A Tale of Two New York Times’ War Stories.

It was the best of fluff piece war coverage; it was the worst of fluff piece war coverage.  It was an age of writing crap about the war; it was an age when real war news was buried on page eight.

Normally, I am sufficiently bored with my only source of news, that it is hard to find anything to say for two or three days straight.  Since I was at Sheehan’s vigil last Wednesday, however, my rage about the war is absolutely over-flowing.  Complaining about the Times’ coverage is the easiest outlet for my anger.
Listen to today’s nonsense.

The Times has been carrying the War on page 1A for a number of days running now.  That is an improvement I guess.  Still, today’s juxtaposition of stories made it impossible not to bolt for the computer and vent.

Today’s front page headline:

They Search for Bombs and Swing for the Fences

Above the headline is a four column photo.  A setting sun back lights a desert baseball game.  A silhouetted man (a PFC in the U.S. Army, we learn from the caption) swings like Joe Dimaggio and a black ball sails into the dusk.

From the headline and the image, you can see that The New York Times has taken to heart their commitment to try to cover the good news of the war.  Today’s good news, apparently, is that our guys still like to play sports and board games.  It could be an advertisement for Nike, almost.  War.  Just do it.

The article itself takes up almost an entire page of print, starting on page one and moving to page eight.  It is a nice piece of writing, I must acknowledge.  It contrasts the horrors that our young men are both inflicting and facing, against their humanity.  Most of them don’t have a clue, it would seem.  They just want to get back to base and try to do something normal.  Lift, baseball, basketball, monopoly.

There are some choice parts of the article that I must share, for irony or tragedy’s sake.

Finding a way to relax is his biggest obstacle.  He and Specialist Dobbins try to compete in something every day, although the constant missions make fielding full teams difficult.

“A lot of soldiers are pretty tightly wound, so sports is perfect for letting them release their aggressive energy,” said Sergeant Rayner, who is the noncommissioned officer in charge of Company A’s night operations.  “Sometimes you get some Iraqi in a vehicle trying to get by your convoy, and an American soldier who is too riled up shoots him.  Then you have a problem.  You have a dead local on your hands.

“I’m not saying it has happened,” he said, then paused.  “But I’m not saying it didn’t happen, either.”

So if I understand correctly, our fun loving soldiers need to play sport so they don’t indiscriminately kill folks in the combat zone.  (And I can’t help but point out, for Sergeant Rayner’s benefit, that though he may have thought he or his soldier’s had a problem when they shot the guy driving past, it was probably a slightly larger problem for the deceased, who will not be featured in an article about how playing soccer in the street helps him relieve the stress of living in a country occupied for Empire.)

The irony/tragedy from the mouths of our soldiers continues:

Private McEwen said he is afraid to shoot even a warning shot when he is the gunner because he is afraid of killing an innocent bystander.

Instead, he tries to stay calm as he watches Iraqi people on the trash-strewn streets and sees children motioning to their mouths, asking for food.

But it is the older people who worry him.  He is not sure whose side they are on.  “Hey, we might make their country a little better, but a lot of people are still in poverty, a lot still hate us and look at us like they want us dead,” he said.  “How’s that for boosting your morale?”

Everything I learned about war growing up, late in the Vietnam era, seems to be revisiting me.  How could we have forgotten so quickly.  Wars of this kind are truly un-winnable.  This is about carnage.  How many lives will be lost?  We need to leave.  I was slightly disappointed in the passivity of the candlelight vigil the other night, not because it wasn’t very good to be with others who share my view, but because to me this seems like 1968.  And the fact that we are not in the streets demanding an end to this horrific injustice makes me feel lacking.

And a part of that problem, in my view, is that most Americans, if not all Americans, do not have any serious understanding of what we have done, and are doing, in Iraq.  The main stream media which informs the masses is filled with photographs of our boys (and girls) playing baseball until dusk, and volley ball on the beach (the photo accompanying the story on page eight).  Sure, if the public is diligent, they can sift through the stories and find the monstrous tragedy of war.  However, for the most part, the appalling human debasement sowed by war has gone un-photographed, un-filmed, and reported in late paragraphs in the midst of seas of news print.

That leads me to the contrasting story on Iraq in today’s Times.  It takes up about a quarter of page eight, well below the pictures of our beach volleyball game.  The page itself is titled:

THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: Welcome Distractions, and the Day’s Death Toll

referring first to the fluff piece on sport in war, and then to the real competition that is taking place in this country we have invaded, primarily, it would seem, based on a flawed plan to expropriate the country’s oil.

The headline of the war news

4 U.S. Soldiers Killed by Roadside Bomb as Deadlock Persists on Draft of Iraqi Constitution

Wow.  Two stories in one.  It sounds like there might be a lot of war news to cover in Iraq.  Too bad our primary writer and photo journalist were too busy covering the rec softball league.

In fact, there are not just two stories here.  As with The New York Times’ war coverage on almost every day, in one story they cover about one hundred things that are happening in the actual war.  Each piece gets about a paragraph.  Maybe two or three or four, depending on how big of news it really is.  I won’t even bother quoting it for you.  Let me just summarize the topics touched on, underneath the ESPN coverage of our troops’ athletic prowess.

  • Four more U.S. soldiers blown up.
  • Recent bus bombing thought an attempt to spread sectarian violence against Shiites.
  • Sunni woman, married to Shiite man, killed in sectarian violence.
  • Talks on constitution are still deadlocked.
  • Russia calls for withdrawal of foreign forces.
  • Washington orders 700 additional troops from 82nd to Iraq as prison guards.
  • Aziz’s lawyer says client will not testify against Saddam, and expects client to be cleared.
  • Judge and driver killed by gunmen in Baghdad.
  • Mortars kill civilian child and four civilian adults in Baghdad.
  • According to Reuters, U.S. and Iraqi troops kill three innocent civilians in raid on house.
  • U.S. says three civilians had returned fire.
  • Earlier in week, American helicopter opened fire on 20 laborers sleeping on roof.
  • U.S. acknowledges civilian casualties, but says laborers were “terrorists.”
  • In Ramadi, a constitutional meeting at a mosque is invaded by gunmen – 1 official wounded.
  • Two Iraqi Army soldiers injured by grenade in Falluja.
  • Romania forgives $2 Billion of $2.5 Billion Iraqi debt.
  • And this thrown in, Al Qaeda leader killed.  (But that was in Saudi Arabia — perhaps the country that most wronged us on 9/11).

I think The New York Times has the right idea about covering the war.  So long as their goal is to keep the population here in America out of the streets.

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