STING2 said:
Prior to the first 1991 Gulf War, the media was alive with reports about how the United States new weapons purchased during the 1980s did not work and were not good enough. The media was filled with predictions that up to 50,000 US troops would die when they attempted to retake Kuwait from Iraqi forces. Frank Sesno of CNN had a two hour special where he attacked US Army systems like the M1 Tank, the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle as being vulnerable and unreliable. They ignored what the military had told them about the performance of the vehicles as well as other weapon systems. One Journalist, can't remember the name, was estatic about the fact that "all the Pentagons toys are not going to work".
I don't think there has ever been a group of people that were proved so profoundly wrong about everything they said about the military's weapons as well as the military itself. I could go into specific detail about how every claim made by the media about the US military and US weaponry purchased during the Reagan build up was proved wrong during the 1991 Gulf War. They had an opportunity to produce and objective and accurate picture prior to the start of the war with evidences and sources from military and non-military sources, but instead they produced what proved to be a laughable and embarrassing critique of the US military and the capabilities of its weapons.
The job of every reporter should be to produce reports that are informed, honest, accurate, unbiased, and consider various sources, instead of these sensational documentary's that only use questionable sources that produce an hour long show that says the US military will get crushed as it crosses the border.
No organization can claim to be perfect, but you will not receive more accurate and honest information from another organization than you will from the US military in regards to its abilities and performance on the battlefield. The US military has one purpose, to serve and protect the United States Of America. Thats a bit different than those competing for market share and selling Newspapers and Magazines.
If you have evidence that the above DOD numbers are incorrect, lets see it. If there is anything that cannot be taken at face value, its your average civilian reporting on the US military and US foreign policy. These people should take some time to sufficiently educate themselves on these issues, before they attempt to analyze and report on them.
i'm sorry, but this is a gigantic load of crap.
do you only read Salon as "civilian" journalism?
besides, you don't understand how the news makes money. it's not about circulation but about advertisitng, and because no one wants to piss off the advertisters, an inherent corporate bias manifests itself, especially in television news, and this bias tends to be conservative.
again, it's not INCORRECT numbers but INCOMPLETE numbers. your posts offer a highly selective, cherry-picked vision of reality, kind of how you go around trumpeting a "majority" by Bush Jr. when he barely won the election -- 3% is not a landslide, it's very nearly a tie, and the "majority" you point to (51%) isn't much of a majority and due to the lack of credible 3rd party candidates in 2004 that we previously have had in every election since 1988.
you do this consistently, about a multitude of issues, and this isn't a personal attack (though i expect moaning) -- it is a critique of how you present facts and use them to build arguments.
as for the above post, i can only go through this so many times. most of what you wrote above as NOTHING to do with the difficulty of National Guard recruiting and retention over the past 3 years -- you've gone onto some masturbatory soliloquy about weapons when that's utterly inconsequential to what is being discussed. i'd love to see you cite each and everyone of these articles you seem to remember off the top of your head -- though i don't hear you complaining when the newspapers get things wrong in your favor, like Judy Miller and the NYT getting WMDs incredibly wrong as she was led around by Ahmed Chalabi, administration stooges both.
and i love "your average civilian." how condescending. how elitist. how junta-like.
most journalists are deeply educated in the issues they cover, and their job is to dig past the spin, dig past the DOD representation of events (which isn't by default incorrect, but it must be clarified).