Editorial: War (reporting) is hell

Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2005 | 7:31 a.m.

Quoting military experts and lawmakers, The Washington Post ran a lengthy story that examined Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's management of the Iraq war in the wake of an insurgency much larger than the Pentagon had ever anticipated. Reporting the views of some of their sources, the paper wrote, "So if parts of Iraq are still in combat zones next spring, with the Army apparently mired in a seemingly never-ending fight, then Rumsfeld may wind up remembered as a principal architect of a foreign policy disaster."

The date of the article? Sept. 14, 2003.

It's little wonder then that today, nearly two years and three months later, with the military mired in a seemingly never-ending fight, that reports out of Iraq are resulting in more and more public criticism of the war. It was the Bush administration, after all, that had promoted the notion that the military's role in Iraq would be over quickly and with minimal casualties.

But Rumsfeld, impervious to criticism, remains inflexible in his approach to the war in Iraq. As of Tuesday, 2,129 American troops had been killed and about 16,000 had been wounded. Nearly every day there are horrific acts of violence that jeopardize the ultimate goal of democratization.

There is no comprehensive plan other than to train Iraqis to fend for themselves, a painfully slow and backsliding process.

Instead of recognizing the need for a change of strategy, Rumsfeld has responded defensively to all criticism. At the time the Post article was written, he was lashing out at criticism directed toward him from Democrats in Congress. Today he is focusing on the news media, saying reporters are ignoring positive developments and overemphasizing American casualties. He says a bigger story than casualties in Iraq is the number of homicides and traffic accidents in the United States, and he castigates the media for not putting the war casualties in that perspective.

The whole Bush administration, including the president and Vice President Dick Cheney, are in this same mindset. The media have reported extensively about Iraq's new government and constitution, its coming parliamentary elections, brave Iraqi voters and American-backed construction of schools and other other infrastructure.

But apparently the administration won't be satisfied until the media begin putting a positive spin on the almost daily occurrences of kidnappings, assassinations and attacks by insurgents and terrorists that are inflicting mass casualties on Iraqi civilians and American and coalition forces.