(this is from point #12 of 13 in the section 4. The Bottom Line - Observations from Iraqi Freedom, April 2006).
12th - There is a rapidly growing animosity in our deployed military forces toward the US Media. We need to bridge this gap. Armies do not fight wars - countries fight wars. We need to continue talking to the American people through the press. They will be objective in reporting facts if we facilitate their information gathering mission. The country is way too dangerous for the media to operate in any other manner than temporaily imbedded with US or Iraqi security forces. The enormous good will already generated by the superb performances of US combat forces will ebb away if we do not continue to actively engage media at every level. We also cannot discount 2000 IED's a month, hundereds of US casualties a month, or the chaos of the central battlefield of the insurgency - which is Bagdad.
This should be a must read for Freepers. This General, even though the Liberal Media is at fault, is trying to save the situation because of the importance of the media to giving a picture to the American people.
Unfortunately, this puts added stress on our troops that already under extreme pressure by the day-to-day possible deadly encounters with IED's and the possibilities of ambush...
General Barry McCafferty is very positive on our the good developments in Iraq. Ironically, the US Media is proving to be a challenging foe to our armed forces...
The link to the entire report is found in the PDF file at:
The US Media, in a sense, is starting to be a threat to our troops in Iraq, at least that is my interpretation of what General Barry McCafferty is saying.
He states:
There is rapidly growing animosity in our deployed military forces toward the US Media.
Any ideas on how we can win the battle with the media.
If you read the report, our troops are doing an superb and have a brilliant performance in Iraq.
This is being tarnished, from what I am reading, in this report from General Barry McCafferty...
McCafferty is a PC liberal, therefore the puke media's darling.
Every other day, he's blabbing away on PBS or NBC or some other alphabet.
He also wrote at length for the New Yorker many years ago criticizing Operation Desert Storm.
Good catch from Gen McCafferty.
There is good reason for animosity toward the media. Because the American media is fearful of being in the field, they enlist the aid of local media hires to carry their water.
They get a slanted take on the war from these folks and some of them have been downright dangerous to our troops. For example, the Iraqi reporter who brought information to Time about the Haditha incident had recently been detained as a possible insurgent.
In any case, the media on the ground has been their enemy. They've had to point weapons in their direction. They have accidently struck the media in one incident that I remember.
The media back home has also been their enemy -- not carrying their story accurately, even undermining their work, and painting their sacrifice as unnecessary and unjust. They report on incidents negative toward our troops before the information is in, and they never report on the information positive toward our troops.
All around, then, the media is a danger to our troops. On the ground in Iraq or back home in the USA, they have sought to injure the soldiers in the field. No wonder they are the hated ones.
(PS: An Army "AAR" is an "After Action Report." It is the classic report that analyzes an event after one has gone through it....whether a special, training, simulated, or real operation.)