http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opi...ck=1&cset=true


Hyping losses while glossing over victories
By Thomas Sowell
Originally published December 15, 2005
The media seem to have come up with a formula that would make any war
in history unwinnable and unbearable: They simply emphasize the enemy's
victories and our losses.
Losses suffered by the enemy are not news, no matter how large, how
persistent or how clearly they indicate the enemy's declining strength.




What are the enemy's victories in Iraq? The killing of Americans and
the killing of Iraqi civilians. Both are big news in the mainstream
media, day in and day out, around the clock.

Has anyone ever believed that any war could be fought without deaths on
both sides?

Every death is a tragedy to the individual killed and to his loved
ones. But is there anything about American casualty rates in Iraq that
makes them more severe than casualty rates in any other war we have
fought?

On the contrary, the American deaths in Iraqi are a fraction of what
they have been in other wars in our history. The media have made a big
production about the cumulative fatalities in Iraq, hyping the 1,000th
death with multiple full-page features in The New York Times and
comparable coverage on TV.

The 2,000th death was similarly anticipated almost impatiently in the
media and then made another big splash. But does media hype make 2,000
wartime fatalities in more than two years unusual?

The Marines lost more than 5,000 men taking one island in the Pacific
during three months in World War II. In the Civil War, the Confederates
lost 5,000 men in one battle in one day.

Yet there was Jim Lehrer on The NewsHour last week earnestly asking
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the 10 Americans killed that
day. It is hard to imagine anybody in any previous war asking any such
question of anyone responsible for fighting a war.

We have lost more men than that in our most overwhelming and one-sided
victories in previous wars. During an aerial battle over the Mariana
Islands in World War II, Americans shot down hundreds of Japanese
planes while losing about 30 of their own.

If the media of that era had been reporting the way the media report
today, all we would have heard about would have been that more than two
dozen Americans were killed that day.

Neither our troops nor the terrorists are in Iraq just to be killed.
Both have objectives. But any objectives we achieve get short shrift in
the mainstream media, if they are mentioned at all.

Our troops can kill 10 times as many of the enemy as they kill and it
just isn't news worth featuring, if it is mentioned at all, in much of
the media. No matter how many towns are wrested from the control of the
terrorists by American or Iraqi troops, it just isn't front-page news
like the casualty reports or even the doomsaying of some politicians.

That these doomsaying politicians have been proved wrong again and
again does not keep their latest outcries from overshadowing the
hard-won victories of American troops in Iraq.

The doomsayers claimed that terrorist attacks would make it impossible
to hold the elections last January because so many Iraqis would be
afraid to go vote. The doomsayers urged that the elections be
postponed.

But a higher percentage of Iraqis voted in that election - and in a
subsequent election - than the percentage of Americans who voted in
last year's presidential elections.

Utter ignorance of history enables any war with any casualties to be
depicted in the media as an unmitigated disaster.

Even after Nazi Germany surrendered at the end of World War II,
die-hard Nazi guerrilla units terrorized and assassinated German
officials and German civilians who cooperated with Allied occupation
authorities.

But nobody suggested that we abandon the country. Nobody was foolish
enough to think that you could say in advance when you would pull out
or that you should encourage your enemies by announcing a timetable.

There has never been the slightest doubt that we would begin pulling
troops out of Iraq when it was feasible. Only time and circumstances
can tell when that will be. And only irresponsible politicians and the
media think otherwise.

Mule wrote:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opi...ck=1&cset=true




Here's another great example. In a lead story today, the New York Times
reports that the White House sheepishly admits allowing our foreign
intelligence services to spy on numerous American citizens, within the
United States, and that practices routinely included tapping phones
without benefit of a warrant.

(A warrant is just window dressing under the Patriot Act, true. The
Patriot Act states that no judge can deny a warrant to any law
enforcement or intelligence agency claiming the surveillance has some
remote connection to the investigation of terrorism....((supporting a
Democratic candidate may fall under the current Administration's
definition of terrorism, just as speaking out against the war in Iraq
resulted in the FEDGOV spying on Quaker churches)).....but a warrant is
still required).

The supposedly left-biased New York Times had this bombshell at least a
year ago, but voluntarily suppressed the story at the behest of the
White House. The White House doesn't deny tapping the phones of US
citizens without even the phony fig-leaf warrants required by the
Patriot Act, but it requested that the NYT sit on the story "in the
interest of national security". The main concern of the White House was
not that its latest wrapping of the Constitution around a wooden spool
and using it instead of Charmin in the Executive restroom would become
public knowledge- the WH merely said
it didn't want the potential subjects of the illegal wire taps to know
the government was willing to stoop to such a level.

The NYT says it set on the story for at least a year. If they had this
story in October of 2004 and decided to keep it quiet, that action very
probably guaranteed the reelection of GWB to a greater extent than even
the lies and distortions in the Swift Boat ads.

I'd have to agree that there is media bias. A lot of it. Not just where
Limbaugh and Hannity instruct you guys to look for it, and the bias in
evidence may not always lean the way O'Reilly and Falwell insist.

As an aside, since the last President was impeached for lying under
oath one has to wonder whether lying while taking the oath "to
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States"
falls under the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors as well. I'm
no jurist, but my guess would have to be that it does. Bush is safe
while his buddies control congress, but if the D's win a majority next
fall (doubtful - the R machine is too well organized and financed and a
very skillful user of propaganda), Bush could have some trouble
avoiding criminal charges in his last two years. I'm not in favor of
that unless they can snag Cheney in the same net.........

Have you received your book yet Chuck?

On 16 Dec 2005 08:04:47 -0800, wrote:

Gosh, given how right-leaning the NYTimes is, do you suppose the liberals here will post fewer of
its stories?
--
John Herring

Hope your Christmas is Spectacular!
....and your New Year even Better!

JohnH wrote:
On 16 Dec 2005 08:04:47 -0800, wrote:

Gosh, given how right-leaning the NYTimes is, do you suppose the liberals here will post fewer of
its stories?
--
John Herring

Hope your Christmas is Spectacular!
...and your New Year even Better!

Right leaning?
Tell me, John, does "the right" support wiretapping American citizens
without a warrant?
Does the "right" applaud the suppression of information that might
implicate the President and/or his immediate staff in a felony?

Nah, surely not.

Did you receive your book yet Chuck?

JimH wrote:
Have you received your book yet Chuck?

Not as of yesterday's mail, no.

I did have one of those pink notices in my box "Item too big for
mailbox, please take this notice to the service window to claim your
mail".......but in the holiday fracas and chaos visible through the
service window nobody could immediately find the item. It may or may
not be the book in question- I get several books a month from
publishers hoping for a review, and somebody must teach a writing
course that advises "Put your manuscript in an envelope the size of a
billboard so the editor will see it......" as we get a lot of
unsolicited manuscripts in oversized envelopes.

wrote in message
oups.com...

JimH wrote:
Have you received your book yet Chuck?

Not as of yesterday's mail, no.

I did have one of those pink notices in my box "Item too big for
mailbox, please take this notice to the service window to claim your
mail".......but in the holiday fracas and chaos visible through the
service window nobody could immediately find the item. It may or may
not be the book in question- I get several books a month from
publishers hoping for a review, and somebody must teach a writing
course that advises "Put your manuscript in an envelope the size of a
billboard so the editor will see it......" as we get a lot of
unsolicited manuscripts in oversized envelopes.


OK, let me know when you get it.

" JimH" wrote in message
. ..
Did you receive your book yet Chuck?


Never mind. I saw your response above.

Harry,
Was JohnH's post insulting, swarmy or snarky?

It must be me, but it seemed like a mild manner observation that liberals do
like to quote the NYT. It seemed very mannerly.



"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
JohnH wrote:
On 16 Dec 2005 08:04:47 -0800, wrote:

Gosh, given how right-leaning the NYTimes is, do you suppose the liberals
here will post fewer of
its stories?
--
John Herring

Hope your Christmas is Spectacular!
...and your New Year even Better!


This is your new, improved, more mannerly behavior?


--
You Voted for Bush? How embarrassing!