http://www.nypost.com/seven/05202008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/success_in_iraq__a_media_blackout_111606.htm

May 20, 2008


DO we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there?

If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.

Want a real "inconvenient truth?" Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

But that fact isn't helpful to elite media commissars and cadres determined to decide the presidential race over our heads. How dare our troops win? Even worse, Iraqi troops are winning. Daily.

You won't see that above the fold in The New York Times. And forget the Obama-intoxicated news networks - they've adopted his story line that the clock stopped back in 2003.

To be fair to the quit-Iraq-and-save-the-terrorists media, they have covered a few recent stories from Iraq:

* When a rogue US soldier used a Koran for target practice, journalists pulled out all the stops to turn it into "Abu Ghraib, The Sequel."

Unforgivably, the Army handled the situation well. The "atrocity" didn't get the traction the whorespondents hoped for.

* When a battered, bleeding al Qaeda managed to set off a few bombs targeting Sunni Arabs who'd turned against terror, that, too, received delighted media play.

* As long as Baghdad-based journalists could hope that the joint US-Iraqi move into Sadr City would end disastrously, we were treated to a brief flurry of headlines.

* A few weeks back, we heard about another Iraqi company - 100 or so men - who declined to fight. The story was just delicious, as far as the media were concerned.

Then tragedy struck: As in Basra the month before, absent-without-leave (and hiding in Iran) Muqtada al Sadr quit under pressure from Iraqi and US troops. The missile and mortar attacks on the Green Zone stopped. There's peace in the streets.

Today, Iraqi soldiers, not militia thugs, patrol the lanes of Sadr City, where waste has replaced roadside bombs as the greatest danger to careless footsteps. US advisers and troops support the effort, but Iraq's government has taken another giant step forward in establishing law and order.

My fellow Americans, have you read or seen a single interview with any of the millions of Iraqis in Sadr City or Basra who are thrilled that the gangster militias are gone from their neighborhoods?
Didn't think so. The basic mission of the American media between now and November is to convince you, the voter, that Iraq's still a hopeless mess.

Meanwhile, they've performed yet another amazing magic trick - making Kurdistan disappear.

Remember the Kurds? Our allies in northern Iraq? When last sighted, they were living in peace and building a robust economy with regular elections, burgeoning universities and municipal services that worked.

After Israel, the most livable, decent place in the greater Middle East is Iraqi Kurdistan. Wouldn't want that news getting out.

If the Kurds would only start slaughtering their neighbors and bombing Coalition troops, they might get some attention. Unfortunately, there are no US or allied combat units in Kurdistan for Kurds to bomb. They weren't needed. And (benighted people that they are) the Kurds are pro-American - despite the virulent anti-Kurdish prejudices prevalent in our Saudi-smooching State Department.

Developments just keep getting grimmer for the MoveOn.org fan base in the media. Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who had supported al Qaeda and homegrown insurgents, now support their government and welcome US troops. And, in southern Iraq, the Iranians lost their bid for control to Iraq's government.

Bury those stories on Page 36.

Our troops deserve better. The Iraqis deserve better. You deserve better. The forces of freedom are winning.

Here in the Land of the Free, of course, freedom of the press means the freedom to boycott good news from Iraq. But the truth does have a way of coming out.

The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy's taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months.

When Iraq seemed destined to become a huge American embarrassment, our media couldn't get enough of it. Now that Iraq looks like a success in the making, there's a virtual news blackout.

Of course, the front pages need copy. So you can read all you want about the heroic efforts of the Chinese People's Army in the wake of the earthquake.

Tells you all you really need to know about our media: American soldiers bad, Red Chinese troops good.

Is Jane Fonda on her way to the earthquake zone yet?

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Here Here

this is a good question..
this is big news..why is it not broadcast more??

is it because the situation is dangerous or becasue we are having a positive impact???

it is more important than a lot of crap they put on the news. causes misdirection of some sort.

Yes well we all know there isn't any RESPONSIBLE reporting of the news. Just alot of lies & spion about what REPS are doing.

It's a shame...

BS!!!

The so called successes are a direct result of Sadr calling his militia to cease fire!
The reason there are no media reports is because the administration has made it impossible for the media to get the story out unless it benefits their position!

The Mahdi militia has always been responsible for most of the violence in Iraq, not Al qaeda. By standing down in Sadr city the Iraqi army was able to go into that part of the city unopposed. The same in Basra, where earlier the Iraqi Army suffered a devastating defeat and a couple thousand desertions.

The article you posted is an OPINION piece. It has no factual accuracy!
The author acts as though everyone is against our soldiers success! BS, that's neocon propaganda!

Show me one instance of the Iraqi Army having success! Just one!

I hear they dig a great latrine..

Truth is most Americans are realist! There are only a few Neocons left (28%) who wish to gloss over the facts!
Most Americans want to see success in Iraq. They want to see American troops removed from this illegal war and have their involvement in an Iraqi Civil War come to an end! You have managed to find one reporter who has a Neocon mindset and is willing to ignore reports like this,

BAGHDAD — Roadside bombs killed four U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq, the military said Wednesday, in a spike of violence that pushed to at least 10 the number of Americans who have died here this week.

In the latest attack, one soldier was killed by an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, about 9 a.m. Wednesday in the predominantly Shiite eastern half of Baghdad, the military said. The armor piercing bombs are believed to come from Iran and have been used by Shiite extremists to kill hundreds of American forces.

The U.S. military said three other U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed late Tuesday by a roadside bomb in the northern Ninevah province, where al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni extremist groups remain active.

The four U.S. fatalities brought the monthly death toll for American troops in Iraq to at least 26 _ well below figures of last year but an increase over the 19 who died in May, the lowest monthly tally of the war.

In all, at least 4,110 U.S. military service members have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The U.S. military says violence in Iraq has dropped to its lowest level in more than four years, but attacks are continuing as Sunni and Shiite extremists try to regroup and undermine security gains.

"The level of violence has dropped dramatically," said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, spokesman for the U.S. command in Baghdad. "It has gotten quieter. But that doesn't make these losses any easier."



Reality!!!

Let the Mahdi militia end their cease fire in the Iraqi Civil War and violence will return to the levels seen before the cease fire. The Bush Administration is too willing to take credit for the drop in violence as a success of the Surge.
The reality is that the drop in violence coincides and is directly linked to the cease fire called by Sadr! Common sense and a free mind will tell you that!

LMAO!!!

Did you know the Iraqi Army is 180,000 strong?
If they are so successful in combat why are Americans (145,000) there at all?

good question.i heard this morning we are sending more troops over to replace the ones that have been there awhile.
meanwhile food,gas and rent are soaring.sucks.

Simple!
Bush wants us to be.....

Here's your media blackout.
Having to go to a British news source to even get this truth should tell you something!

Thats what I thought!
You mean like this,

The demands of real-time television, Iraqi restrictions on reporters in Baghdad and the difficulty of getting to the front line are conspiring to make it virtually impossible for journalists to cover the war properly, the award-winning war correspondent Janine di Giovanni has warned.

Di Giovanni, who was reporting for the Times in Baghdad until editor Robert Thomson ordered her to leave the city last week, said viewers and readers had "no idea" how difficult the war in Iraq has been from a journalist's perspective.

"The story, for a reporter, is in one of two places: in Baghdad, which it is almost impossible to get to now, or in the southern desert with the marines. To be there, however, reporters had to "embed" with the Pentagon months ago.

"Most experienced war reporters balked at the notion of being so controlled and having to obey a 12-page booklet put forth by the American war machine," she wrote in today's Times.

Many of Britain's most experienced reporters - including the BBC's John Simpson, Fergal Keane and Allan Little - are marooned on borders they had thought would open up, but which are now far away from the action, she added.

"Reporters are pulling out their hair with boredom in Kurdistan; there's a real war in the western desert on the Jordanian-Iraq border, but no one can get to it; and on the border of Kuwait most of the press corps are miserably camping out in their cars, unable to get into the desert."

Di Giovanni said the risks for so-called "unilaterals" - journalists operating independently of the allied troops - are huge, as the death last weekend of the ITN reporter Terry Lloyd showed.

She revealed that coalition forces had received dozens of calls from journalists travelling alone in the desert who had come under fire.

Di Giovanni also admitted the demands of 24-hour television news sometimes meant mistakes were made.

"Most journalists simply don't have time to gather enough information before presenters sitting in cosy London studios throw irritating questions at them which they often cannot answer.

"As a result mistakes are made: Umm Qasr declared secure before it actually was controlled, the uprisings in Basra not yet proven to be true."

The BBC director of news, Richard Sambrook, yesterday admitted it was proving difficult for correspondents in Iraq to distinguish the truth from false reports, after a series of media claims about the progress of coalition forces turned out to be premature.

BBC presenters have now been told to use a standard phrase when introducing reporters in the Gulf, making clear they are operating under restrictions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/mar/27/pressandpublishing.Iraqandthemedia

Oh, brother. EVERYONE knows the left wing liberal media only reports what they want you to know.

There is so much progress being made over there, yet leftie libber news medial will not report it.

All one has to do is listen to FOX and you will hear news that you never dreamed possible. Stick to MSNBC, CNN, you will be poisoned with lies.

OR, you can listen to CBN a Christian newsbroasting station and you will hear the truth in an unbiased manner.

Do the 'opposing' posters on this thread want to hear this? Hell no. Would they go to these stations and listen, like they INSIST we listen to their garbage hole news media? Hell no!

I know for a fact, as I asked one to go to a link and read for this opposers own self, and was told bluntly "NO" Yet this opposer INSISTS that I read this opposers' links and articles!

Talk about hypocrites!

KUDOS TO THE ORIGIANL POSTER OF THIS THREAD

Lindyy


P.S. Now I can sit back and watch the bashing of myself begin. Anymore, it is a rather known-given that this will happen. So much for FAIR-MINDEDNESS!

Here Here

This is from an British News source!
If you call opinion pieces from CBN's right wing evangelicals accurate news you are blinder than I thought!

Here, here

British Media is More Liberal than American Media is so all your doing is trading one rag for another! the UK and Europe is as Liberal as Northern california! C'mon Man Your better than this.

Ignoring the truth means you are letting the Bush administration brainwash you!
That story is the truth.

Tell me you at least read it!!

You can then use common sense to judge whether it is the truth or not cant you?

Fanta, you keep giving credit to Al Sadr. The man got run out of Iraq by the US military and Iraqi forces. He is hiding in Iran. He knows that if Obama is elected he can come back with his Iranian buddies and take back control of Sadr City. Heck, if Obama gets elected it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Bin Laden shows up in Iraq.



Why does the media portray this locally dangerous bully as being in control of anything when he fled to Iraq?

Fanta,

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=62321&archive=true