The War and the Media

Those in the MSM (main-stream-media) really should all hang their heads in shame. It certainly appears that they at least want the USA to lose, if they are not actively rooting for the terrorists. This is bad for two reasons. For one, it will tend to drive down morale at home. By showing endlessly the carbombings, which constitute an incredibly small portion of Iraq, gives the impression that the entire country is daily sujected to terrorist attacks. This is quite simply false. The majority of the country is quiet, and these attacks would be but a blip in the radar but for the attention they are paid, far out of proportion to any actual effect. It all paints a picture that is quite simply false. Then too, the endless bombardment of stories about Abu Ghraib and the non-torture there. If not for new alternative media, such as talk radio and the internet, this war would have been lost long ago. The media is actively against the war, against democracy, against anything that Bush thinks is good, which would all apparently make them pro-Saddam and pro-totalitarianism. Is that really how they want to be percieved?

It also does something more sinister. It encourages the terrorists to further deeds. The constant showing of the bombings, while probably inconsequential in actuality, prods them to continue it, because they are not stupid, they know that such bombardment by the media will lead to demoralization, and so the constant attention keeps them at it. Of course, it is not the only factor, and it would not dissapear overnight, but it is a sad thing that people must go to the internet and Chrenkoff for good news, of which there is much. And then much is made of the supposed 25,000 civilian dead, with no context inserted or no mention of the 300,000 in Saddam's mass graves.

It also incites many of the terrorists to action, and actually gets good people killed. It's bombardment of Abu Ghraib stories, and its assertions of koran flushing at Gitmo, which were false and based on flimsy sources in the first place, all result in innocent deaths, which were quite visible in the Koran story. And after that story what do they do? They flock to Newsweek's defense. "Maybe this instance is false but this is essentially accurate" goes the reply. This again: False but accurate. This is the kind of "reporting" that is getting our boys killed and making the war harder to win. The war is winnable, all that is needed is to wait it out. After all, there can only be so many suicide bombers. But it still makes one think: Do they want us to win? And the answer is, sadly, no.