as seen on phillyBurbs.com
Disservice to the service and us
We cheer the made-for-TV production called "Shock and awe," forgetting the all-too-human consequence.
Days are warmer now. The large hills of snow have receded to a few grimy small mounds. Signs of life have returned.
But life reborn like the greening grass somehow holds little comfort this spring.
Half a world away Americans are once again fighting, once again dying, once again killing. All in the name of freedom.
It's a concept we take for granted back home as civilians. Disconnected from the conflict, we merely grumble at the high price at the gas pump.
We watch and cheer as CNN beams the pictures back to us of bombs dropping like some made-for-TV production called "Shock and awe," forgetting all the while, the all-too-human consequence.
Keeping America in the cozy dark about the cost of this war became the Bush administrations' preoccupation Sunday morning when al-Jazeera rebroadcast Iraqi television footage of the first American POWs in Iraqi hands.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted the graphic video - which reportedly shows some dead U.S. soldiers shot in the head along with several who were wounded and bloodied - violated the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war by exposing them to public insult.
He, the Pentagon and even Amnesty International asked the media not to rebroadcast the images and all of the major media outlets acquiesced.
I won't try to rebuke either the logic or the legality of Rumsfeld's argument here. But every fiber of my being tells me not to trust him.
Our government learned well the major lesson of Vietnam. History tells us that it was the independently filmed and nightly shown daily images of soldiers dying that - more than prostesters, more than an unclear mission - caused Americans to turn against that war.
In every conflict since, the media has been kept at bay by our own forces during the fighting. During the first Persian Gulf War, the military went so far as to limit access to just a daily press conferences for a limited "pool" of reporters, where they could dictate the progress of the war.
We were shown troop movements on maps. We were shown footage of "smart bombs" striking selected targets. We were shown images of Patriot missiles intercepting and destroying scuds
It was only years later that the media reported that the bombs had caused nearly as much "collateral" as intentional damage and that claims of the Patriots' accuracy were widely exaggerated.
Hoping to avoid a similar backlash, the Pentagon agreed to "embed" some journalists with specific troops this time around. Aside from adhering to news blackout conditions that would threaten the troops, the journalists are free to report on the war as they see fit. The idea is to get back to an Ernie Pyle, World War II-style of reporting.
In reality, I believe media consolidation, business considerations and a need to satisfy the source, have turned these reporters into cheerleaders. The mass media is now becoming a willing participant to a propaganda effort and it isn't Iraq's. Perhaps that's why Saddam Hussein kicked American journalists, specifically CNN, out of Baghdad last week after tolerating their presence for weeks.
U.S. leaders ask the media to trust them. The media wants us to trust the information it gives us is the truth.
But this is the same government that lied to the public about the secret bombings of Cambodia and Laos. The same government that traded arms with Iran to fund a war in Nicaragua in violation of Congress.
And the same government that continues to deny that veterans of the first war on Iraq were exposed to toxic chemicals or suffer from "Gulf War illness."
An independent media is supposed to separate truth from propaganda, not merely regurgitate what it's been told.
Dave Ralis' Pave The Grass column appears on Mondays. You can send him an e-mail at . To read his previous columns, click here.
