January 24, 2007
Partial Scores
According to a centcom.mil press release, 100 members of "The Council" in Diyala were killed and 50 more were detained in operations of the past few weeks. They were all terrorists.
U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 100 terrorists, detained 50, and dismantled a large terrorist group in January during Operation Turki Bowl, the senior U.S. Army officer in Iraq’s Diyala province said yesterday.The operation, conducted from Jan. 4 to 13, occurred south of Balad Ruz in the Turki Village, Tuwilla and 30 Tamuz areas of the province. During the operation, U.S. Army and Iraqi soldiers isolated and defeated a terrorist group known as “The Council,” Col. David W. Sutherland, commander of 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, told reporters via satellite connection from a news conference in Iraq.
“The group, made up of former Baath Regime members, al Qaeda and Sunni extremists, refused to participate in any political dialogue and preferred attacking innocent civilians in the Diyala province,” Sutherland said.
Did U.S. media outlets cover this victory where 100 terrorists were killed and 50 were captured? No. They responded with hardly a whisper.
They certainly found plenty of time to discuss it when 100 civilians were killed, however.
100 dead civilians is front page news around the globe, especially here in the United States, but 100 dead terrorists? It barely garners a mention.
It seems it has become a fairly standard practice to report half the war in the American media, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that Americans are against a war where all that ever seems to occur the deaths of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
To use a metaphor of a basketball game (and I'm shamelessly stealing this from a local radio host by the name of Bill Lumaye), it is as if the media consistently reports that the local college team scored 70 points in Wednesday night's game after scoring 68 the Saturday before and 63 the Wednesday before that; you're only getting part of the story, and certainly not enough to know who won.
Without knowing how the other team did, you don't know the whole story, and as the on-going saga of the Associated Press/Jamil Hussein scandal reminds us, it doesn't help when even that partial score is grossly exaggerated.
One of the mistake of the Media war today was our fear of the 'body count' mentality of Vietnam. In Vietnam, the leadership equated body count with victory. It kept on pushing that we were winning because we were killing more and more of them than they were with us. That was a mistake then, but we have overreacted to the point that you almost never hear any hard numbers out of any operation, whether the number is 1 or 100. What this has left was a gaping hole in the story that the media now fills with pure crap. No numbers from CENTCOM means we need to get the numbers from Captain Jamil YouKnowWho.
Posted by: BohicaTwentyTwo at January 24, 2007 05:05 PMWhat Bohica said. For whatever reason the military in Iraq very seldom releases any numbers, even estimates, for enemy casualties. I don't know if the media would report these numbers with the prominence they report dead Americans and dead civilians (well yes I do know) but they don't even get the chance. I guess it's overreaction someplace in the Pentagon to the Vietnam body count numbers.
It's weird though because in Afghanistan numbers of enemy dead are reported all the time.
Posted by: moon6 at January 24, 2007 10:20 PMIt would sure help morale (mine anyway) to read about dead Jihadis.
Posted by: moon6 at January 24, 2007 10:21 PMA previous commentor to a previous post of yours suggested that 36,000 Iraqi's died last year (I think I saw 34,000, so possibly pushed upward a little, on purpose maybe?) and that the burning six was just what...six...get over it and move on!
I suggested we should wait to see what was found by MM and Bryan before we decided to move on. Good idea. If Jamil XX's (AP's) stories (reports?) was originally over 20 dead (women and children included) and we found none, what does that mean for the rest of his stories? Should we discount all reports from Iraq by a factor of two,three or more?
These reports paint a picture of mayhem. And, while no one would say that Iraq is a safe place (what place would be safe in a time of war?)these stories shape public and policy opinions. 12,000 dead (are the insurgent/terrorists included in the UN numbers?)certainly paints a different picture than 34,000. Was it a wedding or a group of terrorists? Was it a school, mosque or a safe house? And if the media are only reporting the numbers for the team they hope to win, then things look bleak.
It becomes more and more apparent every day how the MSM are going to report. And they drive me away every day. Thank you for the work you, FA, MM and Bryan do to expose this bias!
Unfortunately, one of the major problems is that the US is losing this PR war every day, and for those who don't seek their news beyond the MSM, they will never know how much they are being played.
Posted by: RS at January 24, 2007 10:53 PM36,000 Iraqi's died last year
Nobody wants to say how many of those were suspected bad guys.
Why might that be?
Posted by: Purple Avenger at January 25, 2007 12:44 AMWell said CY. Your article is dead-on. Geep up the great work.
Posted by: brando at January 25, 2007 01:29 AM*keep
Posted by: brando at January 25, 2007 01:30 AMthe best part of that article is the name of the operation - "OPeration Turki Bowl" excellent!
Posted by: negentropy at January 25, 2007 04:47 PMJihadis got what they asked for, Civilians, well, that's why they they're called Civilians, ain't asking for any trouble. Could be why they get top billing, cause they didn't ask for it.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at January 25, 2007 07:15 PMStrange deja vue look back at Vietnam. Some of the blogs I read remember that we had achieved something close to military victory over there before the anti-war activists stormed into Congress and sold us out. The Viet Cong, beloved of so many college liberals were dead, killed in Tet. The army of North Vietnam conquered Saigon after the Democratic Congress cut off military aid and support from the United States.
Millions died in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Al Qaeda has died by the thousands, and is hated in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They are now the face of the insirgency.
And what is the Democratic Congress trying to do now??
And what will the the cost in lives??
