What Would It Take For The MSM To Cover This?

My last two posts got me to thinking: How many successes are going uncovered by the MSM? So, I logged on to the MNF-Iraq website and did a simple search on torture victims, and this is what I found for January 2007.

Iraqi and Coalition Forces rescued 14 hostages (most of whom had been tortured), recovered the bodies of 9 torture victims who were killed while hostages of the terrorists, evacuated six family members who were being threatened by terrorists linked to al Qaeda in Iraq, captured 42 suspected terrorists in raids against terror cells that kidnapped and tortured Iraqi civilians, and captured an additional four terror cell leaders (one was the imam of the Al-Mahdi mosque, and another had ties to the senior-level of the al Qaeda in Iraq organization).

That does not include all of the weapons caches discovered. That does not include the hundreds of terrorists killed during recent crack-downs in Baghdad and other areas of Iraq. That does not include any of the training successes. That does not include any of the humanitarian or rebuilding efforts.

This good news for the Iraqis and the Coalition (and bad news for the terrorists) is not being reported by the MSM. Out of curiosity, does anyone think that this would be extensively covered if those who were rescued had alleged that they had been kidnapped and tortured by members of the U.S. military or other Coalition Forces? I think that allegations of U.S. or Coalition wrong-doing would have been run as big news, and I think that the failure of the MSM to provide the full picture from Iraq is one of the primary reasons for the perpetuation of the skewed perception that many Americans have regarding the war.

If you want to try an interesting test, ignore anything that the MSM has to say about the war on terror for the entire month of February, and get your information from the war zones from MNF-Iraq and Centcom. You will get the bad news in their press releases and stories, but you will also get a healthy dose of the good news.

Try that for a month and, after reading about the women's center in Assriya and the reopening of the al Haitham School north of Ramadi, as well as some of our inevitable setbacks, see if your perception of the war and what is happening changes at all. If it does, you may want to contact the big players in the MSM and ask them why they aren't covering everything that is taking place.

USMC 9971 OUT