Look at the bodies that are shown in the media. Then think about the bodies that are not shown. Look for the violence that gets the top twelve paragraphs in a story. Then see what shows up in the last two paragraphs.

Our military's press releases are treated with suspicion at best, and completely ignored most of the time. News of violence in Iraq from some anonymous Iraqi official via an equally anonymous AP stringer makes headlines. Heroic actions in the war show up in local papers and on the internet, if at all. Atrocities make the front pages of national papers.

There are dozens of other examples of coverage included, and coverage omitted, all designed for only one purpose: to ensure that this war is a failure.

I'll throw you a specific example for free:

Name a Gold Star mother. Quickly.

Unless you have one living down your street, I know damn well which name came to mind. I've read the stories of dozens of others. Oddly, most don't seem to be the same kind of story I hear from the one who makes the newspapers. A hundred insurgents killed in a battle are not news. It shows up, if at all, as "a hundred Iraqis were killed yesterday in a battle..."

Had WWII been covered the way modern enlightened journalists have been covering wars since Vietnam, we probably would have lost.

CNN concealed Saddam's atrocities. Whether their reasoning is good enough, you can judge for yourself. The point is, there's your coverage. It's okay to crap on America and it's leaders. Nobody is going to hurt you for it, and it's considered sophisticated anyway.

Scott Ritter:

[Q:] You've spoke about having seen the children's prisons in Iraq. Can you describe what you saw there?

[Ritter:] The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children — toddlers up to pre-adolescents — whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace.

Such people are BETTER than you and me. They can make the choices about what we need to see and hear so we don't fly off the handle and make the wrong decisions. From their point of view, of course.

Sit on information on a prison for children for almost five years? Of course. We wouldn't want to have people getting emotionally inflamed, would we? Print photos of Abu Ghraib all over the world five times a week, and inflame millions of Muslims against us? That's different. You see, that's what we were looking for.

I have thrown up the challenge a dozen times here: show me what the mainstream media would be doing differently if al Qaeda were actually paying them. Find me examples of big stories that make our side look good and their side look bad. It's goddamn al Qaeda. How hard could that be?

Thank God they're not the only game in town any more. It makes me wonder what we've been fed in the years before the alternative media.