More Iraq War Thoughts

I found the BBC has a great blog for it's field reporters reporting on Iraq. It's great to see this kind of feed, even if they are a little sporadic and light on details. It gives a great sense or impression of what is going on.

The topic of "is the media telling the whole story" comes up frequently at work. Many of my co-workers are not native born U.S. citizens so they have a very different perspective than many U.S. born citizens. Often felling that Indian, or arab media is telling a better story.

Here are my thoughts, in no special order, about the coverage of the war in Iraq.

• Fox News is about as reliable as al-jazeera. Both seem to focus solely on one side of the issue.
• News organizations are about making money. This influences what they cover and how. I hope this is obvious to all.
• News has become info-tainment. The war coverage is no different.
• The "embedded" reporters have a lot of detail, but not enough analysis. They are too close to the ground and the troops to understand what they are part of.
• Truth is the first casualty of war.
• It's too bad that incidents in the U.S. since the U-2 overflights and capture of the U.2. pilot, Gary Powers have caused people to doubt the U.S. government.
• The media is covering the war like a simplified horse race. They have no ability to deal with the complexity of the situation on the ground.
• The U.S. needs to show some of their good intelligence. The photos of the cuban missiles galvanized the U.S.. We need that again.
• I can't wait to see what happens when the U.S. actually finds WMD. Hopefully, it's not in the context of any beligerent using them. I am curious to see how arab views will scramble to defend Saddam with WMD.

You might also want to check out this blog, purporting to be Saddam Hussein's blog. My favorite quote from "Saddam." "I don't know how I am going to explain all this to my insurance company."