The Word From a Couple of Young Marines

[flashman70]

I dropped by Walmart Friday evening to pick up some ammo and a couple of young guys were at the counter - one of them wanted to buy a varmint rifle. We started chatting and they mentioned being stationed in NC. I asked where and they said LeJune, and that they were both just recently back from Iraq. I thanked them for their service (Lord they were young) and said I was glad they were safe and sound. One of them said "It's not as bad as the media make it out to be." "CNN is the worst. We were in Fallujah and would hear a report that six Marines were injured. We were the only unit in Fallujah and knew no one had been hit. They just make bad s**t up."

Not a revelation, I admit, but interesting to hear from guys that have just gotten back.

 

[Dr.Who]

Now why does that not supprise me that the news media/reporters make things up....

 

[1 old 0311]

AMEN. I have a nephew in Afganastan and he says the same thing.

Kevin

 

[HankB]

w why does that not supprise me that the news media/reporters make things up....

Even though the prominent news anchor who used forged documents from a dead man to influence a presidential election is gone, (as is the news anchor who reported on exploding GM pickup trucks, and the foreign news anchor who chided U.S. voters for throwing a childish tantrum by booting dozens of Democrats in, IIRC, 1994) the main "news infrastructure" remains intact.

 

[Phetro]

Big Media! Nahhh....they'd never lie to us. Their job is to be honest and unbiased, and I'm sure they would never ignore that of all things.

 

[MD_Willington]

Maybe 6 guys getting constipated or gas from MRE's is considered a "significant" injury by the MSM??

 

[AaronE]

MD_Willington Maybe 6 guys getting constipated or gas from MRE's is considered a "significant" injury by the MSM??

To the ones who have nothing more challenging in their daily life than figuring what to wear for the day and what wine to have with dinner, that IS a significant injury.:banghead:

 

[Thin Black Line]

One thing I always liked about the Marines was that they minimized
their talk. Try page 3 of http://www.lejeune.usmc.mil/2dmardiv/2dtankbn/gysgtdixon/050516-Newsletter.pdf

 

[Kharn]

Maybe 6 guys getting constipated or gas from MRE's is considered a "significant" injury by the MSM??

That is actually a problem, Soldiers will get compacted bowels if they do not drink the recommended water (2Q with each MRE, IIRC) and try to avoid going #2 while in the field. Hello surgery.

Kharn

 

[Biker]

Well, not to stir up a chit-storm, but my wife and I have two close friends in Iraq , both women, and according to them, it's worse than the MSM reports. Subjective, I guess.

Biker

 

[Henry Bowman]

Big Media! Nahhh....they'd never lie to us. Their job is to be honest and unbiased, and I'm sure they would never ignore that of all things.

I have liberal (OK, progressive leftist) "friends" who argue that is why we need taxpayer-funded news organizations (NPR, PBS) because they are free to speak the truth and free from the "corporate sponsor induced bias" that makes the MSM have a right-wing bent on everything. They also thought that American children are being dumbed down and made dependent on government as a right-wing plan and that if better educated they would all vote Democrat.

 

[cbsbyte]

A good friends best friend, who served in a Army transportation unit in 2005 said Iraq is alot worse off because there is a lot of violence in the rural areas that is never reported on the nightly news. His convoys frequently were attacked by school childern, old men and familys with AKs. These people wanted nothing more to steal the supplies and sell it on the black market. People kill people for for food, medicine or just sneakers for their kid.

 

[MrTuffPaws]

If it is not so bad, then why does my nephew have to go back for a second tour? (no, he did not volunteer to go back)

Also, the death rates of our troops shows that it is not some theme park over there: http://cryptome.org/mil-dead-iqw.htm

That link is just the dead, not the thousands of wounded.

 

[longhorngunman]

Which is still historically incredibly small. It's absolutely amazing what our military and it's leaders have done in four years. Two huge countries ran by despots that have been cleaned out, 50 million people who at least have a chance at living in freedom. No more of Saddam's threats and tyranny in the ME. The long term influence and spread of Democracy, unless the liberals and Media keeps it from happening. Also notice today that Libya is again reconized by the US because they have agreed to terms and completely handed over their WMD program which was very advanced and also led to the finding out of the Nuclear proliferation programs that the Pakistani scientist was helping despots acquire. Libya's coming clean was because of what we did to Saddam and ole Khaddafi wanted nothing to do with spider holes! I'm by no means saying that Iraq is doing great and a rousing success...yet.

 

[AndyC]

Well, not to stir up a chit-storm, but my wife and I have two close friends in Iraq , both women, and according to them, it's worse than the MSM reports. Subjective, I guess.

True - it depends where you are. Baghdad is extremely dangerous, Tikrit is dangerous but less so than Baghdad while Erbil in the north, for example, is generally very peaceful. That being said, it obviously doesn't take much to plant an IED or drive a VBIED into a previously peaceful area.

 

[Malone LaVeigh]

Yeah, those silly MSM fruit loops making stuff up about,... oh,... 2600+ DEAD, including most since their glorious leader strutted on a carrier deck and declared "Mission Accomplished." The same libral America-haters that parroted every single LIE that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheny and Rice had to say about WMD before the war.

The son of a friend of mine came back from Iraq a few weeks on leave (he's back over there now) and I didn't get to talk to him for any time, but he is close friends with my daughter and her boyfriend, and he said all they do is go on raids and in the 6 months he's been there they have not once found anything they were looking for. But I guess they have managed to really piss off a lot of Iraqi civilians.

He's decided not to reenlist. Too bad, he always wanted to be career.

They also thought that American children are being dumbed down and made dependent on government as a right-wing plan and that if better educated they would all vote Democrat.

Numerous studies show that more educated voters tend to vote Democrat.

 

[Beachmaster]

One of them said "It's not as bad as the media make it out to be." "CNN is the worst. We were in Fallujah and would hear a report that six Marines were injured. We were the only unit in Fallujah and knew no one had been hit. They just make bad s**t up."

I doubt that they were the only unit in Fallujah. More likely, they were the only unit THEY KNEW that was in the area.

I've served in combat areas, and the average soldier is going to hear more rumors than the actual news of what is going on around them, and what is going on in the US. In addition, the military usually is not going to diseminate any bad news among the troops because of moral.

While I'm not saying the media does not lie, or isn't biased, I'm just pointing out that there are two (or more) sides to every story.

 

[SIGarmed]

Numerous studies show that more indoctrinated voters tend to vote Democrat.

Ok fixed.

Lock the thread.

 

[Otherguy Overby]

Malone LaVeigh:
Numerous studies show that more educated voters tend to vote Democrat.

Public education must be working as intended...

 

[deus_sol_invictus]

Iraq..

"These people wanted nothing more to steal the supplies and sell it on the black market. People kill people for for food, medicine or just sneakers for their kid."

Well, at least Iraq is becoming more like America's big cities.

 

[MTMilitiaman]

Public education must be working as intended...

Absolutely. Having spent nearly 20 years in the public education system, including 5 years of college, I can attest that voting Democrat isn't a matter of intelligence as it is brainwashing. The best professors try to keep their political leanings to themselves and present both sides of an argument. When this is done you can get intelligent debate, which when obtained quickly shows that their is a roughly proportional number of excessively stupid or intelligent liberals and conservatives.

Voting Democrat has nothing to do with being more intelligent (and there is a fair number of cases when the opposite could be shown to be true). But that wasn't the original topic. My bro is in Kirkuk with the 101st. His reports aren't favorable. I have a college bud in the Marines and he says it isn't all that bad.

 

[GoRon]

Numerous studies show that more educated voters tend to vote Democrat.

Thats why the inner city schools of the Democratic strongholds are such paragons of excellence.

 

['Card]

I don't mean to minimize our losses, but it has to be said that as a nation, we've completely lost our sense of perspective.

We've lost 2300+ troops in Iraq in just over three years.

2300 US soldiers killed would be about three week's worth at the height of the Vietnam war.

The Persian Gulf War is widely considered to be one of the greatest ass-kickings ever delivered by anybody. There we lost about 400 troops in roughly a month. If we'd been that "victorious" in the current war, we'd have lost 14,000+ troops by now.

Over 1 million troops (English, French and German) were killed at the Battle of the Somme in WW1. That's one battle. The British in particular lost 10,000 troops in the first hour of the first day of the battle.

Call me cold-hearted if you want, but instead of wringing my hands and rending my garmets over 2300 dead soldiers, I'd rather applaud the guys who are there for kicking a lot of ass and staying safe (by any reasonable standard) while doing it.

 

[Malone LaVeigh]

I stand corrected on the number. I didn't bother to check today's paper.

the problem with the 2300+ is that they're so pointless.

 

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

I know 6 close friends (4 soldiers, 2 private contractors) who have spent time in Iraq. They ALL say that the media reporting is atrocious. They ALL agree that the mainstream networks exagerate and sensationalize their reporting to make Iraq sound worse than it really is.

There's no question that the media distorts the facts on Iraq. But if you ask these guys why the media misreports Iraq you get a pretty interesting debate. One think it's a simple case of incompetance. Some say the media does it for ratings (daily life in Iraq is dull and boring, sez them, and accurate reporting would be similarly dull and boring). Some of them say the media intentionally distorts the truth for political reasons.

The media regularly run Chicken Little stories about Iraq. They may be interesting or entertaining, but don't make the mistake of thinking these stories are journalism. "Journalism" implies factual reporting.

The sad thing is that so many of our countrymen form their opinion of the war based on these inaccurate media stories. Otherwise intelligent people will ignore the first-hand accounts from average folks returning from Iraq, then accept anything that comes out of the Boob Tube as gospel.