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Afghanistan
Still bombing at Shah-i-Kot
2002-03-15
  • US warplanes on Friday carried out fresh bombing raids to eliminate the last pockets of al-Qaeda and Taliban resistance in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, an Afghan commander said. "The fighting is in progress. We continue to finish all of Al-Qaeda. The Americans with their airforce, us with our ground forces," said General Attigullah Luddine, who commands hundreds of Afghan troops fighting alongside US forces in the Operation Anaconda offensive, which was launched on March 2. "The operation is finished but there are still some very small units of Al-Qaeda and Talibans."
    Then the operation's not finished.
    The guys on the ground may have scored a victory in Anaconda, but the public affairs mistakes associated with this effort have been a case study in how not to manage the press. Of course the US press just regurgitated in real time anything that a uniform served up as news or commentary, without any consideration of whether the item was realistic or not. These instant links to reality have only taken out the natural filters that posed as editorial obstacles to stupid news stories in the past.
    Posted by Tom Roberts 3/15/2002 5:28:41 PM
    One of my favorite examples of Press Stupid was in the runup to the Gulf War. CNN was rattling on about how fearsome Sammy's SCUDs were, while the visuals were showing SA-6's on parade. While there are exceptions, in most cases if the same people were reporting on agricultural affairs they'd be talking about "horsies" and "moo-moos."
    Posted by Fred 3/17/2002 12:17:13 PM
    • Posted by:Fred Pruitt

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