Enemies and media campaigns

Jack Kelly:

Dan Rather's 44-year relationship with CBS News came to an unceremonious end this week. This should remind us that of the many differences between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq, the three most important are talk radio, Fox News, and the Internet.

Mr. Rather must think his fate unfair. He was in effect fired when the documents on which he based an expose of President Bush's National Guard service were shown to be clumsy forgeries. But Walter Cronkite, who told a much bigger lie, is still an esteemed figure at CBS.

The one great similarity between Vietnam and Iraq is that our enemies, despairing of victory on the battlefield, sought to win with a propaganda campaign.

In Vietnam, this strategy succeeded. If it fails in Iraq, it will be chiefly because of the emergence of the new media.

The turning point in Vietnam was the Tet Offensive of February, 1968. It was a crushing defeat for the Viet Cong.

"Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise," said North Vietnamese Army Col. Bui Tin in a 1995 interview. "Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out. It took until 1971 to re-establish our presence."

"The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans," said Truong Nhu Tang, minister of justice in the Viet Cong's provisional government, in a 1982 interview. "Our losses were so immense we were unable to replace them with new recruits."

The news media reported this overwhelming American victory as a catastrophic defeat.

"Donning helmet, Mr. Cronkite declared the war lost," recounted UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave. "It was this now famous television news piece that persuaded President Lyndon Johnson...not to run for re-election."

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Media malpractice during the Tet offensive turned a victory into a strategic defat that is still costing the US in battles we are having to fight now, because our enemies hope to get the media to do the same thing for them. They have had remarable success by committing war crimes inIraq and getting the media to blame the US for not stopping them.

Our efforts in Iraq have been undermined by letting our enemies control the news cycle while we conduct studies where the results or presented several news cycles later after the enemy and the media have moved on. For some reason we quit having daily news briefing inIraq for a period, turning over the news cycle to our enemies and the useful idiots of main stream media.

While reporting from Iraq is difficult because the enmy in concentrating on weakness has focused on killing the media, there are several exptions but they have almost always been where reporters embed with the troops. Some in the media claim that they would lose objectivity if they get too close to the troops, but they need to comprehend that these are the only guys between thema nd getting their throats slit and their head removed. It is past time for the media to quit feigning neutrality in a war in which they are the target.

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Journalists are repeating in Iraq the errors (or worse) they made in Vietnam. Earlier this month, the Army sponsored a conference for retired general officers at Fort Carson, Colorado. They were addressed by recent returnees from Iraq, including Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

"All returnees agreed we are clearly winning the fight against the insurgents but are losing the public relations battle," said a retired admiral in an email to friends.

A disturbing anecdote from Col. McMaster illustrates why. His 3rd ACR broke the insurgents' hold of the city of Tal Afar last September in an operation which generated these effusive words of praise from the town's mayor:

"To the lion hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets...(you are) not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism."

Time magazine had a reporter and a photographer embedded with the 3rd ACR. When the battle was over, they filed a lengthy story and nearly 100 photographs.

"When the issue came out, the guts had been edited out of the reporter's story and none of the photographs he submitted were used," said the admiral, quoting Col. McMaster. "When the reporter questioned why his story was eviscerated, his editors...responded that the story and pictures were 'too heroic.'"

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That tells you what is wrong with that editor. But subsequent stories on Tal Afar have been written to undercut the success we had there. I can only conclude that some reporters and their editors are so invested in defeat they will do anything to achieve that objective. When a reporter turns in an objective story on a winning battle and the editors eviserate the story, that editor needs to become a story and be required toexplain why he is so invested in defeat.

There is more. If you are interested in more about the egrigous reporting on Tet, Peter Braestrup's Big Story gives the gory details.