Who's Side Are They On?

Approximately two weeks ago, America launched its military campaign against the rogue regime of Iraq, and the American media launched its massive coverage campaign of the battles raging on the sand of the Middle East. Nearly a fortnight later, one point seems crystal clear to the TODAY editorial department: We are winning. We are right on track. Saddam¹s military is crumbling and deserting him. The few who still fight for him are forcing civilians from their homes to fight or murdering their children if they refuse. His few remaining allegiances are hiding in schools, next to water plants and in hospitals, trapped, hoping the Coalition will not drop a bomb on a designated ³civilian² site. In just 14 days the Coalition has severely cut off the fighting arm of Saddam¹s forces and forced him and his cabinet into hiding. However you might not realize this if you are watching any of the national media outlets. Our steady victory is not what many reporters would have you believe, judging by the many loaded questions and summary statements they spew every day. But make no mistake, we are winning.

U.S. forces are moving in on the capital city of Baghdad so quickly that they¹ve rivaled the speed of any army before them. Oil wells have been secured, and those on fire are being extinguished. They¹ve also recorded a miraculously low casualty count, around 50 as of press time, compared to the thousands of Iraqis who have been killed. TODAY would never wish to minimize the importance of every single life on the battlefield. Each soldier whose life is lost is a tragedy. However, this is war, and war is never pretty. Those who assumed we could finish this battle with ease were unrealistically optimistic. We¹re dealing with evil forces, men who do not regard human life as precious. Life will be lost, regardless of how much we wish it weren¹t so.

How many times in the last two weeks have you heard the term ³quagmire?² How many times was it used to compare Iraq to Vietnam? We¹d bet the number is high. This war is not the Vietnam. The only comparison is that some Iraqi troops, in an act of desperation, have employed cowardly tactics such as dressing in civilian clothes, and even this is a stretch parallel. Though you may hear otherwise, this tactic is but an annoyance to the world¹s most powerful military. We feel that using the term ³quagmire² only two weeks into a campaign in the effort to compare it to the 12 years of fighting and 500 casualties a day of Vietnam is the height of exaggeration and alarm. There is no comparison. Saddam Hussein and his forces have had 12 years to prepare and spent months laying in wait for an attack they knew was coming, and this is the best they have to offer.

To listen to some of the national media outlets, one would think that the Iraqis were amassed at our borders, so bleak is the picture they often paint. TODAY will be the first to admit, when in the news business, it can be very tempting to sensationalize. But reporters have a responsibility to bring the most accurate and even coverage we can. That standard should hold fast at the national level, but it rarely seems to these days. Some of the reports issued from network TV sound as if reporters are working for Al-Jazeera. Columnist and author Peggy Noonan, a contributing editor to the Wall Street Journal, summed up the behavior of the media in her opinion piece this week, saying, ³The anti-war left did not pick up its marbles and go home when the war began. They just went home and waited for something bad to happen that they could exploit.² In one high-profile case this week, that of Peter Arnett of MSNBC, some didn¹t even wait for something bad to happen. Arnett¹s reporting of Iraqi casualties last week, based on the propaganda of the Iraqi Ministry of Information, paled in comparison to his decision to grant an interview to Iraqi state TV and asses Coalition forces, saying Iraq ³sees me as a fellow warrior.² This is despicable. To further illuminate the liberal tendencies of the media this week, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll measured public opinion about how they felt the war was going. They reported that a mere 34 percent answered ³very well.² They neglected to mention that 51 percent thought it was going ³moderately well.² That¹s a whopping 85 percent that see the war effort, to some degree, in a favorable light.

Media representatives have been intensely questioning CENTCOMM and our President as to the length of the war, essentially asking that our leaders become crystal ball readers and pin an end date on this conflict. The Bush Administration neither predicted nor promised that the fight would be easy or quick. If you recall, that was the media making those predictions, even though USA Today would have us now believe that the Bush Administration was a victim of ³serious strategic miscalculations.² CBS¹s Leslie Stahl intoned in a segment on 60 Minutes that ³Not everything is going as expected.² As who expected? Sensational journalists, with all their vast military knowledge? We¹d like to know how Ms. Stahl presumes to know the expectations of our generals. ³War could last months, officers say,² read one headline on the Washington Post. No kidding? They seem shocked the enemy is actually firing back. President Bush said last week that this war will go on ³However long it takes to achieve our objective...It isn¹t a matter of timetable, it¹s a matter of victory.² We couldn¹t have said it better ourselves. The media seems to want to have this war both ways: bloodless but quick. This is impossible. Wars that move swiftly and wipe out the opposition with little to no resistance take many lives, including civilian lives. Wars that are restrained ‹ as this one is by its own self-imposed standards protecting civilian life with precise attacks ‹ move slower, though they are less bloody. If this conflict is moving slower than expected, it¹s because we value human life. If anything, our desire to preserve civilian life has encouraged the regime to produce more civilian corpses themselves.

No assessment of the war in Iraq can ignore the fact that Iraq¹s forces are falling apart. Saddam¹s henchmen are no doubt vicious, but they are individual men with no definable leadership and little effect on our massive military. Saddam Hussein has resorted to recruiting unwilling fathers at gunpoint threatening the lives of their children. His military has even commandeered Iraqi children, giving them weapons. He has employed human shields to guard his troops and strategic targets. His men have used civilian clothes and false surrenders to deceive, trap, and kill our brave men. Strategically, such tactics accomplish nothing. All urban warfare achieves is the fragmenting of Saddam¹s troops from a unified force into tiny pockets of resistance. The media harasses generals in press conferences about the supposedly desperate circumstances our troops find themselves in, but thankfully, our leaders calmly and repeatedly punch holes in their arguments.

It is a shame that in this day and age of instant news and blow-by-blow reports from the war front that citizens must be vigilantly skeptical of their news sources. Every piece of information must be scrutinized, questioned, and taken with a grain of salt. We¹d like to hope that the national media could put aside its loaded summary statements and biases and give it to us straight, but we won¹t hold our breath. Make no mistake, though. We are winning.

It's really very simple. The media is ideologically on the side of the Democrats, so the media wants a giant failure they can pin on GWBush. They've been trying since the day after he was sworn in - with absolutely NO success, and their frustration level is now at its peak. President Bush has outsmarted his opponents every step of the way and he keeps doing it - and the Dems and the media keep stepping in his traps.

Their coverage of this war is the climactic culmination of all their frustrations in trying futilely to knock this President down a few pegs and foil his reelection.

There is no other explanation needed.

Michael

They are on the side of the Left. The Left has, shortsightedly and unbelievably, but predictably, made common cause with the terrorists.

The war seems to have brought them all out into the open.

It's really very simple. The media is ideologically on the side of the Democrats

Like the democrats, the media really only cares for itself, it's just not as good at the internal backstabbing that the more prominent democrats are so good at.

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