Ah the genius of Bush’s spin machine: calling it a surge instead of “replacing the dead troops”.

24 hour news, instead of trying to produce the best and most informative news show at 6 o'clock the next day. News networks of today try and make sure they are presenting everything that the other guy is presenting, and then they hire people to talk about it. The news network of today doesn't gain anything by being informative.

 

Also on a 24 hour cycle you don't have time to sit back and look at whats really important moving forward. If you have a guy in baghdad where a bomb just went off, your going to have him tell you whats going on, what the situation looks like at the bomb site. And by the time the dust settles and they just might talk about whats really going on, like who the general's are etc. another bomb goes off, or they flash to someone on the deck of an aircraft carrier watching the planes take off (which is all they are doing, because you can't get useful information on the deck of an aircraft carrier).

 

You could also see that trend in the persian gulf war, during the bombing of baghdad you saw video coming out of the hotel's where the journalists were staying showing you the sheets of anti-aircraft gun fire goin up into the sky. And again in Vietnam, where for the first time you could see color footage of soldiers bodies getting packed into hellicopters. Perhaps part of what is going on is that the events and the feel of the situation has become more important than the big picture.

 

 

Also how do american journalists get access to the heirarchie's of the the Iraqi resistance groups?

 

While it may be possible to glean the identities of a few top people, how could they find out about the rest?

Ah the genius of Bush’s spin machine: calling it a surge instead of “replacing the dead troops”.

 

Your math needs a little work.

Your math needs a little work.

 

http://www.icasualties.org/oif/

 

If we assume that about half the wounds were bad enough to warrant being taken out of the war(Iraq has the highest ratio of loss limbs and head wounds since the Civil War) plus the killed in action it doesn’t even replace all the troops that can no longer fight.

not to mention:

http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

Pardon me, it's my definitions that need a little work (casualties = injured, not just killed). I apologize for my error.