According to the Washington Times, the U.S. press played a crutial role in the Marines loss of control in Fallujah back in 2004. What should have been a victory in a military fight, was anything but that:
“The outcome of a purely military contest in Fallujah was always a foregone conclusion ” coalition victory,” read the assessment, prepared by analysts at the U.S. Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC.
“But Fallujah was not simply a military action, it was a political and informational battle. … The effects of media coverage, enemy information operations and the fragility of the political environment conspired to force a halt to U.S. military operations,” concluded the assessment. …The authors said the press was “crucial to building political pressure to halt military operations,” from the Iraqi government and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which resulted in a “unilateral cease-fire” by U.S. forces on April 9, after just five days of combat operations.
During the negotiations that followed, top Bush administration officials demanded a solution that would not require the Marines to retake the town, according to the assessment.
This is really no surprise to those of us that payed attention to the press. Night after night, channel after channel, we heard the comparisons to Vietnam, our military can’t win, this is a civil war and bring the troops home. The Marines didn’t lose Fallujah, the press did.
Ed:
This is just a repeat of the Peter Arnett story. In the first Gulf War, Arnett famously repeated without any hint of skepticism the notion that the US bombed a baby-milk factory instead of a weapons factory. Years later, Eason Jordan would admit that CNN cooked its reporting to curry favor with Saddam Hussein, and would occasionally just read copy into the camera provided by the Saddam regime as though it was CNN’s own. Rather than treat the Al-Jazeera propaganda with any skepticism at all, the Western media instead regurgitated it while insisting that American military sources could not be trusted to provide honest accounting of the fight.
H/T to Memeorandum
Then there was WALTER KRONKITE and then there was PETER ARNET and who else do we have well then there was other treceroius liberal left-wing journalists and at least the WASHINGTON TIMES is conservative unlike the NEW YORK SLIMES and WASHINGTON COMPOST=:)
We have been saying this all along, and were dissed and dismissed by the Left. Well, as usual, WE WERE RIGHT. The only question is whether the American Leftists MSM did more damage than Al Jizzeera?