Rumsfeld Assails U.S. News Coverage From Iraq (Too Much About Troop Death)

Rumsfeld Assails U.S. News Coverage From Iraq
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By Will Dunham, Reuters

WASHINGTON (Dec. 5) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld assailed U.S. news coverage of the Iraq war on Monday and accused journalists of rushing to find fault with the United States and its military.

He spoke just days after the U.S. military acknowledged that it had paid Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American news stories written by an "information operations" task force. Rumsfeld complained that the issue "has been pounded in the media" but "we don't know what the facts are yet."
"We've arrived at a strange time in this country where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press, and reported and spread around the world, often with little context and little scrutiny, let alone correction or accountability after the fact," Rumsfeld told an academic audience.

Opinion polls show eroding public support for the war and declining confidence in President Bush's leadership as the U.S. military death toll, now at 2,127, climbs.

Rumsfeld accused news organizations of focusing on the deaths of U.S. troops while offering little context about the cause for which they died.

"You couldn't tell the full story of Iwo Jima simply by listing the nearly 26,000 Americans that were casualties in a brief 40 days at Iwo Jima," Rumsfeld said of the World War Two battle against the Japanese for the small Pacific island.

"So too, in Iraq, it's appropriate to note not only how many Americans have been killed -- and may God bless them and their families -- but what they died for, or more accurately what they lived for," Rumsfeld said in his speech at the John Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

'TOUGH JOB'

Rumsfeld said journalists had a tough job in Iraq.

"For starters, it must be jarring for reporters to leave the United States, arrive in a country that is so different, where they have to worry about their personal safety, and then being rushed to a scene of a bomb, car bomb or a shooting and have little opportunity to see the rest of the country," Rumsfeld said.

Sixty journalists have been killed covering the Iraq war since the March 2003 invasion, including at least 13 killed by U.S. forces, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Another 22 media workers such as drivers and translators also have been killed, the group says.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican, pressed Rumsfeld in September to address concerns about the increased detentions and shootings by U.S. forces of reporters in Iraq.



12/05/05 14:13 ET

The death toll in Iraq is very low compared to other wars America's been invloved in.

In the first three years of full-intervention in Vietnam the death toll was only about 2000 as well. You're talking about this war as if its over, which it patently is not.

And given that unlike Vietnam, this war was first fought against a nation with practically no serious defence (thanks to years of sanctions), and then against a rag-bag of nationalists, saddamists and alleged al qaeda fighters I think that 2000 dead is pretty fuckin high. Also, that's not taking into account the injured who will not be able to fight again. The official figure for injuries is 15,881 - but I have no idea of the fit/unfit for return to duty breakdown of that.

It's not going to go on for much longer, at least with America running the show (officially). While the iraqi army is imcompentent as fuck, they're improving. There's no way it'll extend past the next election anyway. If the war's still going on, there's no way a pro-war candidate'll get elected.

Even if we've go tto vote in a third party. Hillary's got a good chance to be nominated, and she's pro war. That sets up the possibility of the only candidate anti-wart being third party, which would make a very interesting election.