In his speech last night, we heard more of the same. How the new plan will be better than the old plan (even if it looks remarkably like all the other plans Bush has tried). How we need more time. That some of our troops will be withdrawn if we are just a little more patient. That Al Qaeda’s on the run. That our soldiers are brave, and their sacrifice is not in vain. That we are winning the war so long as we stay in Iraq. That “normal life” is returning to Baghdad. That we have a grand coalition of 36 nations which have our back. That if we leave, catastrophe will result, both in Iraq and back here in the US of A. That Bush always does what his generals tell him to do. That Petraeus is God.
In short, utter bullshit. And while some in the the US media were critical of the speech (and the numerous lies inaccuracies it contained), almost everyone concurred that Bush has the upper hand, and that Congress doesn’t have the votes to end the war. Yet, what few, if anyone, remarked upon was the real truth about what’s going on in Iraq. Fortunately for us, Al Jazeera compiled a video report to remind us of the real situation “over there” (hat tip to Juan Cole of Informed Comment):
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Pretty damning, isn’t it. 750,000 dead. Over two and a half million refugees who have fled the country. Over 2 million homeless within Iraq. No safe water to drink. Electricity available only 2-6 hours a day. $300 million spent by our government each day.
Even more damning is the fact that you rarely see these facts reported upon by any of the news programs broadcast by America’s television networks. It’s not as if they’re completely in the dark. They all have correspondents over there. They no doubt watch what European and Middle Eastern news media show their audiences every day. They could air the same stories if they wanted to. It’s not as if they don’t know what’s going on in Iraq. It’s that they won’t report it.
The chasm [between the US news media and the American public] revolves around the fact that public polling indicates consumers are starved for news from Iraq, yet over the summer the mainstream media, and particularly television outlets such as CBS, steadfastly refused to deliver it. The press has walked away from what most Americans claim is the day’s most important ongoing news event.
…[T]he pullback we’ve seen this summer, the chronic dearth of on-the-ground reporting … marks a new low of the entire campaign. It’s gotten to the point where even monstrous acts of destruction cannot wake the press from its self-induced slumber. Just recall the events of August 14.
That’s when witnesses to the four synchronized suicide truck bombs that detonated in northern Iraq on that day described the collective devastation unleashed to being like an earthquake, or even the site of a nuclear bomb explosion; the destruction of one bomb site measured half a mile wide. A U.S. Army spokesman, after surveying the mass carnage from an attack that targeted Yazidis, an ancient religious community, called the event genocidal. Indeed, more than 500 Iraqis were killed, more than 1,500 were wounded, and 400 buildings were destroyed.
… Yet that night on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, the hour-long news program that airs at 10 p.m., the carnage from Iraq garnered just a brief report, and that was relegated to the “360 Bulletin,” halfway through the program; a report on a playground catching on fire due to spontaneous combustion of decomposing wood chips was given slightly more airtime and, unlike the suicide bombings, prompted a reaction from host Cooper himself: “That’s incredible. I never heard of that.” …
The next day, as noted by the Columbia Journalism Review, the story was placed on A6 in both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and Page 4 of USA Today. On that evening’s NBC Nightly News, the historic massacre from Iraq was not even tapped as the day’s most important story. […]
That Americans are obsessed about Iraq is no surprise. Polling has consistently shown they think the war is far and away the single most important issue facing the country. And it wasn’t like there was no news happening in Iraq between June and August; the months formed the deadliest summer of the war for U.S. military men and women. To say nothing of the approximately 5,000 Iraqi civilians killed this summer.
No news all summer, yet when Petraeus comes to Washington, all of a sudden there are a flurry of reports about Iraq. Or to be more precise, a flurry of reports about what Petraeus and Bush had to say about Iraq. In other words, the media allowed themselves to be used as stenographers for the Bush administration once again. Instead of reporting about the facts in Iraq, we had endless (and vacuous) commentary about what Petraues said, about what his testimony meant for the debate about the war in Congress, and about the domestic political implications for President Bush and the Republicans. Not to mention all the commentary about the “ugly partisanship” of Moveon.org for daring to question Petraeus’ integrity.
The other day someone here at Booman (and I apologize for not remembering who exactly) made a comment to the effect that we should be holding antiwar protests in front of the headquarters of major news organizations rather than marching in the streets of Washington. Perhaps he or she is right. Because it seems that may be the only way to get the news media to cover its own culpability in “catapulting the propaganda” on behalf of President Bush. After all, Bush’s war policies in Iraq may be complete failures, but his strategy in the disinformation wars back home continues to be a success (as demonstrated, for one example, by BooMan’s post regarding Fred Hiatt’s “stay the course” op-ed today in the Washington Post).
As for the Democrats, one can only surmise that they have surrendered to Bush once again. He stands up and they stand down. Afraid of being called “America haters” by the likes of Fox News propagandists, they bellow for changing the course in Iraq, but never do the one thing necessary to truly put an end to this tragic fiasco: defund the war. As John Edwards pointed out last night in his paid political commercial on MsNBC following Bush’s speech, Democrats have the power to stop this madness. They just have to do it. Unfortunately, we all know they won’t.
And so it goes. More people (Iraqis and Americans) will die to preserve Bush’s “legacy” because the media won’t report the truth about Iraq and the timid Democrats won’t take action to end the most unpopular American war since Vietnam. Afraid of the media, afraid of bullying Republicans, afraid of their own shadow.
Once upon a time a great American President said, in times more dire than any we face now, that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” How right he was. And is.
