Sigh! When are bloggers going to learn! It's been twice this week now that I've seen some blogger cite partial and out-of-context quotes from mainstream media articles as though the general tone was to be trusted.
Haven't we learned a thing since Rathergate? Haven't all those lessons in deception -- from The New York Times, and CNN's deal to only report Saddam's party line in return for access -- taught us anything about being sensitive to, spotting, and debunking media spin?
Last night, I read the obviously-spun coverage of Rumsfelt's visit to Kuwait. The headlines alone gave the game away: "Rumsfeld tries to soothe angry US troops", "US Troops Grill Rumsfeld", "Disgruntled soldiers air gripes at Rumsfeld", "Rumsfeld faces dissent from US troops". The lead-in phrasing often made it sound like Rumsfeld was confronting a growing mutiny.
Yet I noticed that Rumsfeld, known for his multi-paragraph answers, seemed to be quoted as only responding with trite one-liners. It seemed clear to me that things were most likely being taken out of context.
So I did what anyone wanting to comment intelligently on the news needs to do these days (sadly) -- check for the other side of the story.
In this case, I read the full transcript of the meeting, which tells a decidedly different story: the atmosphere was not one of unhappiness and mutiny, as many articles painted it. Rather, there were a few questions about armor and the stop-loss program, but there were quite a number of others in a completely different tone, including one fellow who was unhappy that he had to sign up for the National Guard -- he had wanted to enlist directly in the Army and was prevented from doing so because of his age! (Want to bet the press won't report that complaint?)
Only the most negative quotes were used, stripped of their context. Cues from the transcript -- like "[laughter]" and "[applause]" -- are omitted, making some of Rumsfeld's humorous, apologetic, or self-deprecating statements come off as arrogant or dismissive.
Yet how trusting we still are! So many bloggers still react to these obviously spun out-of-context quote-fragments as though the tone were to be trusted and the articles really meant something.
For example, over at QandO, McQ is excoriating Rumsfeld for blowing off the soldier's questions. When a soldier asked about a lack of well-armored Humvees (the same question which arose during the debates), Rummy was quoted as responding merely with:
"You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to have."
McQ's response to Rumsfeld is blistering:
Well you know what Rummy, that might, just might have been an acceptable answer when we first went into Iraq, but its been what, almost 2 years now? That answer just won’t cut it anymore. In fact its completely unacceptable.
And later:
Am I mad about this? Yes. This is the height of arrogance in my book and the soldiers deserved a better answer than the one Rumsfeld gave. They also deserve immediate action to fix a problem the command structure has been aware of, but apparently hasn’t acted upon, for two years. That is both unacceptable and inexcusable.
McQ, why do you trust the media to give you the whole story? Of course, the troops deserve a better answer. Rumsfeld gave them one:
I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I’m told that they are being – the Army is – I think it’s something like 400 a month are being done. And it’s essentially a matter of physics. It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.
As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.
I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip. It’s interesting, I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up. And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has been working on. ...
The other day, after there was a big threat alert in Washington, D.C. in connection with the elections, as I recall, I looked outside the Pentagon and there were six or eight up-armored humvees. They’re not there anymore. [Cheers] [Applause] They’re en route out here, I can assure you. Next. Way in the back. Yes.
Taken in context, it's clear the tone of Rumsfeld's "the Army you have" quote was apologetic, not terse and dismissive: We'd like to have more, too, but worked hard to improve, we have improved, and I'm being assured by your higher-ups that we're not going to let up, and we're doing all we possibly can.
Rumseld's quote was a set-up for explaining the history, and harkened back to the first days of the war. It wasn't his comment on the current situation. As such it violated the rules of ethical journalism, that you don't take a quote out of context when it substantially changes the meaning or tone.
The media is shameless, and people are easily fooled.
A more fair summary of the above was this one, from AP, which I doubt would have provoked the same reaction:
Rumsfeld said the Army was sparing no expense or effort to acquire as many Humvees and other vehicles with extra armor as it can. What is more, he said, armor is not the savior some think it is.
It seems Rumsfeld's answer is accurate (emphasis added):
The Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, speaking Wednesday in Washington after the Kuwait session, said that the military was now producing 450 armored Humvees a month, compared with just 15 a month in the fall of 2003, when the threat of roadside bombs began to emerge. He also said that three out of four Humvees in the war zones were armored, and that unarmored vehicles were used in back-up operations.
McQ seems to have gotten the impression the main point was that trucks weren't armored, and that nobody was doing anything about that, and that was the question Rumsfeld was blowing off:
Get off your ass, make it a priority like it should have been a year ago and get the trucks armored up as they should be. It was accomplished with armoring up Humvees, and there is absolutely no reason the same program can’t and be applied to armoring up trucks....
Am I mad about this? Yes. This is the height of arrogance in my book and the soldiers deserved a better answer than the one Rumsfeld gave. They also deserve immediate action to fix a problem the command structure has been aware of, but apparently hasn’t acted upon, for two years. That is both unacceptable and inexcusable.
Perhaps McQ was reacting as the press intended.
Yet the soldier didn't ask about "trucks", but "vehicles". The bit about the "trucks" was not at all part of the soldier's original question; it was added later by the press, probably to confuse readers as to the nature of the soldier's concern, which was:
A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.
I'm no expert, but given his references to installing glass and "combat", it sounds like his concern was unarmored Humvees, which do not have glass windows. Rumsfeld, who knew what these soldiers were going to be doing and how, clearly thought that was the question, too.
McQ also seems to think that trucks are the 'vehicles' being sent on 'street patrols' in this quote he cites:
He also said military vehicles that go into Iraq without full armor are used only inside U.S. compounds, rather than used on street patrols where they are vulnerable to roadside bombs.
Again, I'm no expert, but it seems unlikely they'd be patrolling streets in large trucks rather than Humvees, nor that trucks would be sent deliberately "into combat", as the soldier's question put it.
And I don't know if the trucks are going to leave the compounds unescorted, but I'll note if they do, the main danger is probably from bombs, not gunfire. As Rumseld pointed out, armor plating doesn't do much against a blast pressure wave coming up from below or up at an angle. Armor, if scarce, should be applied to vehicles most likely to receive gunfire.
So, if there's any scarcity or priority, I'd rather see the focus being on armoring combat vehicles -- like Humvees -- rather than shift to trucks. Sure, we want everything armed to the teeth. But the question is of priority and effort being applied, rather than just instantly getting our desired ideal.
It sounds like McQ is reacting to the tone of the article, falling for the truncated quotes, and raising an issue -- unarmored trucks? -- which nobody else seems to be thinking is the main topic under debate. He screams for things to be done immediately, as though the Army were sitting on it's hands, or as though we just hadn't bother to spend the necessary funds.
The liberal assumption is that we have unlimited resources which can be put into play immediately; perfection is possible, all it takes is the proper government program, failures are always due to someone's ill will or bad character.
Conservatives (and libertarians, I'm told) are supposed to be occupied with understanding real-world tradeoffs and costs, and understand the limited success government can bring.
McQ seems to be taking the liberal stance here.
Perhaps more could be done -- but there's more to determining that than simply griping about the way an out-of-context quote comes off, as though that were truly all Rumsfeld had said. We can be skeptical of the Bush Administration? Excellent! Now let's all remember to be just as skeptical towards the fourth estate.
UPDATE: It seems the soldier in question was a "plant" meant to bring up the topic:
Lee Pitts, a reporter for the Chattanooga Times, is boasting that he is responsible for the question posed to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld yesterday about the lack of armor on U.S. military vehicles. Pitts says that, knowing only soldiers could ask questions of Rumsfeld, he brought along two as "escorts" and helped them work on questions about armor. Then, he says he lobbied the guy in charge of the microphone to select "plants" as questioners.
If the questions were genuine concerns, why did the soldiers need help to "work on" them? I agree it's an important topic to discuss, but distorting Rumsfeld's responses -- whether you agree with his full answers or not -- is hardly ethical behavior, nor conducive to getting to the bottom of things.
UPDATE: I would be remiss if I didn't also point you to this and this soldier's testimony, both of which testify the whole affair was largely upbeat, and that the acoustics were bad -- which clearly expose as lies both (a) the media's depiction of an angry mob, and (b) Rumsfeld's difficulty in hearing as pretended.