Pentagon Spokesman Slams Press: 'Needlessly Shrill,' Armed With 'Inappropriately High' Expectations

October 1st, 2014 3:01 PM

Monica Sanchez at our sister site CNSNews.com reports that Rear Adm. John Kirby, the press secretary over at the Pentagon, lectured the media on Tuesday that the media elites need to “share a sense of strategic patience” with the military on the anti-ISIS front. Can you imagine how the media would have mocked this in the Bush era?

"I'm not criticizing that there is a public discussion," Kirby said. "I'm just simply saying that some of the coverage, I think, has been needlessly shrill and the expectations have been, I think, inappropriately high on what can be accomplished just through military power alone."

KIRBY: There's also this expectation of omnipotence for the United States military, and omniscience quite frankly....This is a complicated, difficult, cultural, religious, geographic struggle that we're facing here in Iraq and Syria, and it's not going to be solved overnight, and it's not going to be solved through bombs, and it's not going to be solved through anything other than a lot of hard work, and time, and effort, working with partners on the ground-people who actually know the culture. It's not going to be that simple.