[Ramona_A_Stone]

U.S. military and intelligence officials have systematically underreported the violence in Iraq in order to suit the Bush administration's policy goals

DUH.

Originally Posted by Mazer

...they all have different opinions about the war in Iraq, but in the interest of solidarity they keep their opinions private. If the military did have a political agenda it simply would not be able to function as a single unit, and recruitment rates would drop sharply. This is the one American institution that has to be perfectly neutral, and the fact that it has accomplished anything is evidence that it is neutral.

HUH? Dude, I barely know where to begin.

Of course the military has a political agenda, it's the embodiment of a political agenda. The current agenda is to win the "war on terror," "spread democracy" and make Americans "feel safer" by fighting in Iraq. Now granted this might not seem in the least bit logical to anyone with half a brain, but if it's not a political agenda then I can't imagine what would fucking qualify.

You maintain that it's the duty of soldiers to keep their mouths shut about their own political opinions lest recruitment should suffer, but it's apparently lost on you that that in itself is a political agenda, and you go on to argue that the military has ascended to a state of neutrality! Of course the military isn't neutral, the aggressive sterilization of individual opinion itself is a hard political line which is precisely designed to allow it to function as a unit toward a goal. A military goal is anything but "perfectly neutral."

Also you suggest that Iraq is blanketed by free agent reportage in a journalistic orgy that must be filling virtual warehouses with videotape as evidence that there's no chance the violence is underreported, and yet oddly you could compile all the footage and reports that have emerged from Iraq and been shown to the American public since the outset, edit it together and probably view it in a single evening. Seems to be a small margin of discrepancy there, no?

Originally Posted by Sinner

"well, then I guess everything is swell in Iraq”, hmmm who said or implied that?...
...When insurgent propaganda or unsubstantiated rumor are passed off as verified news, it does nobody any good, except the people who want to drown Iraq in blood...

Ah yes, funnily you know it seems people only use the word PROPAGANDA when they're in denial of the message.