See, Hear and Speak only Quagmire

Leftists are sure America's losing the war on terror; some in State Department and Social Science circles claim the invasion attracted new radical Muslim recruits; others argue the army's effectiveness is limited to nations, not "ideas" such as terrorism. But when pressed for evidence, the anti-war arsenal is anecdotes and one-offs, not high-policy or geo-strategy.

So reporters tend to cluster around the more than two thousand Americans dead and the about 30,000 Iraqis killed (a figure that includes terrorists, Iraqi military -- both pre- and post-Saddam's sudden unemployment -- and civilians). Yet, the press deep-sixes the dramatic decline in casualties compared with previous conflicts or with Hussein's brutal tyranny.

Ironically, the current press-Pentagon pas de deux swaps roles with their Vietnam forbearers: where Schanberg, Schell and Sheehan famously discarded Defense Secretary McNamara's six sigma body count metric to address broader political and tactical questions, today's press fetishizes the figures as if bookkeeping for Ford in the 50s.¹ Spotlighting curve-fitting and regression to the exclusion of courage and resolve drains valor and sacrifice from casualty coverage, turning each obit into subtle pro-pacifist propaganda. Worse still, the Blue-state MSM treats the honored dead as a ventriloquist's dummy--sometimes while the soldier is still alive!

What explains this bias? Simple: the media rarely mingle with the military except at funerals, which (apart from Bob Woodward) is too late for an interview. Still, liberals and the press mostly claim to support the soldiers--but insist, without evidence, our troops favor flying a white flag. And when they pump a passionately anti-war serviceman spokesman, the ex-soldier often turns out either to be lying or the Junior Senator from Massachusetts. Or both.

So, though late to the party, I was thrilled that milblogger (Marine) Capt B, stationed in Iraq, took on the leftist/MSM surrender squad back on December 21st:

LEAVE, WE JUST GOT HERE!

Pull the troops out? We were loosing? We cant win?? Did these people eat a bowel of frosted dumbass for breakfast? . . . Why would we even mention pulling out of here until the job is done? It would be like forfeiting a baseball game in the ninth inning and quitting with a two run lead. We are winning this war and for anyone who says different, get your facts together (yea right) and come play ball, Im waiting. For all you “I didn’t get enough attention from daddy when I was young, left wingnuts” out there, we are AT WAR and we defiantly are winning! . . .

[T]here are some that think we should just simply employ sanctions, sing coombiyah, have peace talks and ask terrorists nicely over a cup of tea not to reduce America’s large buildings filled with loved ones in our metropolitan citys to dust. They want you in the states to think that OIF & OEF [Operation Iraqi Freedom & Operation Enduring Freedom] and the fight on terrorism “was a mistake” or “The President made a mistake by overthrowing Sadam” or one of my favorites, we are loosing the war……. Hack, snort, chuck vomit! Give me a break! The warriors I saw recently arnt loosing anything. Nor are their leaders all the way to the President. . . So the next time you here someone state we should pull out, we are loosing or any other crack head statement that wastes perfectly good air, let them know how you feel. Your service members need to know you support them as does your president!

Question: if a soldier tells the truth and a satellite news-gathering truck isn't recording, does he still make a sound?

Read the whole thing--and pass it on, to counter the "anti-war, anti-Bush administration bias in the media." Because step one in "supporting the troops" is listening to them.
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¹ Schell's moved on to stress the "Importance of Losing the War."