraqi nation-building, but our leadership, while telling this nation that this war on terror will be long, seems unwilling to bluntly and straightforwardly tell the nation what will truly be required of the military and us, its citizens. You're at war, but were not. Oh, we've been told by the President that we are, but neither our military, nor our nation is applying all the force at hand to defeat the enemy. Hell, back here you couldn't tell that there's a war any more than during Vietnam. Actually, that's not entirely true. Were it not for the national guard and reserves bringing this war home occasionally in gruesome fashion, it would be Vietnam-like in its domestic impact, an irritant on the nightly news-ugly and frustrating to the average viewer. Oddly, that was a subtle underlying intent of the "total force" concept. Our guard and reserves would force the citizenry to truly share the burden of our conflicts. Truth is, though, much of the guard and reserve are the same underprivileged kids that would have been drafted in Vietnam. I know this as I've commanded in the guard and seen our troops up close. Meanwhile, few self-respecting college kids would dare get caught in ROTC, much less enlisting to serve. I may be wrong on this, but I suspect that ROTC is having some difficulties once more, and I KNOW recruiters are in deep kimchi. Tell me I'm wrong, but I believe that our ground forces are facing radical changes in the way we are configured to fight, and who are primary enemies of the future will be. You are a senior field-grade office
 
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