Why would anyone in the media during these times deliberately create and disseminate disinformation to the American public? “Because they can” is a simplistic answer, but it is probably closer to the truth than is comfortable for most of us.
Take for example the article on the possible deployment of Special Forces in the September 14th issue of the Washington Post by Dana Priest. Almost as a footnote to this rather uninformed collection of suppositions and conjecture, Ms. Priest makes the statement that the reason why we are under strength in our Special Operations Forces (SOF) is because the training is too rigorous. A seemingly reasonable statement is it not? Unfortunately, it happens to be untrue.
In all of our armed services we have been hemorrhaging our best mid-grade NCOs and officers at an irreplaceable rate for over 6 years. The SOF suffers as well from this same exodus. But “why have they left” becomes the next reasonable question. If you look at the reports from higher headquarters on this phenomenon, it would seem they are leaving for better pay in the civilian sector, but the endless dirge from these valuable people is that they joined the military to be the finest warriors in the world and weren’t allowed to become or remain that – not because of pay or allowances or the other sad conditions they bore. It was because they truly felt they were not allowed to prepare and lead their people consistent with their paradigm of what a warrior needs to be.
An example of this can be seen in the Army’s annual failure to use even the meager ration of small-arms ammunition currently allotted for training, regularly shooting it into an earthen berm rather than reporting it unused. Soldiers who can’t shoot? What good are these? How about the combat pilots who could not fly often enough to maintain their skills and their ground crews that faced untenable shortages of essential spare parts for their aircraft. Ditto for our armored forces … tanks and fighting vehicles that cannot be maintained due to lack of parts and mechanics. An unending rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul approach to shortages that have slowly – but all too surely – robbed us of truly deployable formations although, to listen to the glowing reports of our desk-bound and politically-beholden generals and admirals during these same six years, you would get nary an inkling.
But there was a ray of hope a short while ago, when a group of senior officers with backbone intended to resign en masse to protest these conditions. Never heard of that did you? It was nipped in the bud by these same politically beholden officials and ignored to death by the Washington Post and others with the same agenda. We do not censor the news they say loudly to the public, but under their breath among themselves they quietly mutter that they alone decide what is newsworthy.
Do you remember that discredited 1998 story of nerve gas being used by the U.S. during the Vietnam War to kill deserters, women and children? Do you recall how that trumped up story was heralded by the Washington Post and other “liberal” papers and then amplified coast to coast during the weeks following the CNN and TIME allegations? Their own politically correct and well-established views assured them that the story must have been true and, in the aftermath of the controversy raised by those collective decisions, Iraq finally managed to get rid of the U.N. inspectors searching for their caches of chemical weapons.
After Joseph Farah at WorldNetDaily challenged these assumptions – and when the emerging eyewitnesses, contemporary diaries and even the long-published unit diaries of the enemy all contradicted the allegations – it was decided by the Washington Post and the rest of the liberal press that these revelations were “not newsworthy.” The Post’s assigned reporter was Dana Priest, who gave me that decision personally.
If you were to ask today’s SOF soldiers what they think of rigorous training you would hear, as I did, that it is the life’s blood of their abilities and the predictor of their survival in war. But that is not the answer that the Post was seeking. Nor was it what the liberal press told you. Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware).
Tom Marzullo was a Special Forces soldier during Vietnam serving both on an A-Team and in MACVSOG. He completed his career in the U.S. Navy aboard submarines and was assigned to submarine special operations. He resides in Denver, Colorado with his bride of 21 years and their daughter.
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WND Staff