The Iraq war, seen from the other side.

[Siberian HEAT]

Hell, I could tell you what is going on with the war by just listening to their information minister. If you read between the lines, he actually does tell the truth. As one analyst noted over the weekend, that guy only reports glorious victories over the ganster aggressors...but those "victories" are in battles that get closer and closer to the center of Baghdad.

All media has it's flaws...even the embedded media. Notice you don't see any actual combat footage with Iraqi's getting their heads blown off or anything similar -- the TRUE face of war. Only the sanitized versions for public consumption. That's OK though, because just like the info minister you can glean the truth of what is going on if you have an open mind and realize it is never quite as good or bad as you are lead to believe.

Most people see what they want to see in this thing - Arab's want to see Iraqi's civillian deaths to justify anti-western views; Iraqi media wants to see damaged coalition equipment so they can claim glorious victory; western media wants to see cheering Iraqi's so they can claim liberation. It's just the way it is...

 

[MikeJ]

Originally posted by Deltapooh


Did the Coalition forces say the Umm Kasar was clear, or secure? If my memory serves me correctly, the media was the one reporting the situation as all clear. In any case it was a mistake.

Hmm, maybe it's just me but secure and clear are somewhat synonymous, even when coming from the military types as as far back as Afghanistan I can recall them explicitly noting when there was still resistance.

I think what happened was the long list of, what turned out to be errors (Basra, Umm Qasr, 51st div, etc) were either propoganda aimed at the Iraqis (obviously the ideal situation is if the Iraqis lay down their arms and this would play a role in that) or the military was just being premature in an effort to get good news out the war to help ease opposition to the conflict. I doubt there was any malicious intent to deceive the US public, but the fact remains that they've been saying a lot of things that were just untrue.