Of course it’s enemy propaganda. That’s what terrorism is all about — i.e. horrific attacks that scare the will to fight out of the targeted populous. The media covers these attacks relentlessly while barely paying attention to what are troops really are doing.

That’s the thing that gets me. That the enemy is seeking to manipulate the media in order to convince us to quit the fight isn’t even a serious question. Of course they are. The alternative is their own destruction and certainly they understand this intimately. Yet the media, hyper-sensitive to being manipulated by the US military (and for the most part appropriately so), seems absolutely oblivious to being manipulated by the other side. I mean, a tool is a tool, right?

yours/
peter.

We haven’t started the surge — the full surge — yet. So let me have a few months.

and…

Petraeus told Logan the full contingent of extra troops would be on the ground in Iraq “in about two weeks or so … and you’re going to see the launch of a number of different operations in a number of areas, to go after al Qaeda and other extremist elements.”

The first day of operation Arrowhead Ripper was intense. The Army is giving full access to the battlefield, and while on base full access to the TOC (HQ) which means I see the raw truth on the ground, and as it feeds through the TOC. They are hiding nothing. Or if they are, it’s in plain view. (Special operations notwithstanding.) A reporter can see as much as he or she can stand.

…

The combat has only just begun, and media has now figured out this is serious business. During the morning brief (June 20th), Major Robbie Parke mentioned that CNN, TIME, Reuters and some others, are trying to get out here now. Problem is space. Looks like Gordon and I are mostly alone for now. Others are said to be in Baqubah, but if they are here, they are missing some of the most important parts, and if they were at the important commander’s meetings, I would have seen them.

Well, the New York Times reporter knew enough to be in the area, as did Michael Yon.

And not for nothing, 2 days ago, Bill Roggio reported this:

With the last U.S. combat brigade to hit the ground over the last two weeks as part of the surge, Multinational Forces Iraq has declared the beginning of “major combat operations” in the belts regions surrounding Baghdad. The Baghdad Belts, which included Eastern Anbar, northern Babil, and southern Salahadin and Diyala provinces, has long been a staging area for al Qaeda and insurgent operations into Baghdad, and a key part of the Baghdad Security Plan is denying these regions to the enemy.

And here’s Gen. Petraeus on the 16th at a press briefing:

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, I think the secretary has it right. In fact, literally in the last 24 hours we have launched a number of different offensive operations, in the Baghdad belt in particular, and we’re continuing a number of operations that have been ongoing in Baghdad itself.

I really wouldn’t want to be seen as an apologist for the main stream media. They are simply awful in some aspects on average days.

This is striking me more as a consequence of the deeply adversarial attitude between the military and the press. If the military hates the press for playing gotcha and cuts most of them out, then how is it some dastardly conspiracy when they don’t cover actions? Also, if Yon is saying a Times reporter is there, but he hasn’t happened to have posted his report yet, again what is the problem? He’s dependent on editors and print space – papers are not blogs, and bloggers don’t necessarily face the same constraints on posting.

And that’s sorta my last point. We shouldn’t have to be digging to find news about a major US offensive.

Here’s the front page of the website, and this is today’s front page of the dead tree version (web version here). Nothing.

Michael Gordon is a NYT reporter who is in the battle. Gordon will be an important resource. The commanders take a break from fighting each day to have meetings with each other, and Iraqi officers, and he comes off the battlefield with one of the commanders to the briefings. I saw Gordon today, his shirt stained white from sweat.

…

Gordon has been running with other soldiers, so it will be important to hear his accounts. From what I’ve read so far, Gordon has been very accurate and on target.
…

The combat has only just begun, and media has now figured out this is serious business. During the morning brief (June 20th), Major Robbie Parke mentioned that CNN, TIME, Reuters and some others, are trying to get out here now. Problem is space. Looks like Gordon and I are mostly alone for now. Others are said to be in Baqubah, but if they are here, they are missing some of the most important parts, and if they were at the important commander’s meetings, I would have seen them.

So it looks like they’re trying to get some people there, but it’s very after the fact. The fact that the blogosphere has more man power than all the major news agencies covering the biggest operation since the invasion is damning indeed.

This Reuters article is a good example of trying to present the facts in context.

Headline: U.S. troops set trap for militants near Baghdad

The U.S. military said on Thursday it was setting a trap to “eliminate” militants near Baghdad where 12 U.S. soldiers have died in the past two days.

Tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are pushing on with simultaneous operations in Baghdad and to the north, south and west of the capital under Operation Phantom Thunder, a new plan aimed at rooting out al Qaeda fighters and other militants.

The latest offensives, which began in the past week, follow the build-up of U.S. military forces in Iraq to 156,000 soldiers and aim to deny militants sanctuary in the farmlands and towns surrounding Baghdad.

“If you’ve got it properly cordoned then they’re going to flee into somebody’s arms. It’s a trap,” U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox said.

“To the extent that you can eliminate them, we will.” Hard fighting was expected in the next 45-60 days, he said.

Military commanders have said they anticipate greater casualties as their forces press on with a four-month-old Baghdad security crackdown and other operations around the city.

The current headline item at CNN is a perfect example: 12 U.S. troops killed over last 48 hours in Iraq

MSNBC has finally switched over to “Setting a ‘Trap’” w/ subtitle “15 troops killed in 3 days; military plans to set ‘trap’ to ‘eliminate’ militants” Wonder why they need the quotes around trap and eliminate. The editors must think people are ignorant and will believe that this operation will eliminate all militants and all violence.

Wait, so Kieth updates his post to include NYT coverage, while Michael complains the NYT isn’t covering it? I don’t get it.

Apparently you don’t. I never complained that the NYT isn’t covering it. What I pointed out is that they aren’t giving it anywhere near the same coverage as suicide blasts and IED explosions. If you’d click on the links I provided, you would see that there is nothing about Operation Arrowhead Ripper in the “top news headlines” while there are two headlines hailing bad news in Iraq:

At Least 12 U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq in 2 Days

Shiite Rivalries Slash at a Once Calm Iraqi City

And AO size is nice and all, but the rest test is force match up, which Roggio doesn’t have any info on yet — he estimates how many troops we’re throwing at the fighting, but information is scarce about what they’re facing.

That’s why I don’t put much stock in any of these initial reports – it’s easy to confuse forrests and trees.

AO about the size of New Jersey.

Michael, I don’t know how multi-page coverage in the AP and NY Times constitutes barely paying attention.

In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary … come again?

It should also be taken into account in our media’s coverage. To report the way they do is not objective, even if they truly are attempting to do so. It is to allow oneself to be picked up like a weapon and used as such, all the while claiming to be acting impartially. If so, it is an impartiality based in ignorance and an unwillingness to know the truth. If our military was busy trumpeting an occasional disgusting success while on a daily basis losing every fight involving more than two or three men, with casualties running at above a 10 to 1 ratio, unable to mount any effective opposition to their opponents other than to continue existing, but the media concentrated only on their occasional atrocity as a sign of their effectiveness, we would be contemptuous of them. That they do it for our enemies is pretty pathetic.

It is also very damaging, just as the favorable and slanted coverage they used to give our forces during WWII and Korea (where we were in far more desperate straits) worked to our advantage. If favorable coverage helps, and all believe it does, then unfavorable and dismissive coverage hurts. Whether it is justified or not does not change that. I don’t believe downplaying the successes we have had, as frustrating as the inability to end this is, is justified, especially given the brutal and terrible nature of those who oppose us. A true view of the real state of the insurgency is rarely attempted, to truly paint their own plight and to always report based on the best assessment of their and our capabilities would make the war seem far more “winnable” if still distasteful. We might still choose to leave, but not because of the “impossible to defeat” myth that has sprung up around guerrilla warfare. In fact, guerrilla’s themselves are rarely able to achieve their aims, as both Mao and Ho Chi Minh understood. They failed in Vietnam, they failed in Algeria, other factors were the key in both places, and Mao would have predicted as much. That doesn’t mean they can’t succeed here, but if so, it is likely to be because we decided to let them, and the media is the prime conveyor of that message.

Also, if the fighting is so intense and widespread, how would you suggest “comprehensive” coverage? All Yon and Roggio offer are anecdotes from the soldiers they happen to talk to; why this is more representative or accurate than the other anecdotes in other news stories on the fighting doesn’t immediately come to mind.

Michael, I don’t know how multi-page coverage in the AP and NY Times constitutes barely paying attention. It is a battle. No one knows how it is going to turn out. If it is irresponsible to report every single suicide bombing, wouldn’t it be similarly irresponsible to report every single little nuance of an ongoing battle? (I can imagine complaints of a report of, say, 14 U.S. casualties in 24 hours of fighting as similarly “propagandistic,” because it’s not sufficiently positive).

On a broader, perceptual level, I know that a lot of people – I consider myself among them – see this as just the latest plan of the dozen or so plans we’ve been presented with as “the key to solving Iraq.” It’s fatigue in a way, however unfair it may be. You tolerate trial and error (or “muddling,” as the Instapundit calls it) only so much until you conclude the people in charge simply have no idea what they’re doing and they’ve run out of ideas.

In light of this new offensive, do you think the major spike in attacks on the Green Zone is newsworthy? Or is that just enemy propaganda?

Of course it’s enemy propaganda. That’s what terrorism is all about — i.e. horrific attacks that scare the will to fight out of the targeted populous. The media covers these attacks relentlessly while barely paying attention to what are troops really are doing. A major offensive taking place should dominate the nightly news and the stories above the fold in every paper, but that is not the case. Which do you think gets more attention, Josh?

And then there’s the angle of every story. Attacks in the Green Zone are highlighted as set backs in the war and rarely, if ever, are such events identified as the terrorists seeking to grab headlines. Nobody is saying the media shouldn’t cover the bombings, but it would be nice if they would at least recognize how such things are used for propaganda, and how the MSM is quite complicit in spreading the word.

And I think you’re being selective about who’s reporting. The America-hating Associated Press is talking about “intense gunbattles in the streets and around the main market district as U.S. and Iraqi forces sought to clear the city of al Qaeda fighters.” And while the CS Monitor hasn’t run a story directly on the offensive, it did post a length story about attempts by the military to foster religious reconciliation — hardly a hostile stance to take.

In light of this new offensive, do you think the major spike in attacks on the Green Zone is newsworthy? Or is that just enemy propaganda?

You have a point about the suicide bombing being more important than say, a small breakout by a Single Tiger tank during WWII. They do have an outsized effect.

Still, almost no comprehensive coverage of the largest offensive of the war? I don’t know if it is mendacity, laziness or what, but it is a problem. I would also suggest, that unlike the Samarra bombing, these attacks, if they are within an overall atmosphere of improvement in Baghdad, even if still inadequate and tenuous, primary outsized effect is on us, rather than through Iraqi’s generally. Whose fault is that?

Does the suicide bombing really matter more than the killing, capture and disruption of the insurgents and others? We underestimate the effect our actions have upon the opposition because they have not surrendered, because they can still launch suicide attacks, because of their ridiculous pronouncements, because of the false claim of whack a mole.

However, absent all of our efforts how many more would they be able to carry out, how many areas would be fully under their control. If we looked at all of this through their eyes, are they so unimpressed? I don’t think so, and we have seen much evidence that their resolve and faith ebbs and flows as well as ours. The largest reason for its sustenance is the belief that we will leave. Absent that, it would likely be a far smaller resistance.

We have seen that when we do make an apparent commitment more flock to us or the government, to whoever is fighting the insurgency, people switch sides. Yet we squander that with our fecklessness. So it does matter when we are given a distorted view.

If this operation does not improve things significantly, it will not change the distortion in coverage, though it will be used to justify it, as we have seen over and over again. Not only does it not justify the distortion, it in fact is part of the reason for our operations relative lack of success, though that “lack of success” should be said with a caveat. Just staying in the fight, keeping them from getting more control, more freedom of movement is as important to our eventual success as it is to them. Long periods of seeming lack of progress are important. Attrition does matter as groundwork continues to be laid. If the operation does no more than keep the enemy on its heels, unable to expand their power it does accomplish a lot as we consolidate ours. Of course, that implies time, and media coverage such as this makes it more likely we will not have it.

there is a major offensive in a neighborhood of Iraq or that the sectarian violence elsewhere hasn’t yet been addressed?

Hmm, I hope I’m not getting to snarky, but you seem not to have read about the scope of this operation. It is not limited in scope to “a neighborhood of Iraq.” And that’s the point.

The corps level operation is being conducted in three zones in the Baghdad Belts — Diyala/southern Salahadin, northern Babil province, and eastern Anbar province — as well as inside Baghdad proper, where clearing operations continue in Sadr City and the Rashid district. Iraqi and Coalition forces are now moving into areas which were ignored in the past and served as safe havens for al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent groups.

If all the media is going to do is report on the latest disruption of progress, and not say much at all about what we are doing to interrupt the terrorist and insurgents plans, then, in the eyes of the general public, we must not be doing anything, and so, we are failing because there was A SUICIDE BOMBING.

Journalists and others seem to want to explain the lack and slant of coverage, because the situation is to complex to cover in depth in 30 seconds. GIVE ME A BREAK!!!

They can surely pull some airtime away from covering the latest bowel movements of celebrities to cover something that is truly important.

That’s the trick, isn’t it? Suicide attacks undo coalition progress — its difficult to avoid, especially when they (in cases like the Samarra bombings) represent such tremendous disruption on the cheap. So does it matter more that there is a major offensive in a neighborhood of Iraq, or that the sectarian violence elsewhere hasn’t yet been addressed?

I honestly can’t say. I don’t think it’s right to accuse the media of mendacity in this, as it’s not like these things (more suicide attacks) aren’t big deals. Scandal-mongering, perhaps, or yellow journalism — I could buy those. But there’s not much evidence yet that this new offensive/trickle/surge is going to accomplish much.

And remember: Yon and Roggio are just as biased and agenda-driven as the MSM… they just happen to come at it from the other side.