Changing Times Demand Telling The Truth In Wartime
By Rick Moran Posted in Archived — Comments (21) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Promoted from blogs. - Moe Lane
"If it was good enough for your daddy/granddaddy's war it's good enough for yours," seems to be what the Pentagon is saying with regards to trying to hype the accomplishments of Pat Tillman - whose character assassination by the left continues to this day - and Jessica Lynch, the young woman whose convoy was ambushed resulting in severe injuries and her capture by the Iraqis.
The problem is times have changed and trying to manufacture heroes for public admiration and to build support for military action has long since outlived its usefulness, not to mention that the tactic has fallen victim to an ever more intrusive and curious press whose sympathies cannot be counted on to cover up the truth when what really occurs on the battlefield comes to light.
Read on.
That last is especially relevant in Tillman's case where higher ups evidently tried to enlist Tillman's comrades in a scheme to suppress the truth about his death by friendly fire:
The last soldier to see Army Ranger Pat Tillman alive, Spc. Bryan O'Neal, told lawmakers that he was warned by superiors not to divulge -- especially to the Tillman family -- that a fellow soldier killed Tillman.
O'Neal particularly wanted to tell fellow soldier Kevin Tillman, who was in the convoy traveling behind his brother at the time of the 2004 incident in Afghanistan.
"I wanted right off the bat to let the family know what had happened, especially Kevin, because I worked with him in a platoon and I knew that he and the family all needed to know what had happened," O'Neal testified. "I was quite appalled that when I was actually able to speak with Kevin, I was ordered not to tell him."
Asked who gave him the order, O'Neal replied that it came from his battalion commander, then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey.
"He basically just said ... 'Do not let Kevin know, that he's probably in a bad place knowing his brother's dead,' " O'Neal told House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman. "And he made it known I would get in trouble, sir, if I spoke with Kevin on it being fratricide."
How Tillman's commanding officer and higher ups in the Pentagon thought they could keep secret the circumstances surrounding the young man's death is indicative of a military mindset not attuned to the times we live in. The fact that Pat Tillman was a high profile enlistee and that his death would generate intense scrutiny seems to have escaped the mossbacks and pencil pushers in the Pentagon who only saw propaganda gold when viewing Tillman's death. A similar denseness captivated the officers and higher ups at the Pentagon when Jessica Lynch was rescued. The young woman was made into a "Little Girl Rambo" according to Ms. Lynch herself:
The former US private Jessica Lynch today condemned what she said were Pentagon efforts to turn her into a "little girl Rambo", and accused military chiefs of using "elaborate tales" to try to make her into a hero of the Iraq war.
Speaking at a congressional hearing on the use of misleading information, an emotional Ms Lynch described how she suffered horrific injuries when her vehicle was hit by a rocket near the Iraqi town of Nasiriya in March 2003, killing several of her companions.
The Pentagon initially put out the story that Private Lynch - a slight woman who was just 19 at the time - had been wounded by Iraqi gunfire but kept fighting until her ammunition ran out. In fact, her gun had jammed and she did not fire a shot.
Pat Tillman was a hero not because of how he died but because of how he lived, eschewing a huge contract with the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL to enlist following 9/11. And Jessica Lynch's heroism is the heroism of hundreds of thousands of young Americans who have answered the call to serve a purpose higher than themselves and enlist in the US armed forces. She also endured her injuries and capture with a singular stoicism while remaining true to her fallen friends and comrades in arms.
Isn't this enough for the myth makers in the Pentagon? The American people today are much more sophisticated and skeptical than their counterparts who manned the homefront during World War II and Korea. Viet Nam saw to that. Aided by a skeptical and at times, openly hostile press, we look upon military pronouncements about the war with a cynicism born of experience and leavened by pundits and talking heads who tear into the information coming from the military using as a baseline the idea that nothing that comes from the Pentagon can be believed.
This situation was not helped by Rumsfeld's rosy scenarios and "the glass is half full" press conferences. It drove many of us who support the war absolutely bonkers to hear the former Defense Secretary or the Vice President ("last throes," anyone?) give briefings that bore little resemblance to the worsening situation in Baghdad and Anbar province not to mention downplaying the numbers of insurgents, the infiltration of the militias into the police and military, the Interior Ministry death squads and secret torture chambers, and a host of other "glass half empty" benchmarks that, while certainly not good news, would have given the American people a more complete picture of what was going on in Iraq.
The point that propaganda doesn't work anymore - not in the current atmosphere of press scrutiny and suspicion - seems to be lost on the Pentagon officials who tried to pump up the circumstances surrounding the death of Pat Tillman and rescue of Jessica Lynch. They are living in the past if they believe they can get away with it. And the hell of it is, it besmirches the life and yes, legend of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch; two Americans who were simply answering the call to serve and fulfilled their obligations with a startling devotion to duty and their country.
I sincerely hope the Pentagon has learned a lesson from this very public and humiliating expose of their PR machinations. Perhaps they could highlight the very real and unbelievable heroism of people like Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor who threw himself on a live grenade and died saving his comrades. Or the 19 Navy SEALs and Special Operation Aviation Regiment (SOAR) members who lost their lives on a rescue mission in Afghanistan. Or any of the countless other Americans, living and dead, who have honored the flag, their comrades, and their country by sacrificing so much in the cause of freedom.
when you have news reporting in real time and competition for ratings, sensationalism is inevitable. A scrap of a scintilla of a story gets seized on by a network or a paper out to scoop its peers and the account takes on a life of its own. In the case of Tillman, by the time someone pointed out that it might have been friendly fire it was already splashed over network news, again with the suitable implications drawn. There was no "quiet time" to conduct a suitable inquiry before the story got out, and while the Army was doing its investigation everyone from CNN to Sportscenter was advancing its own GI Joe narrative, with or without Pentagon complicity. There are dozens of soldiers who have perished in this war whose parents will never get a Congressional inquiry, no "gotcha" from Henry Waxman, for whom "died conducting combat operations" and a scrap of paper or two from peers or superiors describing the deceased's heroism will have to suffice for an explanation.
I don't intend to defend the Tillman fiasco because there was some obvious juvenile attempt there to create a hero. But the Lynch story was manufactured out of whole cloth... and not by the Pentagon.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
My point is that the attempt to create a hero, problematic as it may be on other levels (and still resting a good deal more on the efforts of the news organs themselves than by anything the Pentagon did to foster it), seemed to precede actual knowledge by the authors of that narrative that he fell victim to friendly fire.
"Yet, somehow, without an iota of proof what was simply shoddy reporting has become a "Pentagon" credibility issue."
It is still a Pentagon credibility issue if the Pentagon remained silent. Somebody should have immediately fed the facts to the news media. Public affairs officers do it every day. They didn't do it, because it was favorable publicity, at the time.
A good public affairs officer would have said that favorable publicity based upon
lies and falsehoods, ALWAYS comes back to bite the military in the ass.
you'd have a point.
In the case of Lynch the Pentagon wasn't silent. The commander of the hospital that treated Lynch said, within a day of the WaPo story, that she was neither shot nor stabbed and in less than a week it was pretty well deconstructed.
A good public affairs officer would have assumed the issue was closed and moved on to another crisis.
This was fueled simply by the media swooning over a little blonde chickie for the sake of selling papers and increasing ratings.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
But I think that the character assasination claims were a little thin. For one thing, two of your links were years old and even the "to this day" one was a month old, despite the fact that there were hearings yesterday and the leftosphere is buzzing with new commentary. For another, the writers seemed like particularly loony no-names. It seems a little like claiming that the right hates brown people and then linking to a few dated manifestos from people who call themselves conservatives. In fact, even the people that you link to were not really attacking Pat Tillman personally, they were impugning the entire military.
The problem is not that most leftists hate Pat Tillman, it is that many don't appreciate the personal heroism of our volunteer army or the vital purpose it has in defending our democracy. The broad decline in individual responsibility, community values, and historical literacy is manifested in a few politically insensitive extremists who follow liberal logic to its conclusion.
Otherwise, I agree with your article 100% and I was very glad to read it. The truth needs no embellishment.
I agree with you that the country's experience of Vietnam has rendered the American people, for better or worse, "much more sophisticated and skeptical than their counterparts who manned the homefront during World War II and Korea." Moreover, as you indicate, the "rosy scenarios" emanating from the Pentagon (and, I would add, the White House) did take considerable tolls on the credibility and persuasiveness of those exhorting us to "stay the course" (often, still, the very same people who peddled the rosy scenarios in the first place). The Tillman and Lynch stories capture this fantastic P.R. disaster in microcosm.
The whole thing is a shame, not the least because present circumstances - most especially including that we now, as was the case with Vietnam, find ourselves in a decidedly unpopular war - could have been avoided had the powers that be only paid heed, as you have done here, to the basic ways in which the nation's character has changed over the past 50 years.
From CNN: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0305/19/se.10.html
KAMPENER: Well, what we did was we took the version and our aim was simply to put that to the Pentagon and say, OK, we've got one story here, we've got two versions. Let's try and unpick the mystery around this story.
So we put some specific points to Brian Whitman, who's the number two at the Pentagon. He also was the chief strategist who designed the whole media management of this war, specifically the use of embedded reporters.
We said to him, what was the nature of Jessica Lynch's injuries? Is it true that she did not have stab and bullet wounds? And his answer to us was, well, let's wait and see what happens in the future.
And then we said, is it true that the Americans did not come under fire when they took the hospital and rescued Jessica? Again we got what I would describe as a holding answer.
When I then said, OK, well, why don't we clear up these discrepancies and instead of all of us relying on your five-minute edited package, which was presented around the world, why don't we all look at the raw material together, what we here in Britain call the rushes, the real-time TV shots as shot by the Pentagon cameraman who was with that U.S. snatch squad. That request of ours was declined.
I can't see how anyone can come to the conclusion that the Pentagon had no hand in letting the "heroic" version of the story go forth unchallenged. Does the media lap items like this up uncritically, far too often? Yes. But the Pentagon has no business in crafting such shameless propaganda, and they certainly did so with both this and the Tillman episode.
what this is supposed to mean.
We said to him, what was the nature of Jessica Lynch's injuries? Is it true that she did not have stab and bullet wounds? And his answer to us was, well, let's wait and see what happens in the future.
No embellishment. No verification of the "Rambo" story. Advises to wait for more info.
And then we said, is it true that the Americans did not come under fire when they took the hospital and rescued Jessica? Again we got what I would describe as a holding answer.
No embellishment. No statement of the rescue being under fire (this is really BS as the video release showed it was not done under fire). Advises to wait for more info.
When I then said, OK, well, why don't we clear up these discrepancies and instead of all of us relying on your five-minute edited package, which was presented around the world, why don't we all look at the raw material together, what we here in Britain call the rushes, the real-time TV shots as shot by the Pentagon cameraman who was with that U.S. snatch squad. That request of ours was declined.
Okay, the Pentagon releases video showing the uneventful, not under fire, rescue of Lynch. They don't let you see it all for a real good reason, it's called security. But whatever, what's a few dead troopers to the press anyway. As the released video showed there was no gunfire I'm sort of at a loss at the objection here unless you are saying there actually was gunfire and they edited it out.
I can't see how anyone can come to the conclusion that the Pentagon had no hand in letting the "heroic" version of the story go forth unchallenged.
No one in the Pentagon, absent the anonymous officials quoted by Loeb and Schmidt, ever supported the Lynch story. Her doctor says the story was wrong the day after the WaPo story appeared. And the Pentagon is to blame? I think it is pretty easy to come to my conclusion.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/usandamericas/article1701462.ece
...Jessica Lynch, the US army private who became the heroic American face of the Iraq war when her convoy was ambushed soon after the invasion, lambasted the Bush Administration yesterday for lying about the incident.
She was testifying to Congress, along with the brother of Pat Tillman, the US Army Ranger who gave up a lucrative career as an American football star only to be killed by his own platoon in Afghanistan, and the two decried the Pentagon’s “deceit” in turning their disastrous experiences into false tales of heroism.
Ms Lynch was injured badly when her convoy was ambushed in Iraq on March 23, 2003, the third day of the war. The Pentagon said initially that she was shot after emerging from her vehicle, guns blazing, before being abducted. It later emerged that she was injured in the ambush and was incapable of fighting. She was taken to an Iraqi hospital by Iraqi troops and owes her life to Iraqi doctors, who even tried to return her to American troops.
Speaking to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Ms Lynch told of waking up in hospital with terrible injuries, unaware that the Pentagon was circulating “the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting”.
If the Pentagon is innocent of manufacturing propaganda, can you explain why both Lynch and Tillman's family are saying otherwise?
This has to be the dumbest rejoinder I've seen on this issue yet. Congratulations.
-----------
We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
do better than this.
This is simply false on its face. Not a single thing Lynch alleges here was said by the Pentagon. It didn't happen and I documented it up thread.
I also addressed the Tillman case up thread.
If you want to argue facts, fine. But I simply don't have the inclination to address lies as if they were the truth.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
You are welcome to believe that both Lynch and the Tillmans are hopeless liars. Amazing how fast they went from "heroes to zeros" once they started challenging the narrative, isn't it?
The Lynch affair was clearly a staged propaganda event that blew up in the faces of those who tried to promote it as a tale of heroism. Ditto for Tillman.
look at this one. (The fourth anniversary is less than a week away.)
I've said nothing about the Tillmans.
I have documented everything I've said about Lynch.
You on the other hand have done nothing here but cut and paste non sequiturs and have not bothered to answer a single one of the factual challenges the Lynch's pathetic testimony yesterday.
You are entitled to believe whatever you want. What you won't do is attribute to me things I haven't said.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
(1) Deliberately misconstruing the comment to which you're replying makes you look like an idiot, a troll, or both. Idiots don't last forever. Trolls have a shorter lifespan.
(2) I'm sure you and your friends like to make cracks about "truth to power" just before study hall, but to the rest of us, that stuff got old a decade and change ago. Drop the attitude.
(3) You are welcome to disagree with streiff's, or any other commenter's, arguments. However, you don't get to make up facts. Continued falsification ends your time here.
-----------
We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
I am all for getting at the truth of all friendly fire incidents, which happen in all wars.
Make no mistake about it, that is the media's object in this story.
Pat Tillman was a hero not because of how he died but because of how he lived, eschewing a huge contract with the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL to enlist following 9/11. And Jessica Lynch's heroism is the heroism of hundreds of thousands of young Americans who have answered the call to serve a purpose higher than themselves and enlist in the US armed forces.
here is a NY Times story I hadn't seen Anyway
Gen Delong sounds a lot more credible than Rep Waxman to me.
work pretty well in wartime. Take this story for instance.
Let's leave aside the case of Pat Tillman for the moment and look at the Jessica Lynch story.
Above we have an uncritical regurgitation of a story that just isn't true. If you follow an actual chronology to the Lynch affair you'll see that there was no "Pentagon" statement on the subject and the story fell apart as soon as it was printed.
The Q document is a Washington Post article written by Vernon Loeb and Susan Schmidt based, surprise, surprise, on unnamed sources. Outside the hair raising lede, it is pretty noncommittal.
By April 20, the Post was in full retreat. From their ombudsman:
And this:
Propaganda does work in wartime if you know how to use it effectively. We're seeing it at Waxman's hearings and we're seeing it here. No named Defense official ever put out the Lynch story. Torie Clark, the Defense spokeswoman at the time, never commented on the story. The hospital commander of the facility treating Lynch pooh-poohed the story in near real time. Other unnamed officials were noncommittal about the story. Less than three weeks after the fact the Post was backtracking.
Yet, somehow, without an iota of proof what was simply shoddy reporting has become a "Pentagon" credibility issue.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling