‘Job Is Getting Done’ in Iraq, Despite US Press, Veterans Say

“In both tactical and strategic terms, coalition troops and Iraqi patriots are winning the war,” Nadler said. “A terror-sponsoring, totalitarian apparatus state is being replaced, piece by piece, by the elements of civil society — free speech, free association, democratic elections and a market economy.

“And if the press will not report it, then the men who accomplished it will,” he added.

The news media’s depiction of events in Iraq was the focus of another speaker at the event — J. D. Johannes. The Marine sergeant noted that the history of wars is usually told by the victors, but the story of Iraq “is being written by the losers.”

Johannes, who has served as both a soldier and a reporter in Iraq, said that the terrorists’ main battlefield is America and to win here, they need help from an unusual ally: the U.S. news media.

One method insurgents use to manipulate reporters is to intimidate them into staying in their hotels, he said. Unwilling to risk venturing out into combat, the journalists are forced to rely on local “stringers,” who often pass along hearsay or propaganda instead of confirmed facts.

Johannes cited the example of a minor battle that lasted only 30 minutes but was reported as a major conflict that caused high coalition casualties. The general who was involved in the fighting later said that he and his forces had been victorious on the ground, but the terrorists “had won it on CNN.”

Nadler said that such instances of lazy or inaccurate reporting are what led his organization to initiate its “War on Words Project” to help veterans get out the message about “the war they, along with Iraqi patriots, were clearly winning,” even though it is regularly portrayed by the news media “as a quagmire or another Vietnam.”

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