Jules Crittenden nails the AP (and by extension, the rest of the media who rely on the AP for their reporting) for focusing only on the Iraq body count this Memorial Day.

(H/T Instapundit)

Favorite graph:

I’m beginning to get the impression there is nothing more important to the Associated Press in its Iraq reportage than the number of “American soldiers killed in this unpopular war.”  That phrase, with a number, is typically trotted out no later than graph three in AP stories on Iraq. It’s as though the body count is the sole measure upon which all decisions and action must turn. There certainly has been no effort by the Associated Press, or other major news organizations on the ground in Iraq, to examine progress in anything but the most dismissive manner, with a quick revert to body count.

You are not alone in your assessment of our ‘unbiased’ media, Jules.  The callous disregard for the bigger picture of our fight in Iraq is disrespectful to the brave men and women who have lost their lives in Iraq.  The ‘body count’ is but one, not overly significant, metric by which we should be judging our efforts in Iraq.  Reducing their ultimate contribution to a statistic for domestic political advantage is the height of propagandizing the war.

The body count number by itself is almost meaningless.  What are we supposed to compare this number to? Past wars?  Is the only acceptable fight one in which we don’t lose a single American?  Should we only fight like we did in the Balkans, by dropping bombs from 15,000 ft?  Fighting wars where we are overly concerned for our soldier’s safety inevitably leads to an increase in civilian casualties by collateral damage.   The media makes just as big a deal over civilian casualties as it does over military casualties.

That restriction seriously limits our ability to fight.  The only way to effectively control territory, and give the Iraqi’s stability to rebuild and organizing their country, is with American boots on the ground.  American soldiers in Iraq are targets for the terrorists (insurgents??? – another word rendered meaningless by the media’s attempt to avoid using the ‘T’ word) who recruit their fighters with stories of being able to go up against America’s fighting men and women in the streets of Iraq.

One of the reasons for the body count being where it is, is the restrictive rules of engagement placed on our military.  If we allowed our fighting force to take the gloves off and use whatever force necessary to take out the enemy, our body count would be lower, but many of our other objectives would be nearly impossible to accomplish.

In the end, war supporters, the Administration, and our soldiers in theater, just have to become accustomed to being maligned by our ’objective’ press corps.  The attacks will come no matter how the war is fought.  Surely the Administration can perform a better PR battle with the press here at home, but until there is a Democrat in the White House, no effort from the administration will be given a fair treatment by our biased MSM. 

This is a sad state of affairs when the unelected ‘fourth estate’ has become a mouthpiece and propaganda organ of one of our domestic political parties.  Conveniently, this political party is also the party that is further to the Left of the major parties.  Makes me wonder if they are just intrested in domestic politics, or if there is an ideological bent to their coverage of the issues.  My guess is that it is the latter.