Posted on 09/23/2003 10:14:13 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Journalists are giving a slanted and unduly negative account of events in Iraq, a bipartisan congressional group that has just returned from a three-day House Armed Services Committee visit to assess stabilization efforts and the condition of U.S. troops said.
Lawmakers charged that reporters rarely stray from Baghdad and have a police-blotter mindset that results in terror attacks, deaths and injuries displacing accounts of progress in other areas.
Comparisons with Vietnam were farfetched, members said.
Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the committee's ranking member, said, The media stresses the wounds, the injuries, and the deaths, as they should, but for instance in Northern Iraq, Gen. [Dave] Petraeus has 3,100 projects from soccer fields to schools to refineries all good stuff and that isn't being reported.
Skelton and other Democrats on the trip said they plan to reach out to all members of their caucus and explain what they observed.
The seven member congressional delegation (Codel) was briefed by U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer; Maj. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, overall commander of military forces in Iraq; and Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division.
The lawmakers said they worry that the overall negative tone of American press outlets reports did not do justice to the progress being made by an occupying force reconstructing a country after years of neglect and in the face of remaining hostile elements that profited under the old regime.
Skelton also trained his sights on the administration for its postwar policy. Joined by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at a Democratic press conference, Skelton said, Failure is not an option.
He warned that should the reconstruction effort fail, Iraq would become a snake pit, a haven for terrorists.
Skelton also demanded that the administration's supplemental spending request receive hearings in his authorizing committee as well as in the Appropriations Committee.
But Skelton tempered his dire warnings with anecdotal evidence that progress is being made on the ground. He said he was impressed with the flexibility and innovative spirit of the American forces, as they shift their strategy from defeating the Baathist regime to earning the trust of the population.
It is precisely that innovative spirit, Skelton said, that gives him hope that Iraq will be stabilized. Foreign troops would not have that kind of improvisation, Skelton said.
Another member of the delegation, Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), agreed that the stabilization effort is making headway. In fairness, the war is neither going as well as the administration says it's going or as badly as the media says it is going, Taylor said.
Republicans were left out of the press conference, but they stressed that they shared their Democratic counterparts assessments about the bravery of the troops and the innovative programs, especially in the northern part of the country.
Democrats concurred that the delegation of Armed Services Committee members was a model of harmony and bipartisan consensus. We agreed on 99 percent of what we saw, Skelton told The Hill.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) said: We were all like-minded in our conversations, not robotic at all, but we saw the real progress that is being made, that we are not at all mired.
Wilson, once a print reporter, strongly criticized the balance of his former profession's story selection. Sure, show the bloody side, but get away from this police-blotter mindset. There's much more going on, he said.
Just on Friday, I heard a CBS radio report on the three deaths and then they had this analysis that just bordered on the hysterical, Wilson said.
Adding, CBS got it exactly wrong, the media portrayed it as an act of sophistication and a regrouping of Saddam's forces, when in fact, it's an indication of disorganization and desperation.
Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) explained that the longer he was in Iraq, the more skeptical he became of his previous assumptions.
Some of the media reports led him to believe that it was Vietnam revisited, he said. But he said there was a disconnect between the reporting and the reality.
Marshall also claimed that there now are only 27 reporters in Iraq, down from 779 at the height of the war. The reporters that are there are all huddled in a hotel. They are not getting out and reporting, he told The Hill.
He added, The good news is not being reported in the conventional press.
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), noting that the reconstruction effort includes over 6,000 projects, said, The positive nature of that is just not being reported back here.
We came away with the realization that a lot of the debate back here is really irrelevant.
Reps. John Spratt (D-S.C.) and Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) also were on the trip.
Skelton and other Democrats on the trip said they plan to reach out to all members of their caucus and explain what they observed.
If this gets on the national news, I will be surprised. This would be a slap in the face of every dumbocRAT and the 10 (and counting) dwarves. Imagine what Teddy and Hitlery will say if this is actually reported.
The ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN networks will never report anything good that is happening in Iraq.
That sounds like a pretty fair appraisal to me. And it's something that a principaled member of the opposition party might say.
However, I'm sure that once they get back, Charlie Rangel and Little Dickie and the rest of the Democommunist Caucus will start reprogramming the Dems on this little junket and have them spouting the party line in no time. Can't have the rank-and-file straying too far off the plantation, y'know.
}:-)4
The choir will pass it on. Thanks, Pan. Thanks for the post, areafiftyone.
Jim Marshall's AJC piece, while dissing the media, still parroted the DNC talking points re. Vietnam. Good to see this bi-partisan report.
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Jeez, it's not like the Republicans are in the majority in both houses of... oh, they are? And they still can't hold a press conference? Is this press bias or bullying? In the case of the former, it's business as usual. In the case of the latter, on what basis can they bully?
Anyone else sick of the wimps?
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