This has to be defended?
Guess what it is that the MSM can tout all day long, and only on one side of the ledger, but that the President, when he brings up the numbers in the other column, apparently has to defend doing so.
W.House defends Bush use of Iraqi body counts
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday defended President George W. Bush's rare use of a body count to describe Iraqi insurgent deaths as a way to show Americans that U.S. troops are fighting hard in Iraq.
Yes, heaven forbid that the President should provide information that the MSM would rather ignore.
Bush said on Wednesday on a visit to the Pentagon that U.S. and Iraqi forces had killed or captured 5,900 of the enemy during the months of October, November and early December.
Note that this is just 3 months. Let's not forget that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who is believed to have succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said on Sept. 28th that "4,000 foreign insurgent fighters have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003." The odds being in favor that the number was at least that high.
And of course, they note how body counts from the government had been discredited during Vietnam.
Presidents have shied away from giving body count numbers ever since the practice was discredited during the Vietnam war.
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military publicized Vietnam body counts as a way to show progress, but it led to inflated numbers which damaged the Pentagon's credibility.
And what of the discredited MSM? To recall just a few matters, there was cBS/Rathergate, and the Pallywood fiascos. Nope, not a peep, all the credibility problems and all the deaths are only on one side. Let's not forget there's also the Reuters credibility problem that I covered here and here.
The rest of the story is just a rehash of the current talks about new strategies. Why not use that space to look at how the MSM touts one-sided casualty numbers? They love noting each new monthly total. They've compared the total to the 9-11 death toll and whined about how improved medical technology has saved lives but only left people disabled. All of this is hardly ever balanced with information about the progress in opening schools and increased wages or the deaths the enemy is suffering at the hands of our brave soldiers.
With such incessant, lopsided reporting, is it any wonder that a people loses its will to wage war? As I noted here, "how can the losing side know it has lost if the winning side is not allowed to know it has won?"
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Filed under: Iraq -- MSM -- NewsPolitics -- Terrorism
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Author: Mark K. Sprengel | 9:30:00 PM |
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