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The Real Story of Falluja
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Wall Street Journal ^ | 5/30, 5/27 | Jack Kelly, Robert Kaplan

Posted on 05/30/2004 11:35:22 AM PDT by gandalftb

What really happened in Fallujah was a great deal different from what was portrayed in the news media, said Robert Kaplan of The Atlantic Monthly, the only reporter embedded with the Marine company (Bravo, 1st Battalion of the 5th Regiment) that led the advance into the heart of the city in the pre-dawn darkness of April 6.

The Marines won the battle in the streets, only to lose it in the news accounts, Kaplan said in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal May 27.

"I was in the city for the first days of the battle. The overwhelming percentage of small arms fire -- not to mention mortars, rockets and rocket-propelled grenades -- represented indiscriminate automatic bursts from the insurgents. Marines responded with far fewer, more precise shots.

Far from being driven from Fallujah, the Marines were boxing in the insurgents against the Euphrates river at the western edge of the city when the cease fire was announced, Kaplan said.

"As disappointing as the cease fire was, the Marines managed to wrest positive consequences from it," he said.

But, he added, "none of the above matters if it is not competently explained to the American public.

Kaplan blamed the Bush administration for this failure.

And had the administration adequately explained to the public what the Marines were doing after Fallujah, there might have been less disappointment and mystification about quitting the fight there."

But if the news reports coming out of Iraq are misleading, surely some of the blame for that must rest with the news media.

(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: atlanticmonthly; deceit; embeddedreport; falluja; iraq; marines; mediabias; medialies; ohnopostedagain; robertkaplan
I too am frustrated that the Marine story is not well told. The administration treats them like the guard dog we put down in the basement when company comes over. It's like you turn the Marines loose when our diplomats fail and it's somehow a national embarassment,i.e. not pc to admit we have a killing machine that creates peace when others can't.
1 posted on 05/30/2004 11:35:23 AM PDT by gandalftb
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To: gandalftb
Kaplan blamed the Bush administration for this failure. - So the media don't report the truth (no susprise there) and it's all Bush's fault?
2 posted on 05/30/2004 11:39:00 AM PDT by Free_at_last_-2001 (is clinton in jail yet?)
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To: Free_at_last_-2001

I expect better from the administration. The rat media can't help itself. Marine PAO motto: If it bleeds it leads.


3 posted on 05/30/2004 11:42:37 AM PDT by gandalftb
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To: Free_at_last_-2001

Why is the pacification of Fallujah called a failure? The town was secured, and the other side stood down, in humiliation (MUCH worse humiliation,in my estimation, than suffered by a few captives in Abu Ghraib prison). The serious combatants for the "insurrection" either were killed, captured, or fled into hiding. This is not lost on the Iraqi Governing Council, or the Sunnis. At times, the mission of the US forces present in Fallujah was far better served by NOT going in with maximum force, indiscriminately knocking down walls and breaking things at every side. "Nuke'm" sounds just a little bit strong now. As it so happened, some well-trained, highly disciplined Marines, acting with reasoned restraint and sure knowledge of their objectives, succeeded in smoking out some of the more over-eager jihadists, and rendering them ineffectual. Sort of like capturing scorpions in a jar. You don't want the scorpion to get in a position where he may sting you, but the eventual result is the same - the scorpion winds up inside the glass jar, trapped. Or crushed in the sand.


4 posted on 05/30/2004 11:59:09 AM PDT by alloysteel (Live well and prosper. Beam me up, Scottie....)
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To: Free_at_last_-2001

I would love to see President Bush get to this level of detail in one of his speeches (is he going to give one this week) before the hand-over to the new governing authority.


5 posted on 05/30/2004 12:02:38 PM PDT by Piranha
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To: Piranha

The Bush team's inability to convey our victory's to the media is a major failing.


6 posted on 05/30/2004 12:36:01 PM PDT by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: All
"The news media doesn't want to tell us about the good side."

We were naive and trusting a generation ago. They fooled us once. Shame on them. Now the "journalists" are doing it again.

Surely there must be a better way to communicate with these clowns -- who are little more than activists employed by news media.

I've emailed them with specifics. Some even responded. Many just wrote columns citing the worst emails and painted all of us as hate mongers.

The left's new thing if you catch their lies and hate talk is, their opinions are "nuanced" and you have to be real smart to get it.

An editor at the Sacramento Bee used to dismiss our complaints as us wanting news reported the way we like it. Ditto their ombudsman at the time. They'd print our letters and keep on truckin'.

All many of us wanted was for them to stop spiking stories and stop labeling conservatives as "controversial," "divisive," and "extremist" in their news articles while putting no labels on liberals and leftists.

It's fun reading about the mainstream media's dwindling numbers of readers and viewers but that's only once or twice a year.

If we could get through to them I'd be very happy with one or the other of the following:

1) the activists would be embarrassed to claim to be "journalists" or

2) they'd stop the charade and admit that they spin their "reporting" to affect and manage public opinion.

They just want to make a difference. Okay. Fine. So does talk radio. But talk radio is honest -- in the traditional sense, not the latest "nuanced" sense.

But in truth this is not what it's about. Nothing will get through to them. It's about whose America will survive, their's or our's. It's the inner war within the big war. I suppose.

7 posted on 05/30/2004 12:42:26 PM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (Benedict Arnold was a hero for both sides in the same war, too!)
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To: Travis McGee

The message is there. In the daily press conferences and news releases, there is plenty of information concerning our positive efforts. I just don't think the DoD public affairs folks have grasped the extent of the overt effort by our media to cast everything in a negative light. Remember, these are the same folks that created the concept of the embedded reporters. They aren't without ingenuity and foresight. But anything they say that might be viewed positively is buried or twisted into some kind of negative. Their enemy is international and ranges from state sponsered media to web blogs. That's a tough nut to crack and I'm sure they're working on a solution. But when the entire world is against you, it's hard to make your voice heard.


8 posted on 05/30/2004 12:52:39 PM PDT by Rokke
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To: Thud

ping


9 posted on 05/30/2004 12:59:33 PM PDT by Dark Wing
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To: WilliamofCarmichael
"It's fun reading about the mainstream media's dwindling numbers of readers and viewers but that's only once or twice a year. "

I think that is the ultimate answer. There is a reason FoxNews has soared to number 1. There's a reason the NYT, WP, Time, Newsweak etc are finding their subscribership plummeting, while the WSJ, The Economist and even internet blogs are becoming increasingly popular. News sources that lose their credibility are losing customers, and with more sources of news out there, people who want the truth can find it.

10 posted on 05/30/2004 12:59:48 PM PDT by Rokke
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To: Free_at_last_-2001

Humidity is high today, a bit cloudy. Bush's fault.

"Day After Tomorrow" awful movie. Not only is Bush to blame for global warming, he is also to blame for shoddy Hollywood movie that use climate change as a bogus justification for yet-another-disaster movie.

Media bias and mis-reporting from Rooters, AFP, CNN, etc.? Bush's fault.

http://blamebush.typepad.com/
BlameBush! Because Bush is to Blame for Everything


11 posted on 05/30/2004 1:31:09 PM PDT by WOSG (Peace through Victory! Iraq victory, W victory, American victory!)
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To: gandalftb

Another part of the article makes it clear the MEDIA could report this more IF IT WANTED TO:

"But if the news reports coming out of Iraq are misleading, surely some of the blame for that must rest with the news media. And if some in the media are determined to ignore facts which do not fit their preferred story line, how much can "dramatic slide shows" at military briefings change this?

"I have never been anywhere else in the world where the people were so happy to see an American," said Todd (last name withheld), an airman stationed in Nasiriyah, in an e-mail. "The media never tells that side of the story."

"Almost everybody loves [the Americans]," Maj. Bob Broody, an Army reservist who spent a year in Iraq, told his hometown Rotary Club in the Philadelphia suburb of Coatesville. "The news media doesn't want to tell us about the good side." "


12 posted on 05/30/2004 1:33:58 PM PDT by WOSG (Peace through Victory! Iraq victory, W victory, American victory!)
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To: Travis McGee
The Bush team's inability to convey our victory's to the media is a major failing. a major failing by whom? - Churchill's inability to convey our victory's to the Nazi media was a major failing as well perhaps!
13 posted on 05/30/2004 4:04:59 PM PDT by Free_at_last_-2001 (is clinton in jail yet?)
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To: Free_at_last_-2001

Like it or not, the reality is that the "media war" is a critical front. Not fighting it, pretending it doesn't exist or is not important, only guarantees that we will lost that critical front.


14 posted on 05/30/2004 10:05:11 PM PDT by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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