rmsharpe said:
Despite your beliefs, I'm most certainly not a carbon-copy of Adolf Hitler!
In all seriousness, I can't recall any war in U.S. history that was won only by giving the straight facts all of the time.
It's incredibly hard to resist when you pull out a quote which is almost an exact carbon-copy of one of Hitler's most infamous. If you don't like it blame yourself for using Hitler's words on the value of truth in warfare to describe your personal philosophy on the issue. Hell, you even go so far as to use the term "sedition" to describe the news about Haditha as if any bad news about America is treachery. You also imply that anyone who reports bad things about America in Iraq is to blame for American deaths in Iraq, going so far as to compare reporters with people telling Iraqis how to make bombs to blow up American soldiers. You also advocate planting phony news stories and misinformation to make America look good. I've heard plenty of this bullfeathers before in history.
No-one is saying you are a carbon copy of Hitler in terms of say killing off the Jewish population of the world. I was hoping to put a few similar quotes from Communist dictators like Mao as well, except I couldn't find them easily (damn hypocrite Mao saying that Communists should welcome criticism. Yeah, as if he ever did that...). However, the impression that you give is that your opinion on "media control in war" greatly resembles that of dictators like Hitler and Mao. That is, the truth is not important, only victory. If you look at history you will see that tyrants of very different beliefs and persuasions - religious, fascist, communist, just plain garden-variety military generals employ very similar tactics and one of these beliefs common to all dictators is the same as yours - the truth is not important, only victory. The whole, "anyone who says a negative word about the homeland is a traitor" also has echoes in history.
It seems that you don't have much faith in your fellow countrymen to make their own informed decisions. Then, why even bother having a democracy? An essential part of democracy is having an informed populace. If the only news that gets to a people is approved by the government, then what use is there for voting except as a sham you can use to go to other countries and say "Hey, we got a democracy!"? Having a free press with few restrictions is not just "a nice thing". Without it, you don't have democracy at all. Sometimes you may not like what it has to say but such is the price of democracy. Not everyone will agree with you. The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is in a democracy this is acceptable. In a dictatorship the person who disagrees, esp. if it is against the government line, is a traitor. In a dictatorship things the government doesn't like aren't published for the "good of the nation". Your position seems to be much closer to the later rather than the former. Obviously you don't understand what democracy is which is ironic considering your super-American-patriot persona.
You say the news articles about Abu Graib and Haditha harm American troops. You could equally and with just as much validity say that outlets like Fox News and Washington Times are Bush propaganda outlets that by putting the appropriate slant on things incite Americans into senseless wars which cause numerous deaths, both military and civilian and irrepairably harm America and hence *they* are the true traitors to the country and should be shut down as soon as possible.
The news coming out of Iraq isn't *that* bad compared to other wars even America has been in. If it was a war that Americans truly thought was important and one which they truly thought was critical to their safety, this level of bad news wouldn't be enough to cause support for the war to collapse. It's a simple rule. If the foundations isn't strong, the structure built on top of it isn't going to be strong. And the "reasons" for going to war in Iraq in the first place were always nebulous and not very clear-cut to most people esp. since the most solid part (WMD) was discredited. For the most part they took the form of a few generic sounding sound-bites and slogans. Is it any wonder that at the first hint of a storm the house of cards starts to fall down? Instead of blaming the wind maybe you should take a more careful look at the materials and design of the house.
Also, the American media you are lambasting now was the same media whose unquestioning hype over Saddam's supposed WMD e.g. the constant stream of "information" from Iraqi exiles, front page stories of exclusive "leaks" from "top officials" is what allowed Bush to go to war in Iraq the first place. You know what they say, live by the sword, die by the sword. If Iraq is a war that was created by media hype then what is the problem of it dying by media hype. If the original reasons for the war had anymore substance to it than media hype then support should easily be able to withstand media hype.
One of the best descriptions of the Iraqi war I've seen is:
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060605/NEWS/606050326/1039
And just as with Vietnam, those who pushed hardest for this war will blame its failure on their usual set of villains a traitorous media, critical politicians, etc. who supposedly undercut the national will we needed to fight and win it.
And it will all be nonsense.
The truth is, the gap between the problem and our will to fix it has existed from the moment this invasion was conceived. It was the fundamental flaw in the Bush policy, the single thing that doomed it to failure.
If we were going to invade and occupy Iraq, we should have done so with hundreds of thousands of troops, after months of intensive planning. We should have committed ourselves to spending as much money as it took, as much time as it took, as many lives as it took to ensure Iraq's security.
But that level of national will did not exist, and the Bush administration knew it. Even in the wake of Sept. 11, they knew that the American people would never buy an optional war that large and expensive. They also knew that without a draft, they lacked the manpower that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki and others told them they needed.
Yet they wanted this war so badly they yearned in their bones to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein and establish American military power in the heart of the Middle East that they went ahead and did it anyway.
Since the American people wouldn't buy a big war, we got sold a tidy war, a war in which "mission accomplished" could be declared quickly and Iraq could fund its own reconstruction. It was a fake war, an illusion of war, a war deceptively downsized to fit political will and not reality.
No wise leader does that. No wise leader commits his nation to a war he suspects it is not prepared to win, and we will pay a heavy price for that miscalculation.
Much as we might like to withdraw, we cannot, not for years, not without greatly compounding what is already the single biggest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history.
Iraq is a war built on a house of cards. Will is failing now because the will to fix the magnitude of problem Iraq represents never existed in the first place. This sort of thing happened before you know. When Japan invaded China they thought it was going to be easy. A short period of time, a little bit of money, a few troops easy, simple. When the Japanese realised this very serious miscalculation they were unfortunately a totalarian dictatorship with a brainwashed population and thus the government was able to get the people's "consent" and participation. The US is unfortunately for you not a dictatorship with a brainwashed population. It's rather interesting as one of the key Japanese miscalculations was that they underestimated the rise of Han Chinese nationalism. They were used to dealing with the Qing dynasty which being foreign could not use the Han nationalism card. However, once the Qing dynasty fell, the groups that took over were native Han Chinese and unfortunately for Japan, the time they decided to invade was the same time in Chinese history where the rise of nationalism occurred. Hence, instead of surrendering easily as the Japanese expected, the Chinese fought on, nationalism allowing them to continue taking horrible losses. The Japanese severely misread local sentiment in China. The Japanese sent more troops to fight the Chinese then they did the Americans.
As for in Iraq - unless you have a Nazi style totalarian regime you cannot hide the facts. They will spread through rumour. And in the regions affected everyone will know esp. with the strong tribal networks in the countryside. Iraqis are not stupid. If network/paper X gets a reputation for being an American shill then people will simply not trust those sources. And any source which has too many positive stories will set off the bullfeathers meter in every Iraqi. Then the only source will be rumour and if you think that the media sensationalises thing you haven't seen what rumour can do. Also as soon as the US gets a reputation for manipulating the media, it's reputation for democracy and free press will go down the toilet everywhere. No-one will trust anything the US puts out. In fact, every single story that is positive about the US, whether it is manipulated by the US or not will be considered American propaganda. Basically, people are not that stupid.
Propaganda seduces by telling people what they already believe is true, reinforcing it and reducing any doubt in this preexisting internal picture. If you have nothing to build on it is useless. Unless the average Iraqi already believes that Americans are the good guys and things are going swell and geez, Haditha never happened because America would never do that, propaganda is not going to work. Unless the average Iraqi already loves America it is not going to work. Unless you go for the complete totalarian brainwashing approaching where all information in the country is controlled by the government i.e. no free press. Al-Jazeera is so successful for the same reason Fox is so successful. They both tell their target audience what they *want* to hear. What you are advocating would be worse than useless. It will destroy what is left of America's credibility and reputation.
That one seemed neutral, balanced and objective. I think I can safely say that you are exaggerating and painting the entire media as liberal america-haters 
