The Bush Administration’s new “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” has a very interesting reference to how the terrorists use the media against us. The document says that the enemy seeks to “Weaken the Coalition’s resolve, and our resolve at home, through barbaric mass-casualty attacks, public slaughter of Iraqi civilians and hostages, infliction of casualties on Coalition forces, and use of the media to spread propaganda and intimidate adversaries.”
In his speech at the Naval Academy, President Bush drew attention to how the terrorists in Iraq are using the media to accomplish their objectives. The terrorists, Bush said, “have nothing to offer the Iraqi people. All they have is the capacity and the willingness to kill the innocent and create chaos for the cameras.” The President’s remarks came on a day when the Washington Post reported on how pro-terrorist Sunni Muslims in Iraq “love Cindy Sheehan” and get energized by watching anti-war protests from America on satellite television. That should have been the lead in the Post article, but it was buried inside the paper.
But when the Post published a Robin Wright article about the President’s speech and war strategy document, this critical problem-how U.S. domestic forces are being used to help the enemy-was completely ignored. That’s because the Post and other media are part of the movement to undermine “our resolve at home.”
That means our media are part of the problem. The recent Pew survey found that 71 percent of the news media oppose the U.S. decision to invade Iraq, compared to 43 percent of the public at large. Forty-eight percent of the public supported military action in Iraq, while only 28 percent of the media did so.
What this means is that most of the major media have decided that the war was a mistake, and their coverage is reflective of that view. Their coverage is, therefore, designed to make others accept their view. Everything we see, read and hear has to be viewed in that context.
But what do the troops think? The answer came from NBC News reporter Jim Maceda, who spent some time with our troops in Iraq. Maceda said our soldiers “think the politicians who want to pull out quickly are dead wrong.” He also said that “many soldiers blame reporters for what they see as a one-sided picture, saying that we tend to emphasize the violence and the death and under-report all the positive steps Iraq is taking.”
Bush has a strategy for victory in Iraq. The terrorists have a strategy for using our media to defeat the U.S.
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