It is Not the Media’s Fault

Larry Johnson

17 years ago

So, the media is losing us the war in Iraq because they refuse to tell the good news? That boys and girls is known in polite company as merde of Moo Cow. This disgusting and disgraceful lie has been repeated ad nauseum by the Bush Administration and its Republican hacks–John McCain to name one. There are, unfortunately, some in the media as well who insist that the media is just not telling us the good news. A friend of mine, Joel Mowbray, takes a whack at this topic in today’s Washington Times (and please, no hateful comments for Joel, he is still willing to give the Bushies the benefit of the doubt and is not an evil soul) by arguing that Iraqis by and large say they are better off today than under Saddam Hussein.

I would argue that objective facts point to a society that is drastically and dramatically worse off:

Iraqi doctors and dentists have fled the country in droves
Iraqi society has become more segregated
Electricity production lags far behind the norm achieved under Saddam
Public safety is a joke
Religious extremism is more widespread and women in several areas of the country are subjected to Sharia law in a way never experienced under Saddam

But, I am an American and to be perfectly selfish about it my first and foremost concern is the welfare of Americans. On this count the trend is going in the wrong direction. Consider, for example, the number of U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq. I pulled together the following graph using data provided by the website Iraq Coalition Casualties. I counted the number of U.S. soldier who died in the four month period–December thru March–for the years 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. The following is the four month average:

We are entering the fifth year of the war and more American troops are dying everyday. And this is happening despite the claims that more Iraqi troops and police are patrolling and that we have killed signficant numbers of Al Qaeda.

But here is the real obscenity. Are journalists better off? News came today that another journalist was murdered in Iraq. My old stomping ground, The Counter Terrorism Blog reports the sad news that Khamail Khalaf, a correspondent in Iraq with RFE/RL’s Radio Free Iraq, turned up dead today in Baghdad. In case you have not been keeping score, Khalaf marks the 97th journalist killed in Iraq since the war began. The blog, cpj.org, is keeping these macabre facts. Compare this death toll with the number of journalists who perished during WW II (68), the Korean War (17), and Vietnam (71). For the math challenged among you, more journalists have died in Iraq than died during WW II and Korea combined.

So, the next time you hear some politician or political partisan or pundit insist that there is good news to be told and the journalists are getting it wrong, encourage the critic to grab a camera or pick up a notebook and walk the streets of Iraq. I am sure they will get a story but I doubt they will live long enough to tell it.

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