I have always marveled at the most elitist faction of American society, its Main Stream Media (MSM) and their ability to, on the one hand, be Useful Idiots for our Islamofascist enemies and on the other subtly remind us in the Heartland how vital they are and how utterly ignorant and dependant on them we are.  It’s a paradox of breath taking proportions.

Sad truth is, the survival of any free society does, in fact, rest with an open and diligent media.  Tyrants throughout history have sought to squelch the press and reign control on a society by controlling what the press says; in essence, molding the media in the regime’s image.  That’s why free people the world over can chuckle at the idiotic statements of Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez referring to an American President as “The Devil”.  One thing that George Bush’s critics must concede, even if begrudgingly, is that he has made no attempt to use force of law to silence his critics, many of which reside in the MSM.  Chavez continues to put a stranglehold on dissent in Venezuela (including attempts at controlling the press) that George W. Bush does not.  Mr. Bush, to his credit, understands the importance of a free press to the survival of liberty in a nation.

But with this freedom of the press comes responsibility – the responsibility to make sure the public knows the entire story, not just the excerpts that provide the action line at best, or at worst, carry the water for a certain political party.  No where is this more important than the MSM’s constant drumbeat of negative coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the long hard slog toward constitutional, stable government in that nation. 

One only needs to look at William Crawford’s regular posts at National Review Online (thttp://author.nationalreview.com/latest/?q=MjE4OA==) to understand that the endeavor in Iraq, while hard and costly, is in fact succeeding.  So, it begs the question:  why doesn’t the media seem to care?  Why do we seem to be relentlessly washed over by the MSM day in and day out about “American Casualties”, “roadside IED’s”, and civil unrest, but virtually no mention of burgeoning free media, women’s suffrage, recovering oil production, schools, hospitals, fresh water restoration,  an Iraqi Military and Police force steadily being rebuilt and taking over patrol duties across the country – etc?  Aren’t these items newsworthy?  If you had to make a decision about whether or not a financial investment in your personal life has any real use, shouldn’t you look at the whole picture (solvency and stability of the entity being invested in, historical ROI and so forth) rather than simply focusing on the fact that you have to part with $1000 right now?  But the MSM doesn’t give the entire story to the “investors”, simply the upfront costs, with the open insinuation that the investment of America is a lost one with no hope of return.  A have long posited that this is simply a case of the MSM preying on the comfortable, detached and historically ignorant portion of the American population that simply taken freedom, safety and security for granted in the world.  Its foolish and its dangerous, and the MSM should be ashamed of itself for its incomplete and irresponsible reporting on the results of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The saddest point of all is, this is nothing new for the MSM.  In December of 2005, American Thinker published and excellent essay by JR Dunn (http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5089&search=the) on the MSM’s reporting of the Tet Offensive of 1968 in Vietnam.  The American forces in South Vietnam effectively repelled General Giap’s VietCong forces during the offensive in a manner that essentially neutered them as a fighting force.  The American Public, however, taking its cue from CBS’s Walter Cronkite, saw an America defeated, and to coin a term “That’s the Way it Was.”  Lyndon Johnson felt as though he had lost Heartland America’s support for the war because “he had lost Walter Cronkite”.  Eventually, a chain of events led to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government in Saigon, and untold numbers of South Vietnamese and later, Laotians perished in Communist Re-education camps.

This begs another question: what would the fate of South Vietnam and a free Laos be had Cronkite et al accurately reported Tet and other such success in the Vietnam War?  What would have happened to American Pride and Morale, which would not recover until the ghosts of Vietnam were purged with America’s decisive victory in Operation Desert Storm 16 years later?  Historians can sit at round tables and discuss these “what if’s”, but educated and honest Americans can really only draw one conclusion.  Innocent lives in Southeast Asia as well as American Pride and Resolve (imagine Iran without ruling Ayatollah’s) paid the price for this incomplete, and in some instances, blatantly false reporting by the Useful Idiots of the MSM.

This begs one final question:  Doesn’t the liberal MSM of America have enough pride and sense to see when they are being used by America’s enemies?  Documents found in Iraq following the death of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi extol the jihadi leadership to use the media in this country to turn our popular opinion against the Iraq endeavor.  And it’s almost shocking to see how willing the American MSM are to be used for this very purpose.  If I was an American Journalist, and was as arrogant as most of them are, I don’t care how much I despised George W. Bush, I would have enough pride not to be a tool of anyone, including others in the world who also hate him. 

Obviously, the MSM’s pride and arrogance doesn’t rule over its hatred of George W. Bush.  That is a shocking paradox.