The war on terror is being fought in an age of global, instant, communications, at least if you have a satellite phone. But many of the troops have Internet access, which is especially useful when they are in a combat zone. So you don’t have to wait for the official version of what’s going on, or for reporters on the scene to get their stories to the folks back home. The troops send email, or pick up the phone, sometimes a cell phone, and call. This has caused a lot of confusion, because the media reports of what’s happening are often at odds with what the troops are reporting. This has been particularly confusing in a year where there’s a presidential election race going on. The Democrats decided to attack the way the war on terror, and particularly the actions in Iraq, was being fought. Part of that approach involved making the situation at the front sound really, really bad. But the troops over there seemed to be reporting a different war. And when troops came home, they were amazed at what they saw in the newspapers and electronic media. Politics and reality don’t mix.
All anyone has to do in order to figure out how the War on Terror is going is ask the damn people fighting it. But the Lame-Stream Media just hasn't figured that part out. And as had already been proven, the Lame-Stream Media will even use a soldier's last words to push their anti-war, anti-freedom, anti-Bush agenda on the public.
And as history has shown, the Lame-Stream media have been rooting for America to fail for decades now.
The idea of the press reporting objectively on the war is I think another urban myth.
Two classic examples: the 1968 Tet Offensive, reported as a great defeat for the US, but which was a victory for the US and which was a devastating loss for the Viet Cong and NVA (essentially resulted in the destruction of the indigenous South Vietnamese Viet Cong).
The second example is the seige at Khe San. This was reported as a defeat for the US, with lots of comparisons to Dien Bien Phu, but the several month long seige at Khe San resulted in the destruction of several NVA divisions at the cost of several hundred US troops. By 1970, the US had defeated the NVA (the indigenous Viet Cong had long been pretty much out of the picture).
The real failure in Vietnam was not to invest in the development of a truly representative democratic government in the south and commit to protect that government from invasion from the north. Of course, then we were primarily interested in fighting communism instead of developing democracy and self determination. In Iraq, I think we have learned to foster self determination, local style.
Well stated, from someone who was there.