A Washington Post Travesty

Wholly one sided on the facts and positing highly dubious opinion, the lead "news" article in today's Washington Post is blatant propoganda in support of those who desire a retreat from Iraq. At the end of this post are e-mail addresses and phone numbers. The Washington Post and our elected representatives need to hear about this. They need to hear us screaming bloody murder.

Today's lead article in the Washington Post is "April Toll Is Highest Of '07 for U.S. Troops" by Sudarsan Raghavan and Karin Brulliard. The first part of the article is nothing more then a gruesome itemization of U.S. and Iraqi casualties. Absent from the article or any related stories is a mention of even a single positive accomplishment by coalition forces during the month of April. It is not balanced news from Iraq; rather, it is a macabre requiem. The second part of the article, wholly unrelated to article's thesis, is a message that Iraq is emeshed in a civil war and our soldiers are dying needlessly. And wait until you see just how disingenuous the Washington Post is in providing us with that opinion.

The article begins with:

The deaths of more than 100 American troops in April made it the deadliest month so far this year for U.S. forces in Iraq, underscoring the growing exposure of Americans as thousands of reinforcements arrive for an 11-week-old offensive to tame sectarian violence.

More than 60 Iraqis also were killed or found dead across Iraq on Monday. . . .

Attacks killed a total of nine U.S. troops over the weekend, including five whose deaths were announced Monday. . . .

Under the new counterinsurgency plan, many U.S. forces have left large, more secure bases to live in small combat outposts and to patrol hostile neighborhoods where the risk of insurgents targeting them has multiplied.

Highlighting the vulnerability of American forces, a series of explosions Monday night rocked Baghdad's Green Zone, . . .

. . . Local Iraqi television stations reported 10 explosions inside the zone. There were no immediate reports of casualties, Garver said.

In eastern Baghdad on Sunday, a roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter who were on patrol, . . .

Before the deaths announced Monday, 99 U.S. soldiers had been killed during April, according to iCasualties.org, . . .

With 11 combat deaths, April also was the deadliest month for British troops in Iraq since the beginning of the war, . . .

The deaths came as the largest bloc of Sunnis in Iraq's parliament, the Iraqi Accordance Front, threatened to pull out its ministers from the cabinet, saying that it "had lost hope" in having Sunni concerns addressed by the Shiite-led government. . . .

In the province of Diyala, where scores of fighters have fled to escape the Baghdad security offensive, a car bomb exploded near a funeral tent in the town of Khalis, . . .

The strike came four days after a suicide attacker detonated a car packed with bombs at a checkpoint in the town, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing 10 Iraqi soldiers.

Near the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, a car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint, . . .

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in the al-Jihad neighborhood, killing four and wounding another seven, . . .

Meanwhile, police found 13 corpses -- all blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in the head -- in different parts of the capital. . . .

Let's stop here for a moment and review just a few of the other news items coming out of Iraq in the past week. These are the ones that for some reason receive no mention in the Washington Post lead article, nor do they appear in related articles:

April 21 - Operation Commando Dive in the Shubayshen area, just south of Baghdad, led to the detentions of almost 50 detainees and a number of cache finds.

April 22 - U.S. and Iraqi forces raid a Mahmudiyah apartment complex, detaining eight suspected extremists and discovering three caches of Iranian explosives and arms.

April 22 - Coalition Forces in raids near Fallujah killed one terrorist, detained 19 others, and found large amounts of chemicals used to make IEDs, several weapons and bomb-making accessories, including more than 50 pressure plates and a suicide vest.

April 23 - Coalition Forces detained 19 suspected terrorists associated with facilitating foreign fighters, working with al-Qaeda in Iraq and operating a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device network Monday.

April 24 - Iraqi Security Forces and Multi-National Division – Baghdad troops uncovered a weapons cache at the Al Nur Mosque in Baghdad’s Jihadneighborhood April 23 thanks to a tip from local residents.

April 24 - Coalition Forces detained 10 suspected terrorists and uncovered a cache of weapons in several operations in central Iraq Tuesday.

April 24 - Coalition Forces provide supplies and equipment to Iraqi Pediatric Hospital.

April 25 - Coalition Forces detained six supected terrorists in multiple raids targeting senior al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders and a group that provides foreign fighters to the al Qaeda.

April 26 - Coalition Forces killed three terrorists during an operation in Sadr City targeting a network that trains terrorists for operations in Iraq.

April 27 - Iraqi SOF and US advisors captured 7 terrrorists and destroyed two vehicles rigged with explosives.

April 28 - In Tikrit, local citizens in led Iraqi Army, police and Coalition Forces to more than 20 caches and assisted in capturing five suspected terrorists and engagements that left approximately 25 anti-Iraq forces dead. The security forces also discovered and cleared more than 20 IEDs emplaced throughout the neighborhood.

April 28 - Coalition Forces captured 17 suspected terrorists during a series of overnight raids targeting al-Qaeda in Iraq Saturday. Included in the capture was an intelligence officer for al-Qaeda in Iraq and a group responsible for murders, kidnappings, the manufacture of improvised explosive devices.

April 28 - Coalition forces interdicted an al Qaeda attack on a girls school south of Baghdad.

April 29 - Coalition Forces captured 72 suspected terrorists and discovered bomb-making materials during a constellation of overnight raids targeting the al-Qaeda in Iraq network.

April 30 - Iraqi Special Operations Forces have launched a raid aimed at the capture of a key individual linked to alleged death squad activity and attacks against coalition forces in Basrah

April 30 - Coalition forces discovered two improvised explosive devices and a weapons cache southwest of Baghdad today.

The above is just some of the hard news coming out of Iraq over about the last week. Would it be responsible for a news organization to include this information along with the roll call of al Qaeda attacks and U.S. deaths? Or if not with it, then in related articles? It would be not only be responsible, but incumbent, actually. And the utter failure to do so makes this Washington Post hit piece not but propoganda of the worst sort.

Please note that the majority of articles linked above concern raids and fights involving al Qaeda in Iraq and some involving Iranian backed forces. If the majority of our efforts are targeting al Qaeda and Iranian trained and supplied Shia death squads, we are by definition not involving ourselves in a civil war. It would almost appear to the untrained eye that that we are primarilly fighting radical Islamists - the same folks who killed hundreds of Americans before 9-11 in the case of Iran, and who killed thousands of Americans on 9-11, in the case of al Qaeda.

But you will find no such analysis in the Washington Post's lead story. There is no mention of the vast decrease in sectarian violence, nor the primary targets of our most recent combat actions in Iraq. Instead, the Washington Post gives us this gem of ethically challenged reporting:

On Monday, U.S. troops at Camp Victory, a sprawling base near Baghdad International Airport, reflected on April's deadly toll on their comrades.

Sitting at a picnic table outside a recreation center, four soldiers smoked Marlboros under a starry sky. Part of the Headquarters Headquarters Support Company for the 3rd Infantry Division out of Fort Stewart, Ga., they had arrived last month. They were on the base, just "sweeping parking lots and waiting for a sandstorm," as Pfc. Richard Gonzalez, 22, put it.

Still, they said, frequent news of troop deaths made even their mission more frightening.

"It makes me feel depressed to be in Iraq right now," said Gonzalez, who is on his second deployment. "It's a whole lot different than last time."

Now, he said, soldiers at the base must carry weapons. Return addresses on letters from home must be ripped off and burned, so as not to fall into the wrong hands. On his first deployment, eight months passed before his Baghdad base was hit by mortar fire. This time, he said, it seems the Camp Victory intercom announces incoming fire every day.

"There's a whole lot more activity," said Spec. Krystal Fowler, 21, of Hampton, Va. She said it "kind of bothers" her to know other troops are taking hits in the field and she can't help.

Spec. Natisha Jetter, 23, of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands, agreed.

"Our fellow soldiers are out there dying, and we're here not doing our job," Jetter said.

Gonzalez said the deaths made him realize that "there's a war going on out there."

Fowler sighed. It's a war between Iraqis, she said.

"We are just interfering, and letting our soldiers die." . . .

Can you believe this tripe? This is a reporter in the green zone fishing for a quote from anybody that will put the Iraq war effort in a bad light, and they seek out quite literally the least qualified source imaginable to print. They chose a junior enlisted soldier in a non-combat specialty, one who is assigned to division headquarters who has never set foot one outside of the green zone, to establish that Iraq is in a state civil war and we need to get out. To put this in some perspective, that would be like interviewing an elementary school's janitor to determine what is occurring in a university board meeting across the street. It is absolutely outrageous and so incredibly disingenuous that it is stomach turning.

There is not a thing ethical about this Washington Post lead article. It is so over the top in its defeatism, so selective in its facts and assertions, and so lacking in any balance as to be a far left opinion piece designed to decrease support for the war. A century ago it would have been tagged as yellow journalism. It is most decidedly not the news.

Ladies and gentleman, if you value your national security, then we cannot stand for this kind of ethically challenged reporting from our main stream media. Please, read this whole article here, and then jam the phone lines and the e-mails of the Washington Post to let them know just how you feel. And while your at it, see if you can't get your elected representatives off their sorry asses to respond to the Washington Post also

Authors:
Sudarsan Raghavan and Karin Brulliard

Washington Post:
Newspaper Information: www.washpost.com

Newsroom:

Main Phone: 202.334.6000 / 800.627.1150

Letters to the Editor:
The Washington Post
1150 15 St. NW
Washington, DC 20071

and by e-mail at:
letters@washpost.com

Your Elected Officials:

Senators

Representative

(H/T Mudville Gazette)

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Of Animals, Casualty Counts, Idiocy and Dishonor

Today's Washington Post contains a Reuters story reporting and commenting upon U.S. operations in Diyala province. The story opens with a description of a typical case of animal savagery that bears all the hallmarks of al Qaeda. Mourners had gathered in Diyala to bury a young Shia man killed in the fighting. A bomber wearing a vest laden with explosives joined the throng of mourners, then detonated, killing himself and thirty two others.

The people who commit these atrocities are animals, and we can ill afford to give them any quarter. Their goal is to reignite sectarian violence - to goad the Shia into equally mindless violence in retaliation. It is important to understand that acts like these are not evidence of a civil war. Rather, they are evidence of al Qaeda attempts to reignite the one that they partially succeeded in starting with the bombing of the Mosque of the Golden Dome in Samarra early in 2006.

These facts seem lost on both Democrats and the MSM. Thus we have Harry Reid willing to surrender to al Qaeda over their four bombings in Baghdad last week.

We are now taking the fight to al Qaeda and militant militias, and we are doing so hand in hand with an increasingly united Iraq - Sunni, Shia and Kurd - fighting for their own freedom. Because we are flushing the animals out, we are going to suffer more casualties then we have using the failed strategy of staying in large cantonments. That is an inevitable price to be paid unless one is to surrender to the animals and accept their ascendancy. Thus it is maddening when Reuters states:

Diyala, a religiously mixed area, has been the scene of fierce fighting between U.S. troops and al Qaeda as well as Sunni Arab insurgents. Last month, U.S. commanders sent a force of armored vehicles and 1,000 extra soldiers to the province.

. . . Five U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend, raising the number of American troops killed this month to over 100 and making April one of the deadliest of the war for U.S. forces.

The toll could increase the pressure on U.S. President George W. Bush, who is fighting a plan by Democrats to set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.

I will say again, as a former infantry officer and as the son, grandson, and father of soldiers, I am deeply saddened by each casualty we suffer. But there is an infinite divide between honoring our war dead and using their sacrifice as a reason to surrender the fight in Iraq. We understood this bitter truisim in World War Two, when our total dead numbered well over 100 times what we have suffered in Iraq to this point. The foe we face in radical Islam is no less potent a threat to our national security then we faced in World War Two. Thus, while there may be legitimate justifications for leaving Iraq, given that doing so will inevitably be portrayed as a victory of the Islamists and greatly embolden them, I believe strongly otherwise. But in any event, an American casualty count is under no circumstance a legitimate reason for surrender. Using that as a justification, as suggested by Reuters today and by Harry Reid but a few days ago, is despicable and dishonorable.

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The Washinton Post Lacks Any Journalistic Integrity

What article is the top billed story on the Washington Post website now? It is this atrocity of a WP news article titled "Afghan Civilians Killed After U.S. Marines Convoy Attacked." It is listed on the WP website as the "most viewed" article.

Before continuing, let me review the background. Afghanistan is a war zone, and the unfortunate truth of war is that, in fighting an indiscriminate enemy that uses civilians as shields in their attacks, or otherwise attacks in and from civilian areas, it is unavoidable that civilians will die. That is a reality forced on our soldiers by the actions of an amoral enemy.

But as you can gather, civilian deaths seen in that context are not why this is headline news. It is headline news because the AP found an Afghani who blamed the deaths on the Marines.

First, here are the uncontested facts. A Marine convoy was passing through a town near Jalalabad. An IED exploded next to their convoy, and that was followed up by enemy small arms fire from multiple directions -- a textbook ambush. The Marines returned fire. At some point, either from the IED explosion or the small arms fire, eight civilians died. A reporter questioned the Marine Corps about the civilian deaths. The jist of Marine Corp’s response was that they would debrief the Marines involved in the fight, conduct an investigation with the Afghani government, and then get back to the reporter.

So, explicitly, why did this becomes top line news?

The Associated Press quoted several wounded Afghans as saying that the Marines had fired indiscriminately as they fled the explosion.

They were firing everywhere, and they even opened fire on 14 to 15 vehicles passing on the highway," Tur Gul, 38, told the AP. Gul was standing on the roadside by a gas station and was shot twice in his right hand. "They opened fire on everybody, the ones inside the vehicles and the ones on foot."

So how many problems are there with this particular article and this kind of reporting:

1. Anyone with no military background reading this report will likely be left with the impression that this is just another example of our military out of control. This report, as headline news, defames our soldiers.

2. The results of the debriefing will likely be published in a report buried deeply in the bowels of the WP several days from now. The damage done to the reputation of our soldiers and the nobility of their efforts under fire and in an ambush will not be undone.

3. When the results of the debriefing are released by the Marine Corps in a few days, I have little doubt that they will not show anything other then that the Marines returned suppressing fire towards the locations from which they were being fired upon. Anyone who has been a member of the United States military knows that our troops are trained and drilled repetitively to do precisely that. Wildly spraying bullets is counterproductive. If you are not firing in the direction of an enemy, you will be exposing yourself while at the same time allowing the enemy to keep his head up. That is something untrained or poorly trained soldiers do. The U.S. military, by comparison, is the most highly trained force in the world today. That is not to say that something else might have occurred on this occasion, but it is to say that the AP and WP should be suspect of claims to the contrary until they have all of the facts. That is certainly not what the AP and WP do in this case.

4. The jist of this piece turns morality on its head. It puts moral blame on our soldiers, and completely ignores the fact that the enemy are using civilians as shields, either directly or by staging attacks in areas were civilians are sure to be caught in the fire. This is an enemy wholly lacking in any sense of morality, and the cynical loss of civilian life for them is a plus because of hit pieces like this. Yet any reader who does not analyze what is going on will again just adopt the WP/AP thesis that it is our soldiers who are out of control.

5. Who is Tur Gul, the man making the accusations against the Marines. It is reasonable to assume that if Taliban were able to set up an extensive ambush in the area, including setting up IED's, that just about every civilian in the local area had do know about it. Further, they had to be complicit in it to the extent of not warning the coalition forces. I am not saying that such makes the civilian deaths justified. My point is only that there had to be civilians loyal to the Taliban in the area for this ambush to take place. So, is Tur Gul one of those loyal to the Taliban? We know nothing about him besides his name. By naming him, the W.P. gives a paper thin veneer of reliability to its article. What most readers will not know, however, is that just because the W.P or A.P. provides a name, that alone is no indicia of reliabity. Just do a search on Michelle Malkin's website for "AP."

6. The basic thesis of this hit piece is very damaging in another regard. It incrementally moves the public, and our government, to place an ever greater burden on our ROE -- "rules of engagement" -- that govern when and how our soldiers can fire and protect themselves in hostilities. Let me give you some idea of how the ROE -- and our soldiers who, unlike the enemy, place a value on human life -- operate by quoting from this article in the Guardian from February 22, 2007. And just for the record, as you read this article, know that the Guardian is the U.K.'s leading far left newspaper and it's editorial position is vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq.

Boys on bikes cycle backwards and forwards on a footbridge over a small canal lined with houses and groves of date palms. Women in headscarves look anxiously in groups from windows. Men walk with shopping bags. A gunman, clutching an AK-47, bobs his head around the corner of an alleyway close to a school. Once. Twice. On the third occasion a child, a boy seven or eight years old, is thrust out in front of him. The gunman holds him firmly by the arm and steps out for instant into full view of the Bradley's gunner to get a proper look, then yanks the boy back and disappears.

"That is really dirty," says Specialist Chris Jankow, in the back of the Bradley, with a mixture of contempt, anger and frustration. "They know exactly what our rules of engagement are. They know we can't fire back."

A few minutes and a few hundred metres later the performance is repeated. A woman and three small children emerge uncertainly from behind a building, little more than a shack. They stare at the approaching armour. After a few seconds they retreat from view; then the process is repeated. The third time they emerge, a fighter is crouching behind them with a rocket-propelled grenade aimed at Jankow's Bradley. The group disappears.

There is a long pause, a moment of excruciating moral conflict for the soldiers and for the gunner in particular. Not to shoot would be to imperil their own lives or those of their colleagues, both American and Iraqi. To shoot would be to risk killing civilians who have been shoved in front of their guns to shield insurgent fighters.

7. This WP/AP article is one more in the mosaic of the MSM cynically and deliberately attempting to influence public opinion against our wars overseas.

8. On the very outside chance that there is a shred of truth to this story, it should be headline news -- ONLY AFTER THE MARINES HAVE BEEN DEBRIEFED AND THE MARINE CORPS IS ABLE TO RESPOND SUBSTANTIVELY TO THE ALLEGATIONS. That would hold our troops to appropriate standards and allow the newspaper to report facts, not shill for the anti-war crowd and their de facto allies, the radical muslims with whom we are at war. This AP/WP story, as headline news, is an atrocity.

9. I would urge you to complain to the Washington Post about their ethical, moral, and journalistic standards in running this piece as headline news. The Washington Post contact information is:

Newsroom: foreign@washpost.com

Main Phone: 202.334.6000
800.627.1150

Letters to the Editor: Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
1150 15 St. NW
Washington, DC 20071

and by e-mail at: letters@washpost.com

Update: The New York Times has a similar article, though, and I never thought that I would say this, the NTY provides a much more balanced article. The NYT at least includes the following:

The United States military said the unit came under fire after a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden car near their convoy “as part of a complex ambush involving enemy small-arms fire from several directions.”

Members of the unit, on patrol near Jalalabad airfield, returned fire, and the civilians were killed and wounded in the cross-fire during the battle, according to a statement from the military press office at Bagram Air Base, 40 miles north of Kabul.

“We regret the death of innocent Afghan citizens as a result of the Taliban extremists’ cowardly act,” Lt. Col. David Accetta, a military spokesman, said in the statement. “Once again the terrorists demonstrated their blatant disregard for human life by attacking coalition forces in a populated area, knowing full well that innocent Afghans would be killed and wounded in the attack.”

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WAR ON THE SURGE. And no, not the Democrats this time. This time it was the insurgents who staged a rare frontal assault on a U.S. base north of Baghdad. The insurgents attempted to breach the entrance to the base with a suicide bomber and followed up with an attack by gunmen. Two U.S. soldiers were killed and 17 injured. The base was apparently of company size -- a little more then 100 men. We do not know how many of the insurgents were killed or captured. As ominous as the attacks is the NYT take on it.

As American troops move into small combat outposts throughout Baghdad for the first time since the early months after the invasion in 2003, today’s attack underscored the inherent risks in the Bush administration’s new security strategy.

The insurgents in Iraq, of whatever stripe, have a fairly sophisticated grasp of our news media, politics, and history. It seems clear that what they desire more then anything at this time is a TET style offensive. TET was the 1968 offensive undertaken by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese regulars that doomed American involvment in Vietnam. It was a fight that we clearly won militarily, but it was played up as a huge win by the North Vietnamese in American press, leading shortly thereafter to our withdrawal from South Vietnam.

While not on TET's scale, I have no doubt that the assault that occurred today on a U.S. base was aimed directly at MSM. One of the truths of our military is that we have, in fact, because of our training, professionalism and equipment, a force far superior to anything that can be fielded by anyone else in the world today. In Iraq, we have never lost an engagement occurring at the platoon level or higher. Strip us of that mystique just once and I have no doubt that the calls for withdrawal from Democrats and a few White Flag Republicans, hand in glove with wall to wall coverage by MSM, would reach deafening levels.

Look for more attacks like these in the coming months -- and ask yourself, just how much of a disservice are Murtha, Pelosi, Reid, and their ideological companions in the MSM doing to our soldiers in the field?

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