My Turn to Sound Off: Bias is Apparent in Media’s Failure to Report the Good News From Iraq

More than 1,100 building projects are going on in Iraq. They include 364 schools, 67 public clinics, 15 hospitals, 83 railroad stations, 22 oil facilities, and 69 electrical facilities. The oil and electrical facilities will, when operational, contribute much to the Iraqi economy.

And I bet you didn’t know that, as of the end of 2005, 96% of Iraqi children under the age of 5 had received the first two series of polio vaccinations, while 4.3 million children were enrolled in primary schools.

And did you know that there are over 1.25 million cell phone subscribers in Iraq, and that since Saddam was overthrown, phone use has risen 158%?

How about this? The Baghdad Stock Exchange opened for business in June 2004. Yes, people in Iraq invest in stocks, just as do people here.

What about the fact that at least two major candidates in the Iraqi presidential election held in January 2005 had a televised debate? Or these facts: an independent Iraqi electoral commission, working with U.S. and U.N. personnel, funded voter registration and information programs, set up 30,000 polling places, organized 130,000 election workers, and held a general election for a nation of 27 million people.

Did you know that Iraq’s independent media consists of 75 radio stations, 180 newspapers, and 10 television stations? No, Al Jazeera is not the only TV outlet in that nation, although it is the only one to have been temporarily banned there, in Iran, and Saudi Arabia, for inflammatory broadcasting.

Now admit it. You’ve never seen more than one or two of these positive developments in the American press. Instead, we are fed a steady diet of suicide bombings, flag burning incidents, casualty counts, blustering quotes from Al Quada operatives about what they’re going to do to us, and wounded troops stepping off airplanes, being greeted by sobbing relatives who don’t seem to understand that in war, soldiers get hurt and even killed.

This plays right into the liberal’s hands, because their view of how to conduct a war seems to be that as soon as our troops get shot at we need to pull back and bring in a blue-helmeted international peacekeeping force.

All of this is intended to undermine the world’s perception of the United States, thus minimizing support for the war on terror. It’s also aimed at discouraging American citizens by convincing them that the cost of fighting any war is just too high, and that this war is one we cannot win.

If we adopt that attitude, it would place us squarely in line with the socialist countries of Europe, who believe they can solve any dispute by talking their enemies to death. It’s also a repeat of the tactic used during the Vietnam War, another fight the media did not support because it threatened to stop the domino-like advance of international Communism.

Not since WWII has the media agreed that the United States should fight a war to win, and even then, some news outlets expressed doubts that we were worthy of victory.

If he’s still alive, Osama bin Laden is probably laughing up his sleeve, knowing that if he hangs on long enough he has a good shot at waiting us out. In this, the liberal American press is his greatest ally.