as YouTube,[1] very rarely is new material pegged for subscribers to the official MNF-I channel, and what material does go up and what material is pegged is almost invariably dry and boring.[2] When it is suggested that all units should take advantage of soldiers' familiarity with digital media and desire to record by designating someone to film every operation—if only to ensure there is a visual record to counter any lies told after the fact—this author has encountered serious resistance from military personnel, to include Public Affairs (PA) personnel. (Of course, there are some lessons the Israelis didn't learn. In 2006, they refused to permit Western journalists to accompany their ground forces, which meant reporters wishing to cover the situation on the ground in Lebanon—which was basically all of them—had no choice but to go in through the Hezbollah controlled side, under Hezbollah's rules, to see what Hezbollah wanted them to see, no more and no less, and to broadcast that, no more and no less. In 2008, they similarly refused to permit Western journalists access to Gaza, which meant there was no independent confirmation of any casualty reports, and Western news outlets could either report the numbers coming from Palestinian sources or report no numbers at all. Most split the difference by reporting very vague numbers for as long as they could, but surely the Israeli side would only have been helped by having independent witnesses on the ground.)
The problem is that all too often the American military has responded to claims made against it by saying merely that an incident is under investigation. That is not a response. That is an answer that simultaneously freezes the potential for response—because what it says is that no real response will be forthcoming for an indefinite period of time—and one
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- ↑ More combat footage, however, seems to be posted to the site Liveleak.com. I have done no numerical analysis, that is simply this author's impression.
- ↑ Compare virtually anything posted by American personnel to Liveleak to, for example, "Ruins of Nineveh in Mosul," posted to the MNF-I channel on December 15, 2008, which doesn’t even have a narration. Available from www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTforK9Jc1k.
