COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Well, this Lieutenant Colonel serving near Fallujah has some ideas:

What noticeably was missing were accounts of the atrocities committed by the Mehdi Militia -- Muqtada Al Sadr's band of henchmen. While the media was busy bashing the Coalition, Muqtada's boys were kidnapping policemen, city council members and anyone else accused of supporting the Coalition or the new government, trying them in a kangaroo court based on Islamic Shari'a law, then brutally torturing and executing them for their "crimes." What the media didn't show or write about were the two hundred-plus headless bodies found in the main mosque there, or the body that was put into a bread oven and baked. Nor did they show the world the hundreds of thousands of mortar, artillery and small arms rounds found within the "sacred" walls of the mosque. Also missing from the coverage was the huge cache of weapons found in Muqtada's "political" headquarters nearby. No, none of this made it to the screen or to print. All anyone showed were the few chipped tiles on the dome of the mosque and discussion centered on how we, the Coalition, had somehow done wrong.

The horribly disfigured and disemboweled corpse of the woman in Fallujah I knew about. I didn't know about 200 headless bodies in the mosque, nor the body in the oven. And I tried to follow things reasonably closely during that time, through the media.

I tell you, every time I think I have my mind wrapped around how ghoulish these terrorists are, they manage to nauseate me again.

They have become no longer human. They've become orcs. We do these people a favor by killing them, if only to put them out their own mouth-foaming, rabid, blood-fetishizing miserable existence.

I don't think all of the insurgents are this way. Or even most of them. I'll grant the ordinary insurgent their fundamental humanity. But there were obviously enough of these human cockroaches in Najaf to drag two hundred souls into a mosque, and then behead them one after the other.

And then someone decided that wasn't enough, they had to put someone in a baking oven?

If the media didn't cover that, then maybe they need to be put through the same treatment as the people of Dresden after the liberation of Dachau.

Within about an hour of our entry, events were under control. Guard posts were set up, and communications were established with the inmates. We informed them that we could not release them immediately but that food and medical assistance would arrive soon. The dead, numbering about nine thousand, were later buried with the forced assistance of the good citizens of the city of Dachau.

The press would scream and bitch, of course. But they'd have to file something. They couldn't ignore the story.

Read the whole thing. Thank God for blogs and email. Ten years ago, this Lieutenant Colonel's media critique could not have gotten out. Or it would have been crammed into a 'letters to the editor' page in fifty words or less, next to the nutball conspiracy theorists and not taken seriously.

Highlights:

The number of attacks in the greater Al Anbar Province is down by at least 70-80% from late October -- before Operation Al Fajar began.

...

Recently, when a Coalition spokesman tried to let TV networks in on opening moves in the Fallujah operation, they misconstrued the events for something they were not and then blamed the military for their gullibility. CNN recently aired a "special report" in which the cable network accused the military of lying to it and others about the beginning of the Fallujah operation. The incident referred to took place in October when a Marine public affairs officer called media representatives and told them that an operation was about to begin. Reporters rushed to the outskirts of Fallujah to see what they assumed was going to be the beginning of the main attack on the city. As it turned out, what they saw were tactical "feints" designed to confuse the enemy about the timing of the main attack, then planned to take place weeks later.

Once the network realized that major combat operations wouldn't start for several more weeks, CNN alleged that the Marines had used them as a tool for their deception operation. Now, they say they want answers from the military and the administration on the matter. The reality appears to be that in their zeal to scoop their competition, CNN and others took the information they were given and turned it into what they wanted it to be. Did the military lie to the media: no. It is specifically against regulations to provide misinformation to the press. However, did the military planners anticipate that reporters would take the ball and run with it, adding to the overall deception plan? Possibly. Is that unprecedented or illegal? Of course not.

I remember that controversy when it came out a few months back. I remember marveling at the arrogance of these reporters. Sure, no one likes to be used. But who the Hell are they to think themselves above being used? Al Zarqawi uses them every day. And the press uses people around them every day. Shamelessly. You don't think Mary Mapes was using Bill Burkett to ingratiate herself with Joe Lockhart? Reporters are the biggest users on the planet. They use American soldiers on a daily basis. I saw that as a battalion S-1 hosting local media events in Miami the day we got formally alerted. I saw TV reporters shamelessly arranging my soldiers behind them to create a dramatic backdrop.

Using my soldiers.

Ok. Nothing wrong with that. I want them to tell their story. And I want them to tell it in an engaging manner. But let's not pretend nobody's using anybody. I was using the reporters right back, because I wanted my soldiers to get credit for their sacrifices, and I wanted to put a human face on the story, because that way I have fewer soldiers with civilian employer problems down the road.

The thing is, I guess maybe reporters are sometimes too stupid to figure that out.

As individuals, they're usually very smart. And some of them are my best friends. But as a group, traveling in packs, and trying to outdo each other and play to impress each other, rather than the public they serve, they're insufferable. It's like they get retarded. I've never seen anything like it.

Or, have they even read Mao Zedung's theories on insurgencies, or Nygen Giap's, or maybe Che' Gueverra's? Have they seen any of Sun Zsu's work lately? Who are these guys? It's time to start studying, folks. If a journalist doesn't recognize the names on this list, he or she probably isn't qualified to assess the state of this or any other campaign's progress.

Well, I read all these guys by the time I was out of high school. Yeah, I'm whacked that way. So I pretty much expect any journalist covering a counterinsurgency to be conversant with these ideas.

Splash, out

Jason