It's the Army, not the Media

There is outrage across the blogosphere this AM regarding TNR, AP, Reuters, WaPo and everyone else for reporting things from Iraq that either didn't happen at all or happened differently from that reported.

None of these lies and distortions would appear if the Army did the job of cleaning things up quickly and telling us about it. The incompetence of the conduct of the War extends to the lack of a professional media response team.

We have a lesson in front of us right now when we look at the Clinton attack team in action once again. When attacked, they are prepared, they have their story, and they know how get it out there instantly. I submit to you that we are paying the price for the incompetence of the Military, an organization wedded to secrecy at all levels (note the banning of blogs), that just doesn't "get it." When I served , the brass banned movies, seized books (and punished anyone caught reading them), and went so far as to try to stop us from seeing movies they didn't like while we were in town. Suppressing information is their only interest, and they are miserably incompetent at that task too.

This is from today's Stars and Stripes....No BS here

A story headlined Disabled soldier feels abandoned by Army also has links to other stories blasting the medical care our troops are getting. And this blast is coming from the Army itself.....

He had trained for months before going on temporary duty from the Heidelberg Military Intelligence Detachment, 2nd MI Battalion, 66th MI Group, to the monthlong selection program at Fort Bragg, N.C., in September and was ready for the challenge.

“I could put 70 pounds on my back and run for 20 miles,” he said. “I could pick up [my daughter] with one arm and my wife with the other.”

But a week or so into the course, an accident changed everything.

Hennessey and other soldiers were ordered to hoist thousands of pounds of rebar from a construction site onto their shoulders and clear it away.

“Finally, we get it lifted up,” Hennessey recalled. “I was the third guy on it. The first guy tripped. I tried to hold it up, and it sort of crushed me.”

Hennessey stayed at Fort Bragg four more days.

“At that point, I needed help getting up. I didn’t have control of my bladder,” he said.

As bad as that sounds, it was just the beginning of a health decline that’s changed Hennessey’s body, his sense of himself and his future.

Hennessey, 34, not only won’t become a Special Forces medic as he had planned, but he’s also soon to become a civilian with what he says is chronic back pain and disability. He’s made a dozen trips to the emergency room in past months, needs a cane to get around and takes handfuls of painkillers daily.

There's a hell of a lot more to this story, one that is circulating to every GI in the service no matter where stationed. This entire war is being led by an asshole without a clue. This guy is not alone in his abandonment by the Army.....