A new Indiana University study of news reports by television reporters embedded with American troops in the early days of the Iraq War found little support for critics who question the journalists' objectivity.

The study, which appears in the upcoming 50th-anniversary edition of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, found that while embedded reporters described events in very personal ways, their reports were not slanted in favor of Allied forces as a result.

-- IU study finds that news reports by
embedded war correspondents in Iraq were objective,

May 17, 2006

"We are, I absolutely believe that we are winning the … war, which was our first objective"

-- Michael Fumento,
Embedded Reported upbeat about Iraq,
November 30, 2006

“Having embedded reporters on hand also forces the military to be on its best behavior.”

-- Tom Nybo,
December, 2004

"The rules of engagement have been broadly defined, loosely enforced to protect US service members at the expense of the Iraqi people.  Anyone who tells you different is either a liar or a fool."

"On my third tour, the rules of engagement were stricter, but they really only existed so that the command could say that there were rules of engagement that were being followed."

"Marines viewed the rules of engagement as either a joke, or a technicality to be worked around so that they could bring each other home alive."

-- Marine Sergeant Jason Lemieux,
Winter Soldier Hearings,
Washington D.C.,
March, 2008

"We were all congratulated after we had our first kills."

"Myself and two other people went ahead and took out some individuals, because we were excited about the fire fight that we had just gotten into and we didn't have a camera man or woman with us.  With that being said, anytime we did have embedded reporters with us, our actions would change drastically, we never acted the same, we were always on key with everything, did everything by the books."

-- Jon Michael Turner,
3rd Battalion, 8th Marines
Winter Soldier Hearings,
Washington D.C.,
March, 2008

"The first rule of Fight Club is - you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is - you DO NOT talk about Fight Club"

-- Tyler Durden,
Fight Club

Just as happened in the winter of 1971, a group of American war veterans, this time having served in Iraq and Afghanistan, met and testified about what they had done and had seen others do during their deployments in our current epoch's wars.  And, just as in 1971, this edition of the Winter Soldiers' meeting has been completely ignored by US corporate media.  So ignored, in fact, that most Americans likely have no idea that such a meeting even took place.  Which is not surprising for a corporate media that have thoroughly convinced themselves that being "embedded" gets them to the "heart of the story."  Embedding does no such thing, of course, but the corporate media's attitude is pervasive.

Embedding serves one purpose and one purpose only: to cast a sheen of legitimacy onto what in reality is a dreadful, misbegotten and wrong-headed effort that does nothing but ingrain a deep resentment in the local populations said to be "liberated."  Embeds, as they and the military label them, are primarily a propaganda tool and any reporter believing they are seeing the real story is, in the words of Sergeant Lemieux, either a liar or a fool.

The Indiana University study claims that embedded journalists remain objective, which may be true as far as that goes.  But what the study and credulous rubes like Michael Fumento and Tom Nybo fail to understand, or willfully chose to ignore, is that a bias is built-in to the system.  As the Marine Turner explained above, soldiers would exhibit what might be called "best practice" while on mission with an embedded journalist.  But once free of that burden, well, the leashes would come off.  Can an embedded reporter know this?  Obviously not, but then that is exactly the point.

Let us ignore the ridiculous conceit of Nybo's that embeds force the military to be "on its best behaviour," and recognize that embedded reporters are there at the behest of the Pentagon, go where the Pentagon approves and are sent on missions with troops who are well aware that they need to behave professionally and not outside the "rules of engagement."  Like any good propaganda tool, this arrangement has the salubrious effect of placing supposedly "objective" reporters on the ground observing US troops, who dutifully behave as promised, and allows the reporter to truthfully report that they did indeed observe the military acting properly.  This offers plausible deniability after the fact for both the reporter and the military and further creates an environment wherein the Pentagon can claim that incidents like the Haditha massacre are merely one-offs committed by a few "bad apples."

Also at issue here are the so-called "rules of engagement."  As Sergeant Lemieux testified, these rules were in constant flux, made up in the heat of the moment.  What kind of rule base is that?  When the rules of engagement are constantly changing on-the-fly and can be changed at any given moment, then one thing about the rules of engagement is clear: there are no rules of engagement.  When reporters are unaware that "rules" can be altered spontaneously at the lowest unit levels,  they still are able to report that soldiers, as witnessed by the embed, always observed the rules of engagement even when those rules are completely unknown.  The rules are officially known, of course, but those apparently bear little relationship to the ones grunts are offered up in tense and hostile situations. 

The US corporate media have, for quite sometime, always chosen to ignore the fundamental realities of war fighting as it has been practiced by the US military since at least the Vietnam War.  Veterans who spoke out during Vietnam were branded as traitors and liars and that too can be expected with this latest effort, should any wide-spread word of these testimonies break out.  Such soldiers are only patriotic, useful tools so long as they keep quiet.

These Winter Soldier hearings represent a breech of the fully articulated though unspoken rule of silence.  What happens in Iraq is supposed to stay in Iraq.  Of course, what happens in Iraq (and Afghanistan) most assuredly will not stay in there, as the families of those killed, maimed and otherwise abused can certainly be expected to rise up in defiance and retaliation.  Indeed, they have and will continue to do so.  While it should be obvious to most everyone, this simple, obvious reality is never discussed.  Rather, the media blackout of first-hand, eye witness accounts of war crimes suggests not so much a cover-up, but a much larger and more deadly problem: enforcement of the American myth.  And so long as that fantasy can be maintained, the American public and their minders will be able to continue asking that most disingenuous of questions, "why do they hate us?"

Coming clean about American military action is a long and largely ignored tradition.  For not only have the underlying motives been repeatedly exposed by those so engaged, abuse of the very fighting soldiers revered so publicly also has a long and inglorious tradition.  In our own time, we have seen the privatized debacle of veteran's care, the neglectful, dismissive and parsimonious "treatment" American veterans receive on returning home and bills sent by the Pentagon for equipment lost or damaged on the battlefield.  But this, too, is nothing new.  The Vietnam veterans probably suffered worse neglect and maltreatment than veterans today, although with the draft, many did not have to serve four and five tours as is becoming common in the current conflicts.  Even before this, however, soldiers were being abused and taken advantage of as far back as World War I.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.

All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill…and be killed.

But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.

We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn't find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!

-- War is a Racket,
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

We might wonder why US governments have repeatedly ignored the entreaty of Thomas Jefferson to avoid "entangling alliances" and rather embrace "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations."  We might wonder when, if ever, this country will cease the continuous pursuit of destructive bloody-mindedness.  But that, too, would be foolish.  Because it will not end.  And it will not end for one simple reason: those profiting from these bloody adventures are those who are also in charge of informing the national American psyche, of keeping alive the pretense that all the fighting is done to advance "freedom and democracy."  And until that pretense collapses, or rather, is made to collapse, the wars, as John McCain has promised, will continue.

The exposure that soldiers testifying at the Winter Soldier hearings hoped to bring to the US occupation could be an important step in recognizing the situation on the ground for what it is and for what it is actually doing to spread disaffection and hatred.  These testimonies could clear the smoke and reveal a truth with which most Americans would be entirely uncomfortable.  But as long as the media minders are a part of a corporate officialdom that enjoys record profits generated by the engine of war, testimony like that of the Winter Soldiers will remain disparaged, marginalized and, in the best case scenario, completely ignored.  They will hold fast to the first rule of fight club.

______________________________
Watch a series of soldier testimonies in the Winter Soldier hearings at hotpotatomash, where the quotes cited above can be heard.