Daily Update

updated 12:00 p.m. ET November 6, 2003

No news is good news?

Editor and Publisher reports that many US newspapers have begun reporting all US military deaths in Iraq, not just those the Pentagon attributes to combat or hostile action. On Monday, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all cited the number of total US deaths in Iraq – 378 or 379 as of Monday, in addition to the killed-in-action number that the Pentagon reports. The Post also reported the total number of wounded, 2155. In late October, Editor and Publisher had first raised the issue of the way casualties in Iraq were being underreported by the media.

The Toronto Star reported Sunday on the Pentagon's efforts to keep the cost of war out of sight of the American public. For instance, body bags, as they were called during the Vietnam War, are now called "transfer tubes." No TV cameras are allowed to cover the arrival of the dead of wounded at Dover Airforce Base. Although this policy has been in place since the first Gulf War, it has only been consistently applied since last March. Reuters reports that this policy also is now in effect at Ramstein Air Force Base in Southwest Germany.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) says the policy was created out of respect for relatives, but others have criticize the lack of media access, arguing the DoD's aim is to prevent the public from seeing large numbers of coffins that could turn public opinion against the war. "You can argue both sides," said one US military official who asked not to be identified. "Some say Americans need to see this, this is factual and the public needs to see (the coffins). Yet you also think of the mom of a killed soldier and the trauma of seeing television pictures of her son being repatriated."

But Helen Thomas of Hearst Newspapers writes that the ban is misguided.

I can understand why the White House and the Pentagon want to shut down coffin coverage on the nightly news. The photos would be disturbing to anyone and – if the war goes on much longer – politically damaging to the president. But the families of the fallen Americans should not have to grieve alone. We can only share by knowing.

Mark Shields of CNN argues that the Bush administration has failed the "Dover Test," which he says was first postulated by then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton in 2000. Before an administration makes the decision to sends troops into combat, or to ask for the support of the American people for such a venture, it must answer the following question:

"Is the American public prepared for the sight of our most precious resource coming home in flag-draped caskets into Dover Air Force Base in Delaware – which is a point entry for our Armed Forces?

Columnist Harley Sorenson writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that he's puzzled by the fact that none of the US troops wounded in Iraq ever seem to later die of their wounds. Or if they do, he says, it's a figure buried by the Pentagon. Mr. Sorenson also says that a US soldier, with whom he reguarly exchanges e-mails, has told him that "casualties in Iraq are not reported unless the press is nearby and gets wind of them."

Howard Kurtz writes in the Washington Post that the Bush administration seems to have taken its Iraq-related complaints against the media to a new level – not only does it want the bad news reported in perspective, it doesn't want it reported at all. The Age of Australia noted that the day after 16 soldiers were killed when their helicopter was shot down in Iraq, President Bush made no mention of the incident in either of the two speeches he gave that day.

Slate also reports that the US Army removed a highly critical report from the web site of the Center for Army Lessons Learned after the Washington Post ran a story summarizing its content. (The document can still be seen on Global Security's web site.) Ray Bonner of The New York Times reports on the extraordinary lengths the Bush administration has gone to in order to "manage" the news in Iraq.

Recently, when an army major and the head of operations of an American agency here sought to take a reporter for coffee at the Rashid Hotel [in Baghdad], where senior American personnel live and eat, a sentry told them that no reporter could enter the hotel without an escort from the press office. The American officials were more astonished than the reporter.

Others columnists and security experts have complained that the White House has either overstated, or misstated, positive news about Iraq. For instance, the Washington Post reports that recently Vice-President Cheney discussed a poll conducted in late summer by the Zogby polling organization, and done in conjunction with American Enterprise magazine, on the Sunday morning talk shows.

"The US wins hands down," Cheney said, when Iraqis were asked what model of government they would prefer among five choices. Cheney's information, according to an aide, came from the American Enterprise essay on the poll that said 37 percent of respondents chose the United States, and 28 percent selected Saudi Arabia. But a look at the raw data from the poll on the magazine's Web site revealed different figures. According to the data, only 21.5 percent chose the United States, while 20 percent refused to select any model, and 16 percent selected the Saudi government.

"I am not willing to say they [the administration] lied," Mr. Zogby said. "But they used a very tight process of selective screening, and when they didn't get what they wanted they were willing to manufacture some results. . . . There was almost nothing in that poll to give them comfort."

But supporters of the president feel most of the kind of complaints mentioned above are merely sour grapes, and really nothing more than a personal attack on the president himself. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb opines most people who criticize the way the White House has given out information about Iraq, be it pre- or post-war, are only interested in one thing – getting George Bush out of office.

James Taranto makes the same point on The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal, when he quotes a posting at what he calls an "Angry Left" web site. The posting argues that having more soldiers die in Iraq may be the only way to get rid of this "slime bag WASP-Mafia, oil barron ridden cartel of a government."

Meanwhile FoxNews reports that it has obtained a document believed to have been written by the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee that outlines a strategy for exposing what they calls " the administration's dubious motives" in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

Among other things, the memo recommends that Democrats in the Senate "prepare to launch an investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the [Senate] majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time ��� but we can only do so once ... the best time would probably be next year."

Finally, the Guardian reports on a study conducted by the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies, that looked at how TV in Britain, US, and the Middle East, covered the war and found that assumptions by both sides – that the media were either "in bed" with the military, or only reported bad news – don't hold up under scrutiny. It does come to the comclusion, however, that having reporters embedded with the military during a war will most likely produce only one side of the story, which tends to show war as acceptable.

Also...
• Soldier accused as coward says he is guilty only of panic attack ( New York Times)
• First Polish soldier killed in action in Iraq ( CNN)
• Private Lynch's rape claims ( The Age)
• Jessica Lynch too busy to meet her saviour ( Independent Newspapers Online, South Africa)
• The war of the words ( Oxford Student)
• Praise for the troops in Iraq ( Philly.com)
• The Islamic terrorism club ( CBS News/Weekly Standard)

• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Tom Regan .