The Laughing Wolf

Staging Versus Ignorance

Well, my blogfather had to keep pushing, and bringing up other points in regards the story that claimed that the rescue of Pvt. Lynch had been staged strictly for morale. As usual, he does bring up some good points that merit fuller discussion.

Where we both agree is on how you send people into a situation like that. You don’t tempt fate, and you don’t trust that all the bad guys have gone. Even if you suspect that they have, you still don’t take chances.

That means that you send in the people who can do the job, the special forces. You have them armed with live ammo, not blanks as it is reported that the Baghdad Broadcasting Company is claiming/is going to claim soon. You find a locked door, you don’t knock, but blow it per training. You secure, sort, and cope.

Which leads to the clueless reporter hypothesis. I have written on this before, on his blog, about the undeclared war between The Media and the military. In many journalistic circles, it is quite fashionable and proper to be willfully ignorant of the military. To go to great lengths to avoid learning anything about them and how they operate. They are the murderous, almost sub-human barbarians, after all, who CHOSE to be soldiers.

That attitude is one reason the embeds were a brilliant stroke. It is doubtful that you truly got too many of that school out with the real front-line troops. Yet, all the embeds – even Ted Koppel – got a much better understanding of the troops, how they operate, and what is and is not done.

Which brings us back to the particular reporter in question. Was he just ignorant of how such things are done? Could he be one of those moronic fools who thinks that you could just slip in a small team like modern ninjas, so that they could check out everything and then just spirit her out?

I find that hard to believe, though I do have to acknowledge it as a possibility. After all, there are those out there who believe that in the midst of a gun battle that someone with a snub-nose revolver (or comparable auto) can get pinpoint accuracy and shoot so as to disable a perpetrator/enemy without killing them or doing lasting damage to their body. There are those who think the special forces really are ninjas who can sneak in, go across ceilings, and move undetected throughout buildings and such even though they are dressed different, talk different, armed, and more. There are also those who believe in the tooth fairy too.

The story, and the way it was put together, just doesn’t add up for me. Not on many levels, and in particular not on the ignorance angle. There appears to have been too much time spent in setting up points, in not-so-subtle innuendo and implication, for this to have been the complete result of ignorance. If this was indeed written in the aftermath of the liberation of the town, it would also imply a certain familiarity with military operations. Even if not, almost everyone on the planet has had some exposure to rescue operations through news, broadcast media, or even popular books.

No, this one comes across as nothing more than a deliberate smear campaign. An attempt to start something that it now appears others may be willing to pick up. The BBC report seems to quote one or two of the same sources, and I would love to know if this guy helped or advised on the BBC program.

This really, to me, is adding up to the big lie. Tell something in the worst way possible, imply or infer that really bad things happened and/or that it was a sham on one or more levels, and trust the doubt to grow. The absence of checks and balances is a clue, but it is just one of many.

No, I am afraid I don’t see much innocent in this. Ignorance may well be part of it, but I don’t think it is simple ignorance of the military and how things are done.

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