Ollie North Critical of Media's Reporting on Iraqi War
by Chad Groening
March 31, 2004
(AgapePress) - One of the nation's most prominent national defense analysts says the mainstream media continues to distort what is going on in Iraq.Retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North recently published War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which he documents his experiences as an embedded reporter for the Fox News Channel during Operation Iraqi Freedom. North says a year later, despite reports to the contrary from the mainstream media, morale among the troops is high.
"You saw those stories last week about how morale is down; somebody had done a poll out there, and morale is lower and the suicide rate is higher?" North asks. "The best barometer of troop morale -- and it's been this way ever since the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge; George Washington learned this -- is the reenlistment rate."
"You can check any one of the armed services: the reenlistment rates for the units that are committed to Iraq, the units that are going to Iraq, and the units that have come back from Iraq have never been better," North states.
And according to the retired military officer, the media has overplayed the report that the suicide rate is up in the military. "Unmentioned in any of the statistics was that the suicide rate for the armed forces of the United States is about three percentage points lower than it is for the national average for men," he says.
"Now why our colleagues in the media wouldn't point that out is beyond me."
The best-selling author and television commentator says most his colleagues in the media simply do not get it when it comes to reporting what is actually happening right now in Iraq. North says War Stories provides an accurate historical account of what happened during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The "poison pen media" will not report that, he says.
