PERCEPTION IS REALITY

The American public is unhappy with the way the war in Iraq is going. We know this becuase the news media reports it ad nauseum. On any given day you'll see headlines like these:

Alabama poll: War not worth lost lives

Northwest Arkansas Poll Shows Opposition to War

Poll: Most Minnesotans oppose Bush troop surge

So why are so many people so unhappy with the conduct of the war? Because it's going badly. And how do they know this? Because the news media tells them so, of course.

Imagine for a moment that all you know about the war you learned from the mainstream media. Broadcast news and your local newspaper. No FOX News. No talk radio. No blogs. Just the old-school media. Here's what you'd know about the war:

The US has over 100,000 troops in Iraq. They're all young, uneducated, and poor. They live in spartan conditions on various bases throughout the country. They spend their days driving around Iraq in vehicles. Periodically, some of them are injured or killed by roadside bombs. Occasionally, they get so frustrated that they kill civilians, commit rape, and abuse innocent detainees.

That about sums it up. Note the items that are missing from the picture: no reports of the terrorists detained(apparently, all of the "abused" detainees are just innocent Iraqis being held for no reason), of weapons caches found, or of the heroics of our warriors.

Oh sure, they'll report on successes... if they're big enough; like the death of Zarqawi or the capture of Saddam. Of course, such reports are usually accompanied by analysis telling us (the ignorant masses) why it doesn't really matter. Even FOX News--which is supposedly a propaganda machine for the Bush administration--seldom reports on the day-to-day successes in the war.

In order to find stories like these, you have to go to places like the Multi-National Force - Iraq website. There you will not only find stories of success, you'll also get the bad news as well:

MNC-I Airmen Attacked

Roadside bomb strikes MND-B patrol

Search for missing Soldiers continues

It's sadly ironic that a military PR website--an unabashedly biased source--will give you a more balanced view of what's going on in Iraq than the "legitimate" media. Free press? More like bought and paid for.