Gloom. Despair. Agony. Oh, my.
If you read the papers or watch the news, you probably assume we?re losing in Iraq, since nearly all the pictures you see from there are negative. And sadly, some members of the media are no longer content to merely find and report bad news. They?re literally creating the news, and using our troops as props.
During a recent town-hall meeting in Kuwait, Specialist Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee National Guard pressed Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of armor on some army trucks. The exchange was played up as a regular soldier making his boss face an unpleasant truth. As it turns out, though, a newspaper reporter from The Chattanooga Times Free Press drew up Wilson?s question.
?I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions, so I brought two of them along with me as my escorts,? reporter Edward Lee Pitts wrote in an e-mail to his colleagues. ?Beforehand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have.? Pitts went so far as to search out the man with the microphone for the event to make sure ?his? soldier got a chance to ask his question.
Now, this isn?t to say that the lack of protection for our troops isn?t a serious problem. We shouldn?t be sending people into combat without all the tools they need to be safe. Other soldiers cheered Wilson?s question, so this is clearly something they?re concerned about. Still, the military is working on the problem. Military columnist Joseph L. Galloway recently reported that, ?every Humvee requiring armor in the combat zone will have it within 90 days.?
The problem here is that, while journalists focus on the negative, they?re missing the positives.
Of course soldiers have some complaints. Every soldier who?s ever gone to war anywhere had some complaints. But the story you?re not reading is that, despite all the complaints, the American military is committed to the war in Iraq and the overall war against terrorism.
In fact, the service members who?ve been called to Iraq are re-enlisting in impressive numbers. ?Retention is higher in the units that have been mobilized than across the force, and across the force it is high,? Brig. Gen. Frank Grass, deputy director of the Army National Guard, told the American Forces Press Service.