Mar 25 2006
Iraq Is Vietnam – Damn it!
RCP was discussing the unbalanced media coverage in Iraq and the fact they may be finally getting a clue. In that post there was a link to a CNN segment from the Situation Room between Wolf Blitzer and Howard Kurtz. While there was some glimmer of realization here and there, Kurtz feels Vietnam is just around the corner (as the media has been predicting for three long years now):
KURTZ: …But I’ve look very carefully in recent weeks from the time of those mosque bombings through the third year anniversary stories of the U.S.-led invasion, and the tone of a whole lot of this coverage has been negative, has been downbeat, has been pessimistic, in part that’s because a lot of the news out of Iraq has not been good. But I think we may be reaching kind of a tipping point here that we saw in Vietnam where the press coverage seems to tilt against this war effort.
BLITZER: So you’ve seen a change in recent weeks? Is that what you’re saying?
Oh please. The antiquated media has been seeing the ghost of Vietnam since before the invasion! Are these clowns serious? There are a quarter of a million hits on Yahoo for the terms ‘Iraq’ and ‘Vietnam’ together. Is Kurtz claiming this connection is just coming out now? Did he miss this from August of 2005?:
A leading Republican senator said Sunday the war in Iraq is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago.Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, reaffirmed his position that the United States needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq.
Hagle has the honor of calling for surrender before Murtha! Or how about this from December 2004:
But a comparative analysis of U.S. casualty statistics from Iraq tells a different story. After factoring in medical, doctrinal, and technological improvements, infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966—and in some cases more lethal. Even discrete engagements, such as the battle of Hue City in 1968 and the battles for Fallujah in 2004, tell a similar tale: Today’s grunts are patrolling a battlefield every bit as deadly as the crucible their fathers faced in Southeast Asia.
Difference is in Iraq we have won in 16 of 18 provinces and trying to stabilize the last two. Maybe Kurtz missed this from November 2003:
Iraq isn’t Vietnam, not yet at least. But as criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war there intensifies, a number of prominent Vietnam War veterans say they are frequently reminded of the way the White House fumbled away public support for the only major war the United States ever lost.
Many who served in Vietnam — including members of Congress, former Pentagon officials and a small but influential group of retired generals — have begun to say what those now in uniform cannot: The Bush administration, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in particular, have not leveled with the public about the difficulty of winning in Iraq.
That was a few short months in, illustrating it was the media and left who had no concept of what it would take to turn Iraq around. After 30 years of despotism and brutality, these idiots where thinking we should be able to do it in under 12 months or run for the hills in surrender. Is that all there is? Of course not!
Common Dreams 4/04 (threw this in for laughs)
And it goes on, and on, and on,….
Is it any wonder the left can never solve any serious problems in this world? They have no ability to do anything that cannot be done with a miracle!
People complain Bush is too success oriented – to optimistic. The problem with his detractors is they are too miracle oriented. They won’t do anything unless they can pull off a miracle, which they seem to believe they can do all the time, without pause.
Kurtz is just not all that bright if he cannot recall the three years of obsessive ranting from the media on the pending second-coming of Vietnam. Geez.
This has been said since the beginning of the conflict. I got 29.4 million hits when I yahooed “Iraq” and “Vietnam”. This point has been addressed by numerous blogger and the MSM at seemingly to no end.
The point of this I think has something to do with “Moral Politics” and “frames”. The analogy (frame) is Iraq=Vietnam. Therefore, the frame has to be built with four sides: immoral, illegal, irresponsible, incomprehensible. This, I believe, is the script agreed upon by the “Shadow Party”. The script has two parts “Iraq=Vietnam” and “Bush=Nixon”. This is the script that will be the basis for the 2006 elections.
If the US were to move soliders out of theater (regardless of the situation on the ground) the opposition can claim victory and spoon-feed a steady picture of US defeat, quagmire, and civil war. The change I would look for is in level of coverage, not the tone.
RichatUF
CONTEMPT OF TRUTH
Written by Jack Kelly
Friday, 24 March 2006
My friend Bill Roggio, an Army veteran and Web logger who was embedded with U.S. Marines in Iraq last fall, was a guest this week on a segment of the CNN show “On the Story.” The topic was news coverage from Iraq.
“Give me a show of hands if you have confidence in the news coming out of Iraq,” Mr. Velshi asked the studio audience. “It looks like about 30 percent of you.”
“Let’s see a show of hands of those of you who don’t have confidence like (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld says,” he asked. “That looks like 90 percent of you.”
Mr. Roggio responded by giving the media a D+. “Reporting often is inaccurate, usually lacks context, often aids al Qaeda, and is why Americans like those in the audience have been so misinformed.”
further in the article:
The latest example, he cited, has been the coverage of a U.S.-Iraqi operation which began March 23 with an air assault.
Typical ignorance was exhibited by UPI correspondent Sana Abdallah, who writes: “Operation Swarmer, a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive around the northern Iraqi city of Samarra went into its fourth day Sunday (3/26) with very little to verify why it has been described as the largest assault operation since the American-led invasion of Iraq three years ago.”
Or Time Magazine: “Contrary to what many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of air power since the start of the war,”.
Or a journalist asking Roggio’s friend, paratrooper W. Thomas Smith: “Why are we launching a massive bombing campaign in Iraq?”
The dimwits have confused an air assault (where infantry is moved by helicopter into contested territory to conduct an operation) with an air strike (where fighter-bombers blow up something) or a ground assault.
“Events are immediately placed into a political context. Commentary is often mixed in with reporting. There is little understanding of operational intent or how the military even works. Operations are viewed as individual events, and not placed in a greater context. Failure and faulty assumptions are the baselines for coverage and analysis. Success is arbitrarily determined by a reporter or editor’s biases. The actions of the U.S. and Iraqi military are viewed with suspicion and even contempt.”
and this statement says it all:
CNN correspondent Abbi Tatton implied that because Bill is a former soldier, his view is biased. “Are you not too close to this to be objective yourself?” she asked.
Consider the implications of this attitude. Would a reporter who is a lawyer (such as Fox News’ Megyn Kendall) be considered biased in covering the courts simply because she actually knows something about the law? Would a reporter who is a doctor (such as CNN’s Sanjay Gupta) be considered biased simply because he actually knows something about medicine?
Yet news organizations consider it proper to have our wars covered by people who are unclear about from which end of the rifle the bullet comes.
SBD