Remember the Truth Tour ballyhoo?
Critics Call Radio Hosts' Trip Propaganda Mission
The plan
The delegation, which Morgan said is being funded by individual radio stations and the hosts themselves, will be leaving on Friday for about a week.
They will be broadcasting from U.S Central Command headquarters in Baghdad's Green Zone and will be traveling with the troops daily.
The group will kick off the trip with a "Thank You BBQ" for the troops at Centcom headquarters in Tampa, Fla., before traveling to Kuwait to visit with soldiers. They will be flown from there to Iraq via military transport and will be sleeping in tents inside the secured Green Zone.
According to retired Col. Buzz Patterson, host of "The Buzz Cut" on Rightalk, the delegation of seven to 10 conservatives will also include two writers from the Web site FrontPage Magazine, which is published by David Horowitz and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.
"The war is being won, if not already won, I think," Patterson, who is retired from the U.S. Air Force, said. "[Iraq] is stabilized and we want the soldiers themselves to tell the story."
Nothing in the mainstream media popped up on Google. I found only an article posted today in the on-line National Review.(cited at the end)
moveamericaforward.org
Friday in Tampa on July 8 is well documented.
First Pictures from Voices of Soldiers Truth Tour
The Briefing from CENTCOM at MacDill AFB
Photos From CENTCOM BBQ
Although the broadcast schedule implies that broadcasts from Baghdad were scheduled to begin on July 11, I deduce from the diaries that the group was only there for three days--July 12 through July 14. They were back in Kuwait on July 15. Not much time to subvert the dominant paradigm that Iraq isn't turning out well.
A diary entry by Howard Kaloogian gets us to the Baghdad airport. Not a word about the trip from the airport to Baghdad, where they have to bunk with a liberal reporter. Ewww!
The Group Is Now in Kuwait
Some undated photographs from Iraq
More photographs from Iraq
Then we have a blandingly generic summing up written by Spc. Curt Cashour, who is based at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.
Sending the 'right' signals
rightalk.com
At Rightalk.com Brad Maaske describes his Wednesday, when he talked to some Iraqis, but I can't say the results contribute anything new to our understanding. Of course it appears that all the participants on the tour were assigned interpreters by the U.S. Army. It's hardly surprising that nothing surprising emerged from their exchanges.
Some of what I learned in Baghdad
Brad tells what he saw and did when he had " unfettered and total access to anyone in Baghdad, from the lowest soldier to the Chief of Operations . . . " However this did not mean that he set out with only a few of his own native contacts.
Wow! What a day!
My day started at 7:00 AM as I was going out on foot patrol with the Iraqi Army. Over the course of the day I went on 3 patrols and saw several trouble spots in the red zone.
Others in our group were taken to see the reconstruction projects as well as going on patrol and visiting an orphanage in the red zone adopted by our American Soldiers! I was 1/2 mile from the suicide bomber.
You should be so proud of the wonderful job our soldiers do. Children flock to the Humvees whenever they stop. It is no wonder the murdering terrorists have gone to the softest targets of all, children accepting candy and gifts from our soldiers!
Over the course of 18 hours we saw more than we could absorb. We are all still checking our notes, recordings and videotape to share what we have learned.
Its 2:30 AM and we are now back in Kuwait. Many of us have had less than 10 hours sleep since Monday. One thing is certain, there is a ways to go, but, we are making significant progress towards turning Iraq over to the the Iraqi's.
That was it. The third and last day of the tour.
Here is a story sent back by Melanie Morgan that is meant to be uplifting, but I find terribly ironic, with the emphasis on the terrible. It is the story of a young Iraqi girl caught in the crossfire when insurgents ambushed American troops. Her sister was killed and she was horribly burned. When the local doctors proved unequal to treating her burns, a patrol of American soldiers managed to get her sent to the U.S. for treatment. So I guess we're supposed to be proud, and she's supposed to be grateful that we are helping her recover from horrible injuries she never would have suffered if we hadn't invaded.
Latest from Iraq
I was rather startled at how differently various participants perceived their living conditions.
Michael Graham 1
I slept on a bare cot in a tent in the desert, and at some locations the only available "food" (and I use that term under protest) were MREs -- which stands for "Meals Ready to Eat...assuming you've already eaten both shoes and most of your undergarments."
Martha Zoller 2
Our accommodations were cots in tents with other soldiers . . . . There was power and air conditioning in each tent, plenty of access to showers and bathrooms. Also, each tent had wireless internet access. It didn't work well for my computer, but there were plenty of soldiers and marines that were emailing and surfing the web in their off time. While it was Spartan, it was comfortable.
Brad Maaske 3
We spent the day eating, the food is awesome here, talking to soldiers, and getting clearances to film and interview more people. 3 days is not enough time. . . . We are sleeping in tents, approximately 20 people to a tent, ours both civilian and military. Although it is hot here, it feels a lot like my home town in Visalia, California.
Ms. Zoller got excited by an encounter with a "twisted" UN worker while she waited 18 hours at the Baghdad airport.
The Final Chapter of My Trip To Iraq
The most radical viewpoint came from a UN worker, who didn't want to have her name used. The day before a heinous homicide car bomb exploded in a crowd of children and families that had gathered around Americans giving out candy. The cowardly bomber waited until the children had gathered and then detonated the bomb, killing 27 children. She said it was terrible that the American soldier was giving candy to the children. Blaming an American soldier in a peaceful exchange with Iraqi children for a car bomber, who killed them, is just the kind of twisted thinking we are up against in the Global War on Terror.
If the UN worker said anything about the fact that the American invasion had turned Iraq into a spawning ground for these terrorists, Ms. Zoller doesn't share it.
She also got a scoop on Saddam's support of terrorism. Listen up Dick Cheney.
Still in Baghdad
We had briefings from one of the Iraqi military generals, Lt. General Abdul Qader Jassim. This was the first time he had talked to journalist from the west in his headquarters. He told an interesting story of how he went from being a general in Saddam's army, being in and out of jail when he began to stand up to Saddam, and then transitioning to the War on Terror and the new Iraqi army. How do you go from terror trainer to terror fighter? He now looks at Saddam as a gang leader and that the coalition did not conquer the Iraqi people, but we conquered the regime of Saddam.
He verified that Saddam had trained terrorists in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon for the purpose of terrorising Israel and Iran. He said that on that there were 4000 trained terrorists that were harbored in Iraq at the time of the invasion into Afghanistan. He also estimated that the Iraqi army is about 60% on the way to being ready to be independent from the coalition forces.
This is interesting stuff. I always had the impression that Saddam took a more punitive course than a little jail time for generals in his army who opposed him. Maybe he wasn't such a bad guy after all. I'm surprised Cheney hasn't quoted the general on the subject of Saddam's training of terrorists The general's estimate of Iraqi army readiness is also at odds with that of our generals.( U.S. Says Iraqi Security Forces' Abilities Limited)
I suppose the last word is to be found in Michael Graham's (he of the "bare cot in a tent in the desert")National Review column.
Handing Over the Mic
These soldiers weren't stooges from Public Affairs or handpicked flag wavers foist on me by media handlers. I found some in the mess hall, others working security checkpoints; others sought me out because they have family living in the D.C. area where my radio show is broadcast. The least fortunate were the soldiers in Humvees stuck with "tourist duty," four friendly but serious young men who got stuck with a couple of bonehead radio hosts riding along on patrol.
In all, I spoke to more than 100 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, with different ranks and different duties at their FOBs (forward operating base), and yet they overwhelmingly had the same things to say about the war in Iraq:
"We believe in the mission."
"We're making progress."
"The Iraqis are making progress, too."
And, perhaps most important of all: "We're going to win."
In other words, I heard things seldom heard on CBS or read in the pages of the New York Times.
He finishes
It was only a week, and I have my obvious Bush-supporting, troop-cheering biases, but how much closer can a reporter get to delivering unspun, bias-free objective reporting than live-mic broadcasting instantly back to the states? No edits or filters or editorial meetings. Just the young men in the hot desert telling what they've seen, what they've heard, and what they now believe based on those experiences.
Isn't it at least significant that not one in 100 thought invading Iraq was a mistake? Was it mere coincidence that a random selection of 100 soldiers all believe their mission is worthwhile? Should we detect the hand of the Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy in the fact that the vast majority of the troops find the media coverage of the war ignorant, harmful, or both?
Well, it wasn't a week, it was 3 days. And Mr. Graham doesn't say what percentage of his sample was either selected by the army (drivers, escorts, interpreters) or self-selected fans of his show. And there is the little matter of members of the military being prohibited by law from criticizing their leaders, including the commander in chief. Graham appears to have missed the young women also in the hot desert, who probably also have stories to tell. Mr. Graham doesn't have any explanation of how these soldiers are measuring "progress." He appears to have missed also the fact that hope and belief are not reality. Those soldiers who have seen friends killed and mutilated, who have themselves killed innocents along with criminals, need very much to believe that their mission is worthwhile and that they are "winning" no matter what the facts are.
I'm sure that the tour participants now have a better idea than I do of the misery of 120 degree heat and sandstorms, but they don't have any more insight into the ultimate fate of Iraq than they did before their exciting journey. Or if they do, they're not talking.