Countless Tears at Home
Somehow I don’t think any of the reporters shed any of those tears. Or for that matter, really care about those who did.

Who coined the term “the herd of independent minds”?

Another grim milestone was reached as the mooing herd of MSM toadies copied and pasted the text from one email blast for the gazillionth time, showing originality not seen since Olden Polynice typed his last English term paper and displaying ethics and honesty not seen since, well, the last time they shat out something similar.

In the San Diego Union, the top headline screams the 3,000/grim milestone thing. Then below it, they attempt a lame “explanation” of why Americans have so turned against the war. In this, they at least cite varying opinions among experts on the cause for the drop in support. But, of course, and hilariously, one factor never mentioned is …. relentless near-hysteria and exaggeration, and outright distortion, always in a direction likely to shake support for the war.

Speaking of which, in the usual composite of NYT/WaPo “news service” dreck that they use for their headline story, there is a throw-away line that is completely inaccurate - it is asserted that Iraqis are less likely than at some undefined earlier point to tip off Coalition forces to IEDs. On a macro level, this is spectacularly wrong, on a micro level, it’s meaningless, as said willingness to tip of Coalition or government forces varies constantly and usually in proportion to the presence and demonstrated seriousness of security forces. It’s dozens of false elements like this that add crucial spice to the demoralizing stew served to news consumers 24/7.

Just noticed another gem. Iraq is “near unraveling” along sectarian lines. No evidence or analysis to support this incredible and headline-deserving observation. No explanation as to whether this represents an improvement or worsening of the previously asserted condition: “on the brink of civil war”.

It’s a shame we have no government that could actually try to communicate facts to the electorate or correct the record of media distortion. Oh, wait …..

I’m no right-wing horse’s ass — I’m a centrist horse’s ass. Which is the more historically significant event: the first dictator to ever be formally tried and executed for even a tiny portion of his crimes; or the KIA count in the biggest walkover since the Spanish-American War? Guess I’ll never be a headline writer.

Get out much, John? Some of us have spent more than a year in the belly of the beast, working with the media in Iraq, seeing how poorly they “cover” the “real news”.

We’ve seen how they completely ignore huge swaths of “real news”, how they mangle other stories beyond recognition. We’ve stood by and choked back guffaws when they (often as not youngsters with not an ounce of wisdom of any sort) utter the most preposterous, ignorant things, or ask the silliest questions. We’ve been told by bureau chiefs how they’ve had to issue edicts within their Baghdad offices that their Iraqi (i.e., Sunni) employees not openly cheer images of burning US military vehicles on TVs in the bureau. Gee, ya think reliance on local employees of this sort affects the way they are even able to do “their job”?

Ever been on the end of a conversation with a major wire-service bureau chief when he’s hysterically and acidly snarking that “we don’t need this, we could be out covering the shooting of pregnant women by US soldiers!”, all in response to a dispute over the make-up of a press pool for a day trip out of Baghdad, a dispute in which the bureau chief was clearly wrong? What sort of professionalism, mindset, and integrity do such outbursts indicate to you, John?

Ever been at the site of a major ongoing story in Baghdad for months and witnessed the field reporters’ dispatches being reshaped by editors in London and New York into unrecognizable, typical negative distortions of actual facts unfolding in Iraq? Ever seen the reporters’ frustrations that their work was being wasted, and that the public was being fed incorrect information and impressions? Ever seen this process over the course of months, and - sure enough - when a true “milestone” in the process eventually came along, seen it completely twisted beyond recognition thanks to the foundation of distorted information that had shaped most peoples’ understanding of the process?

Didn’t think so. Your use of “right wing” indicates a non-substantive mindset, but if I’m wrong about that, let me assure you should be extremely uncomfortable with the quality of information you are receiving through the major media. There are major problems on the ground in Iraq, and spectacular problems back at editorial offices.

With a silent government and a dysfunctional media, anyone who feels comfortable with the information they have about Iraqi is probably not thinking hard enough. Pretending that the pathetic media performance is a case of them “just doing their job” is not thinking at all.

But why is it even a milestone, John? Did we judge our success against the Japanese against the 2,403 Americans killed at Pearl Harbor? Did the media then declare a “milestone” when the first 2,403 Americans were killed in offensive operations against the Japanese?

Yes I know, the war in the Pacific was a lot more popular than the one in Iraq. But I don’t see how that changes things, unless you’re going to argue that these “milestones” only count when a war has reached a certain level of unpopularity.

“If you don’t think hitting such a milestone in an increasingly unpopular war isn’t an obvious huge story…”

No, it’s not obvious, it’s not huge, and it’s not a story. Horse’s ass? You should check to see if there are flies circling your mouth.

How I love to hear you howl. There is nothing so sweet to my ears as the keening of the smug, self-righteous ideologues, who by their fury expose their fear that somehow, in spite of all their efforts to achieve nobility, everything they think and say is utterly, irrefutably and tragically…wrong.

you guys are nuts. 3,000 deaths is a sad, important milestone. maybe you should think about how if most of the media is covering it then it might be a big deal. stop acting like there’s some left-wing media conspiracy.

> 3,000 deaths is a sad, important milestone.

Really? Then feel free to cite its use in any other circumstance. What? MSM is ginning up “milestones” the way Hallmark invents holidays?

> maybe you should think about how if most of the media is covering it then it might be a big deal.

Where there’s smoke, there’s often someone running a smoke making machine.

If some ordinary biz “happened” to act so much in lock-step, MSM would be screaming anti-trust and collusion. I now know why they’re so quick to make that accusation - it is how they work.

Oh, Rick. And 3001 deaths are…sadder, more important, and maybe this time, a kilometerstone? If most of the media are covering it, then it must be a big deal? You mean like swine flu? Y2K disasters? Or…dare I say…global warming?

Drew, I believe the total for that day was about 2.5 times the losses we’ve suffered in Iraq. Therefore, this blog and these comments must all be in German, since clearly we lost WWII that day.

There is a trail I walk near my home where there is a marker every half-mile. I suppose you could call them half-milestones. For me, not very fit, these are important markers. Once I’ve passed three of them, it’s time to head back. For a marathoner, they are to be noted as small portions of a longer journey.

The mainstream media, with its 24 hour news cycle, goes in big for sprints. It lacks the patience for a marathon. 3000 dead is a grim milestone for them. Having Iraq as the top news item through multiple sweeps periods is even grimmer: how do you come up with new, fresh angles for a war that just keeps being a war?

Our marking of this and that milestone compares with a commercial culture that lives from quarterly earnings report to quarterly earnings report. But America is capable of better things.

According to the D-Day museum, on D-Day, we lost 6600 men. That’s not for the whole Battle of Normandy, mind you, just for the landing. On the one hand, our 3000 dead in Iraq is a grim milestone for America today. On the other hand, we’ve been through days where we lost twice that many men, and couldn’t even issue a grim milestone update at the 5,000 (!) mark because we were in the middle of a battle and had no idea.

Our war in Iraq is one part of a marathon effort to bring to heel fascism passing under Islam’s banner. Iraq is not, in fact, a war, but one battle in this war. And as 9/11 taught us, if we fail to bring this war to the enemy, they will bring it to us. So yes, let us mark this “grim milestone” of 3000 dead. But let us remember that a milestone only tells you that you’ve gone a mile. It says nothing about how far you plan to go, or how far you have to go.

It is to our amazing good fortune that we can mark our 3,000 fatality with newspaper headlines, as opposed to learning a month later that it might have happened some time between 10:00 and 8:30 on the 20th. This shows that we are pacing ourselves in this steady as she goes marathon. And thank God for that, for we’ve still a long ways to run. We just passed another half-mile marker, I would guess, which bears noting, but for which we unfortunately cannot afford to stop.

Some of the indignant responses about the significance of the 3000 American dead obscure a central point being made by Bill, one that is surprisingly even lost on people who are allegedly expert at using words to tell stories and convey information- all these expressions use an identical phrase- grim milestone- that gets trottted out verbatim periodically.

IF the idea is to emphasize the horror and tragedy (and I think that these exist, even when the cause is just) one could pick up a thesaurus or something. “Glum milepost” hops out at me from thesaurus.com. Maybe it lacks the punch of ‘grim milestone’, but it would have some claim to originality.

I don’t mock the suffering, but rather, the pretensions of those who deign to tell us when there are inflection points in the conflict that should influence how we see it without taking the time to demonstrate that this is so.

If it is especially significant news, news organizations should make that case. Perhaps not identically in the way they did when there were 2000 troops dead, if they seek to convince people that something has shifted. Otherwise, it comes off looking like liberal, anti-war boilerplate. What is noteworthy risks becoming little more than noise, or, in this case, a case study in self-parody.

Many of us laugh when Jon Stewart strings together soundbites of politicians keeping on message using the same phrase again and again. Real news shouldn’t look like that, though.

When the death toll has risen another thousand, something surely worth pausing for has happened, and yet precisely the same refrain is trotted out by the press, might not one be forgiven for assuming that the dirge being piped is not 100% sincere?

To answer Mr. Ettore, I would indeed expect major news outlets to leap on this. I would, however, expect them to occasionally use a different turn of phrase as a condition for assuming they had the brains to which Mr. Ettore lays claim for them.

Make a firewall or something.
Humm, a wall of fire around collections of sub-human terrorist hideouts?

to much to ask that they [anyone] would point out how many casualties had happened in a similar amount of time in another war. to give a frame of reference… or something. MSM always compares to Viet Nam, so perhaps that would be a good comparison… let’s see approximately 500,000 maximum force size or 4 times the current deployment, major US deathtoll approximately 58,000 total. which is about 20 times more. Then naturally we could go down the line and compare time frames, discuss the modernization of medicine that saves lives, and so forth.

The bottom line is that without a frame of reference, the numbers are meaningful only for the solemn matter of grief and rememberance. They don’t give you a position or direction within the war… and they never have.