Keep the MSM's Feet to the Fire

For the past two weeks, I've been distressed by some events that have made big headlines. Among these events are Humvee armor issue and the worsening of the environment in Iraq. I believe I will be writing further on both of these topics, but tonight will be brief in order to get to my larger point, which is that the mainstream media may have a more successful time of spinning the news to tell the anti-war story they want to tell now that the election is over, because a large portion of us are no longer vigilant about getting "the rest of the story". We should be.

I offer exhibit one. A little short of two weeks ago, a soldier got his 15 minutes of fame, thanks to a tough question to Donald Rumsfeld, which was fed to him by a reporter. I'll give Rumsfeld credit. When you go into a Q&A, and you don't ask for the questions in advance, you're doing a no bullshit interview. The downside to this is it leaves you open to looking like a fool when you get hit by a tough question. Well, we already know that the reporter had a huge hand in creating a story rather than covering it. We'll leave aside the ethical issue with that, and instead look at the fact that large portions of the media ran, no, sprinted with this story, but made no effort to balance it out.

First, the Humvee was not designed to be an armored personnel carrier. It was designed to be a hardier version of the Jeep. This is the reason that the Army has had to retrofit these vehicles. In adding weight to the vehicles, they are also altering the performance of the vehicles. Now our situation right says that we probably should make that trade off, but that trade off is going to get other soldiers killed. The speed, mobility, and the gas mileage of the vehicles is going to decrease, which is going to make the vehicles easier targets. Also, because the vehicles were not designed to carry this extra weight full time, there are going to be more breakdowns of the vehicles. Breakdowns at the base snarl operations. Breakdowns on patrol can get you killed.

Second, the military was much further along in this process than we were led to believe. On this, I defer to Powerline (those guys at Powerline are damn good). They are linking to a press conference that discusses this issue. I am going to excerpt here the same passage they do:

The first point is that you'll recollect that one of the questions was the status of the 278 ACR; in other words, the date that we had the visit by the secretary of Defense, we had a question about their up-armoring status. When the question was asked, 20 vehicles remained to be up-armored at that point. We completed those 20 vehicles in the next day. And so over 800 vehicles from the 278 ACR were up-armored, and they are a part now of their total force that is operating up in Iraq.

Q On the 278th, can you repeat this? At the time the question was asked, the planted question, the unit had 784 of its 804 vehicles armored?

GEN. SPEAKES: Here is the overall solution that you see. And what we've had to do is -- the theater had to take care of 830 total vehicles. So this shows you the calculus that was used. Up north in Iraq, they drew 119 up-armored humvees from what we call stay-behind equipment. That is equipment from a force that was already up there. We went ahead and applied 38 add-on armor kits to piece of equipment they deployed over on a ship. They also had down in Kuwait 214 stay- behind equipment pieces that were add-on armor kits. And then over here they had 459 pieces of equipment that were given level-three protection. And so when you put all this together, that comes up with 830.

Q At the time of the question -- summarize this, now -- that unit that the kid was complaining about was mostly armored?

GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. In other words, we completed all the armoring within 24 hours of the time the question was asked.

Q If he hadn't asked that question, would the up-armoring have been accomplished within 24 hours?

GEN. SPEAKES: Yes. This was already an existing program.

So, what does this mean? It means that Rumsfeld was ambushed on a problem that had already been identified, and which was well on its way to being resolved, particularly for the unit in question. We came away from this story that this was a rampant problem, that soldiers were scrapping for their own lives, when in fact the military was well on its way to resolving the problem.

Next on my hit list is the coverage of the situation on the ground in Iraq right now. Are things getting worse? You bet they are. The media is not incorrect in telling you this. They are not rounding this story out, either, though. Successful elections in Iraq will be a big defeat for the insurgents. They are throwing everything they have at us and at the provisional government right now in an attempt to stave off that defeat. This is a pretty big moment of truth for this war. Think of it as this war's Tet. The question is, do we repeat our mistake here at home of giving up on the war just as we have an opportunity to win, or do we gut things out like our parents and grandparents did during World War II and see this thing through. I guarantee you, if the elections are successful on January 30, the insurgency will be significantly weaker on February 1st, and we'll be in a situation to start pounding nails in their coffin. But if we lose faith in the next 30 days, if we turn in mass against the war just because we don't have the patience for it, this thing is going to go on longer and be deadlier than it needs to be, just like it did in Vietnam.

I fear that now that the election is over, people who questioned everything they read and heard earlier this year are falling back into the habit of just casually listening to what is going on, and no longer looking for the rest of the story. Remember this: The media has a vested interest in undercutting the war effort. Things going badly means ratings, and ratings mean money and fame, and money and fame mean more to them than your relative over in Iraq, no matter what they tell you. Keep their feet to the fire.

UPDATE
Tech Central Station has a good article on the armor issue.