Wars

Power Line posted:

Douglas Wood, who was freed by Iraqi and American soldiers after being held as a hostage by Iraqi terrorists for nearly seven weeks, has apologized to President Bush and Prime Minister John Howard for his coerced plea that coalition troops be withdrawn from Iraq:

"Frankly, I'd like to apologize to both President Bush and Prime Minister [John] Howard for the things I said under duress," said Mr. Wood, with his American wife, Yvonne Given, and his brothers, Vernon and Malcolm, and their wives by his side.

"I actually believe that I am proof positive that the current policy of training the Iraqi army ... works because it was Iraqis that got me out," he said.

Howard said that no apology was necessary, a sentiment that President Bush would undoubtedly echo. It reminds me, though, of how many times the news media have breathlessly repeated such calls for withdrawal by terrified hostages. As though they meant something.

But, Powerline, to the media they DO mean something. They mean an opportunity to put our effort in Iraq in the worst light possible, without serious analysis or context, and with lots of emotion attached. It's why they fought so hard to show pictures of those flag-draped caskets, why ABC's Nightline promoted their show given over entirely to the somber reading of the names of our war dead, and so on.

The terrorists produce their tapes of weeping hostages pleading that we stop killing innocent Iraqis and withdraw our forces, in the certain knowledge that our media will rush to display that garbage to the world. By any accounting, this is doing propaganda work for the enemy.

But there is no contradiction involved for our liberal media, because for them the enemy that must be defeated is Bush. Declaring defeat in Iraq, and then working to make that a perceptual reality, is a key strategy in their war against this administration. There is no other conceivable rationale for the NYT to put Abu Ghraib on its front page for 33 straight days.

Finally, they are able to report that public support for the war is falling. Given the relentless media jihad, it's slightly puzzling that it hasn't fallen to zero. But they're working on it. One US officer in Iraq wrote that he had $130 million in development projects going in his sector, but was frustrated that couldn't find any reporter interested in covering any of it. How very naive of him. A development project will get media coverage when a terrorist kills its Iraqi administrator or destroys it completely with a car bomb, not otherwise. Images of futility and defeat are the currency of value. The officer has his war to fight, the media have theirs.

Byron