Hating Rummy
God, I hate Rummy. See items #4 and #6 in this post I published earlier. Oh, and based on what my cousin has to say, a soldier who just returned a couple months ago from 9 months in Fallujah, the story you never see published is how many of our troops are committing suicide over there. Sad and scary.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.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited
Listening: Tony Bennett - The Christmas Album - Snowfall
Reading: Two Sweaters for my Father - Perri Klass
posted by LA @ 10:47 AM
2 Comments:
Hello LA. Thought I'd visit your mirror. Hope I'm not being a pane in the glass.
You're pretty prolific here. Good stuff, too.
I started mine some time ago and have not kept up with it. I've written a few things, but mostly to entertain myself until my son becomes more comp literate and interested in all things cyber. Well, I won't take up too much time when I have very little to say except you've an entertaining blog that duly presents your intelligence and wit. Take care.
FMouie to youie.
Thanks, FMouie. Keep on with those great parodies at Dlisted, they are a scream!
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