By Steve Hynd
As a follow-up to my post earlier today about the US military's deliberate spin of a quagmire as "deliberate progress", it's worth reading this report by Ben Gilbert of Global Post:
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan � A major military operation involving hundreds of American troops, U.S. Special Forces and heavy bombers dropping 2,000-pound bombs on Taliban command and control centers wrapped up last week, concluding a critical phase in the campaign to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan�s southern Kandahar province.
But no journalists were there to witness the operation.
U.S. military officials told journalists who had arrived to Kandahar Airfield for embeds in the Arghandab district between Oct. 1 and Oct. 15 that logistical problems had caused their embeds to be cancelled.
Maj. Randy Taylor, head of the Media Support Center at Kandahar Airfield, said the cancelled embeds were not an attempt by the military to limit media coverage of the war in the Arghandab district, long advertised by the U.S. military as one of three key objectives of this summer and fall's campaign in Kandahar province.
The New York Times, Agence France Presse, the military�s independent �Stars and Stripes� newspaper, Swedish Radio and several other freelance photographers and reporters were among the embeds canceled or changed just hours or moments before they were scheduled to join U.S. military units in Arghandab district.
And this from Joshua Foust writing at CJR:
Away from the military�s spin machine, reality is nothing so upbeat. Two weeks ago Michael Cohen noted in The New Republic that the military is, literally, the only group inside or outside of Afghanistan that sees hope and progress in the war. Everyone else�he spoke to NGO workers, election monitors, and longtime residents and analysts�sees nothing but �pervasive gloom� when it comes to Afghanistan�s future.
This disconnect between military spin and ground reality is not only dangerous, it is insulting: Americans can handle the truth about the war their government is fighting. Whitewashing the real challenges and problems we face can only make us worse off: it will make our eventual withdrawal more humiliating and surprising, and it will create a need in the public to know what went wrong. What went wrong, however, is years of consistent political and policy failures, on the part of four military commands, two administrations, and the entire civilian foreign policy community. A surprise �defeat,� which can result from such odious spin, will lead not to a sober reconsideration of how to avoid such a catastrophe in the future, but a witch hunt instead. The military should be more responsible in how it handles its public images. And much more importantly, the media�print and TV alike�should quit meekly reprinting whatever briefing they�re given on their embeds.
Take all reports of progress which read like ISAF press releases with a massive pinch of salt.
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