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War stories

From my foxhole-view as a tactical battalion commander in western Baghdad in 2006, the American press, although not perfect, has reported the reality of the Iraq war.

Contrary to what most believe in the American military, as well as some conservative columnists and a few politicians, the American press does give a reasonably full, fair and balanced picture of what is happening in Iraq.

The war in Iraq is complex, difficult, deadly and heartbreaking, but with glimmers of hope and success that sometimes shine through the death and violence. Do we expect the press to only report the good and not the bad? Now, sadly, the bad tends to outweigh the good, and I, as a soldier and citizen, want the press to report the war accordingly.

I saw with my own eyes in Baghdad the brutal face of sectarian war; I saw the still-undefeated Sunni insurgency attack Iraqi security forces and coalition forces; I saw firsthand many of our coalition forces’ successes. I also saw our lack of progress in certain areas.

I saw these things by being out on patrol, by conducting operations with my soldiers and by interacting with the local people and learning from them.

And during my tour in 2006, I spent about two hours every day reading about Iraq through stories told by reporters from the major national and local newspapers and news services and, at times, watching TV newscasts from the major networks. The stories told by the American press, for the most part, matched what I saw happening on the ground. It was my sense that the embedded reporters who spent time with my unit during 2006 really tried to tell the story of what we saw as our successes.

My armored reconnaissance squadron was responsible for the Sunni-dominated district known as Ameriyah, a critical area in Baghdad that was home to insurgency leaders.

As an example of what I saw as the even-handedness of American media covering the war in Iraq, in early September, shortly after a substantial clearing effort in Ameriyah, we had a CNN crew spend a day on patrol with us. That day, with the CNN crew, we sadly came across an Ameriyah resident lying dead on the street from sectarian violence. The body of that local Iraqi man represented in a discrete way failure on our part to stop the sectarian violence. The CNN crew could have focused its story on the image of the dead body and how things were not working in our favor. However, their report instead portrayed the success we were having in employing locals to clean up garbage and used quotes from interviews by locals on the street that conditions in Ameriyah were improving.

I also came to believe that the embedded journalists who spent time with my unit had a deep concern for the welfare of the American soldier serving in Iraq.

Their courage under dangerous conditions to get their story is beyond question. The insurgent attack last spring on an American patrol in Baghdad that seriously injured CBS correspondent Kim Dozier attests to the journalists’ courage and commitment.

My position that the American press has reported the reality of the war in a balanced way is not a common one within the American military; in fact, it is a radical one.

It is my opinion that the American military’s ongoing condemnation of the American press’s reporting of the Iraq war has more to do with its own mistaken belief that the American media lost the Vietnam War and has less to do with the current reporting on Iraq. I also believe that because the American military fears so deeply the loss of support of the American people over Iraq as an outgrowth of Vietnam it tends, wrongly, to allay these fears by blaming the American press for not reporting enough of its successes in Iraq.

But as I looked around Baghdad from my foxhole in 2006, I saw, by and large, fair and balanced reporting. This is a minority view within the American military, but it was and still is my foxhole view.

The author is an active-duty Army lieutenant colonel. He commanded an armored reconnaissance squadron in the 4th Infantry Division in West Baghdad in 2006.