Redstate

By Repair Man Jack Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Promoted from diaries by Mark I.

Christopher Torchia of the Associated Press wrote a seemingly innocuous and factual account of the continuing warfare occurring in Iraq; 26 December 2006. However, the article title, U.S. Deaths in Iraq Exceed 9-11 Count, provides a classic example of subtle advocacy that has made it off the editorial page, and into the news sections of our daily papers.

Read on...

Newspaper article titles require verve in order to make the reader with a time constraint choose a particular article off a given page of the paper. Thus, I fully expect any good headline writer to jazz it up a bit and make the reader look twice. However, the title of this article ventures into the realm of mendacity because it attempts to evoke a response in the same manner as if the article were an editorial on the policies leading to the war itself.

In the first place, the entire exercise of ghoulish arithmetic involved in comparing the death toll of Iraq to the death on 9-11 is based upon a desire to disseminate propaganda. All newspapers do disseminate a certain amount thereof, but the responsible ones leave it in their editorials and advertise it as such. Torchia’s headline writer should have stuck with the 5 W’s – the same way Mr. Torchia did in composing a fairly professional and factual article about combat in Iraq.

The second and more troubling aspect of this headline is that it both preys upon and intensifies the innumeracy of most modern consumers of mass media. The death count comparison is fallacious on several levels. Most importantly, the actual comparison itself has little bearing on its intended message. No one but a purblind mongoloid would argue that The Iraq War has had a greater impact on The United States than 9-11. Particularly, there would have been no Operation Iraqi Freedom, sans 9-11.

The casualty count mechanically fails to measure the impact of the two events with no comparison of death rates. An AP writer could have made the same asinine comparison by braving the machine gun and mortar fire associated with the banzai attacks against the US Marines on Okinawa. Using a Timex watch and a notepad, the writer could have recorded the exact number of hours, minutes and seconds that passed before the Japanese Military inflicted more casualties against the USMC on Okinawa than they inflicted on December 7, 1941.

Of course, that comparison would be mordant nonsense unfreighted with any meaning whatsoever. The headline affixed to Torchia’s article suffers the same shortcoming. It tells us a piece of information that is deliberately taken out of context to cause us to reach somebody else's desired conclusion.

Telling us that more Americans have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom than were killed on 9-11, in the context in which the headline was used, is an attempted shorthand version of a whole laundry list of complaints against the current war. The choice of the casualty account from 9-11 was a particularly studied propaganda exercise. It intentionally anchors the mind to both a number and a traumatic event.

This point of reference; namely, the butcher’s bill Bin Ladin delivered on September 11, 2001, then becomes a standard of measure by which the reader is invited to judge current events on the ground in Iraq. This shows admirable subtly, but nefarious intent. Events occurring on 9-11 had an impact far beyond their body count. Events played out in Iraq do also, but no effort is made to even evaluate whether the death count on each date offers an accurate comparison of the events ceteris parabis.

The attempt is made to plant the subconscious axiom that any event with a death rate higher than 9-11 is worse than 9-11, and therefore more evil. Were this stated in black and white, the derisive howls thereby invoked would be audible for miles in every direction. Nice try, but the intelligent consumer of news and information won’t let it in the back door either.