Do we not owe it to our soldiers in the field to do everything we can to ensure their success?

The recent Newsweek disaster was only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our(american) own news sources printing negative stories about the military that relied on shoddy sources or allegations by people with a vested interest in attacking America. Does anybody want to hazard a guess at how many front pages Abu Garib got in the NYTimes? The vast majority of the media has shown a clear anti-military attitude.

Now of course the liberals would call this responsible journalism, but they have wanted Iraq to be a failure from the beginning so their opinion is somewhat negligible. Any objective analysis of warfare, especially the type we are currently in will yield that in an army of hundreds of thousands of men there will be a certain amount of unsavory behavior that the military must correct. The media has shown itself unable to put this into perspective, and just last weekend it cost lives.

This thread was prompted by my friend who just emailed me from Iraq. He says that things arent half as bad as the media portrays them to be. I see this as a direct negative influence on our soldier's moral.

America has had a long and successful relationship with media censorship during a time of war. This censorship seems to have lessened dramatically in recent times and we have felt the effects already once(vietnam).

I see no reason whatsoever to allow a hostile media as much access to Iraq and our soldiers when it has been shown to cause losses in moral and more trouble for our troops. Any news about the military should be checked by the military before being shown to the fickle public. There are many lessons that must be re-learnt from WW2 it seems.

Its a sad state of affairs when American lives are at stake and the media feel it is their job to kick around the military. At a certain point we need to put our soldiers lives and our countries success in iraq on the balance with the media's "right" to know everything and see which one weighs more. Especially as the media has shown itself to be so hostile.

Ernie Pyle would be rolling in his grave if he saw some of the crap reported on today and how it affected our troops.