Exactly. The entire concept of a "fast war" was invented by people outside the administration in the first place. Nobody in the administration has said anything remotely resembling that; in fact the president and everyone else in the administration have consistently warned against taking that view.
Once the media had planted their invented "fact", they were then free to find fault with it, blame the administration for screwing everything up and if the administration tried to "deny" this media-manufactured fact, they would then look like liars. The media can't just say what someone else says. They must offer their interpretations. Otherwise, what's the point of watching them move their mouths at all? They then broadcast an interpretation of a guess. Which is fine, that's not much of a problem for the actual military planners unless somebody accidentally guesses the truth.
Another prime example is the media "analysis" of the tactics. Someone who is no longer a general, but whom the call "General" has an opinion about some tactic, but he doesn't know what the tactics are, so he is guessing. Then his guess doesn't quite fit with what happened yesterday. Something has changed. According to the media, problems arise whenever the war tactics are "changed". The war can become "bogged down" and all that nonsense. As you of course already know, nobody outside the military planners has a clue about the tactics of this campaign, which are fluid and can (and probably do) change on a daily basis. The most interesting stuff is the stuff that is not being given to the media. The real tactics include the understanding that the media is going to pervert whatever is offered to them by the military for their own purposes anyway; they have no idea what the tactics are and never will, on purpose. They are fed only what they can be fed without compromising American lives. The media's propensity for manufacturing combat news was exhibited most recently in Desert Storm when Wolf Blitzer was reporting under his desk at the Baghdad Marriott and General Schwartzkopf had to stand in front of reporters and not crack a smile while they were asking him where his tanks were going to go tomorrow.
I do like the idea of reporters going with combat units. Those guys have guts, and as a general rule, they appear to be reporting without the editorial spin. |
