The Military and the Media

Mac Owens has an essay on National Review Online describing what he sees as a renewing deterioration of military-media relations.

It's probably worth pointing out that some of this deterioration comes about when the media doesn't do the job it should, viz., dig into all stories, not just ones about the US Army. Here's an extract from www.strategypage.com, a list of what the after-action investigation of that "Iraqi wedding" found, and it explains why Army commanders were so adamant that it wasn't wedding.

- The only permanent buildings at the site contained large stocks of food (the meat was still frozen solid), bedding, medical supplies, ammunition and weapons, as well a document forging operation. 

- The site was not prepared for a wedding feast, and there were no stocks of dishes,
plates, etc. and, most importantly, no  "Nuptial Tent," which is a standard feature of an Arab wedding.

- There was no evidence of any means of support for the house. The most common livelihood in the area is sheep raising, and there was no evidence of that at the site. All evidence pointed to a smuggler way station, similar to others found along the Syrian border in the past.

- The deceased "wedding guests" were almost all men of military age, only a couple of women, no elders at all. There was only one child, who was wounded. All the deceased were dressed as city dwellers, not as the local Arabs who would hold a wedding at such a location. All of the deceased lacked any form of ID on them. The only ID's found were stacked up inside the house, and these were fewer in number than those bodies found at the site.

- Weapons and equipment found there included RPG's, military binoculars, and bomb making materials.

- There was lots of clothing found, prepackaged in pants and shirt sets.

- Weddings are traditionally held on Thursdays in Iraq to take advantage of Friday as a day of rest. The bombing raid took place on Tuesday night.

- There were also no gifts, no decorations, no food set out or left over, and the good bit of money recovered was all in the pockets of the bodies found at the site.

What I wonder is, how come they didn't leak this before? There's more to military-media relations than embedding...