Bulls-eye!

In an interview with Rush Limbaugh today (had to stay home with the kids for Resurrection Sunday break) ... Defense Secretary Rumsfeld indicated that the folks in the media are no longer interested in "embeds".

And a few months ago in my Katrina comments, I hit the nail on the head. The reporters DO NOT WANT TO KNOW what is really going on, because then they can tell the story that they want to tell and then murmur, preferably in an indiscernable tone or with Clintonesque weasel words, that what they are reporting as fact is really the story they are being TOLD and not actual, verifiable facts. The freedom of not knowing the truth frees up the report for wild speculation ... fitting into whatever template the reporter wants to fit it into ... and it is always anti-Bush.

We already know that many of the reporters never leave the cocktail bar at the hotel, instead paying Iraqi contacts to get them the stories. It is also common knowledge that the Iraqis know that they make more money if the story is particularly bad news for the US. It also explains the wide gulf between what the soldiers are encountering on a day to day basis and what the reporters are reporting.

The fact that the reporters are no longer willing to ride along with the troops speaks volumes about what they are up to. It is very similar to the reporting on Katrina and the Superdome fiasco ... where reporters were literally telling us incredibly ugly stories about the goings on inside ... that all turned out to be total B.S. My point at that time was that these cockroaches were telling stories about what was BEING REPORTED as going on inside the Dome, when all that they had to do was open the door and walk in and see for themselves. Bottom line is that they did not want to (or perhaps knew but pretended not to) know what was *really* going on inside because they were able to make up whatever garbage they wanted to.

Conclusion

If one of your pals comments on Iraq and how bad things are ... you ask them how the hell they could possibly know? The news media now refuses to ride along with the military because they do not want the truth to get in the way of the story that they would like to report. You then followup with the fact that the military guys coming back are telling us that the reports are totally bogus, and they are in fact re-enlisting to go back at an unprecedented rate ... sure sounds like the hell-hole of hopelessness that the news media is painting for us.