SwiftVets.com

[Doll]

Emphasis mine: While watching a documentary on the History Channel about Spruance's 5th Fleet the orator commented that this very humble Admiral hated the press in the United States because of their miscoverage and misrepresentations of that time era during WWII. Admiral Spruance called the press here "The Sob Fraternity". His reason behind this was because the press at the time did not want to accept the realities of war and were always whinning.

I found it extremely interesting that today we have a press of similar fashion. Our msm does not want to accept the realities of war and there is constant whinning amongst them. An interesting parody imho.



Admiral Raymond Ames Spruance, USN, (1886-1969)

[GM Strong]

Adm. Spruance would be a kindred soul of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in this regard for the press.

"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."

William Tecumseh Sherman
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8th Army Korea 68-69

[Doll]

How right he certainly is!

It makes me question then why in the world, or should I ask how in the world was the media ever allowed into the war zone or as they are today to be imbedded with our troops?

Personally I think it is a big mistake to have that press so close to our troops. Would it not have been better to have Military Personel report the happenings and goings on to the press instead of having them right there to lie and distort the truth?
_________________

The HILL Chronicles

Soldiers' Angels
"Wednesday Hero - Google It!"

[J. Toy]

Ray Spruance was the difference between winning and losing at Midway.
Nimitz put him in command of his carrier task force at the recommendation of Halsey, even though he was a cruiser commander and had never served on a carrier.

As for press coverage in Iraq, Dr. Sowell sums it up nicely! (as usual)

The media's war

by Thomas Sowell

The media seem to have come up with a formula that would make any war in history unwinnable and unbearable: They simply emphasize the enemy's victories and our losses.

Losses suffered by the enemy are not news, no matter how large, how persistent, or how clearly they indicate the enemy's declining strength.

What are the enemy's victories in Iraq? The killing of Americans and the killing of Iraqi civilians. Both are big news in the mainstream media, day in and day out, around the clock.

Has anyone ever believed that any war could be fought without deaths on both sides? Every death is a tragedy to the individual killed and to his loved ones. But is there anything about American casualty rates in Iraq that makes them more severe than casualty rates in any other war we have fought?

On the contrary, the American deaths in Iraqi are a fraction of what they have been in other wars in our history. The media have made a big production about the cumulative fatalities in Iraq, hyping the thousandth death with multiple full-page features in the New York Times and comparable coverage on TV.


The two-thousandth death was similarly anticipated almost impatiently in the media and then made another big splash. But does media hype make 2,000 wartime fatalities in more than two years unusual?

The Marines lost more than 5,000 men taking one island in the Pacific during a three-month period in World War II. In the Civil War, the Confederates lost 5,000 men in one battle in one day.

Yet there was Jim Lehrer on the "News Hour" last week earnestly asking Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about the ten Americans killed that day. It is hard to imagine anybody in any previous war asking any such question of anyone responsible for fighting a war.

We have lost more men than that in our most overwhelming and one-sided victories in previous wars. During an aerial battle over the Mariannas islands in World War II, Americans shot down hundreds of Japanese planes while losing about 30 of their own.

If the media of that era had been reporting the way the media report today, all we would have heard about would have been that more than two dozen Americans were killed that day.

Neither our troops nor the terrorists are in Iraq just to be killed. Both have objectives. But any objectives we achieve get short shrift in the mainstream media, if they are mentioned at all.

Our troops can kill ten times as many of the enemy as they kill and it just isn't news worth featuring, if it is mentioned at all, in much of the media. No matter how many towns are wrested from the control of the terrorists by American or Iraqi troops, it just isn't front-page news like the casualty reports or even the doom-saying of some politicians.

The fact that these doom-saying politicians have been proved wrong, again and again, does not keep their latest outcries from overshadowing the hard-won victories of American troops on the ground in Iraq.

The doom-sayers claimed that terrorist attacks would make it impossible to hold the elections last January because so many Iraqis would be afraid to go vote. The doom-sayers urged that the elections be postponed.

But a higher percentage of Iraqis voted in that election -- and in a subsequent election -- than the percentage of Americans who voted in last year's Presidential elections.

Utter ignorance of history enables any war with any casualties to be depicted in the media as an unmitigated disaster.

Even after Nazi Germany surrendered at the end of World War II, die-hard Nazi guerrilla units terrorized and assassinated both German officials and German civilians who cooperated with Allied occupation authorities.

But nobody suggested that we abandon the country. Nobody was foolish enough to think that you could say in advance when you would pull out or that you should encourage your enemies by announcing a timetable.

There has never been the slightest doubt that we would begin pulling troops out of Iraq when it was feasible. Only time and circumstances can tell when that will be. And only irresponsible politicians and the media think otherwise.

Thomas Sowell is a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow.
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Corpsman, 1969-1973

[PhantomSgt]

[Leeman]

I saw the documentary on Admiral Raymond Sprucance I thought is was good and I sure did smile when I read how he held the newspaper men in contemp.

I am reading Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, U.S.N (Ret) book "And I was there"

here are the headlines from The Chicago Tribune dated Sunday 7 June

Jap Fleet smashed by U.S.

2 carriers sunk at Midway, Navy had word of Jap plan to strike at sea.

Knew Dutch harbor was a feint.

Walter Winchell in his "On Broadway" gossip column in the NY daliy news accused Colonel McCormick, The anti-Roosevelt proprietor of the Chicago Tribune of having tossed safety out the window when he "allegedly printed the lowdown on why we won at Midway -- claiming that the U.S. Navy decoded the Japs" secret messages.

all this on page 454 of the book

Of course the Japanese changed the code & it took about six months to break them again .

So I guess things have not changed all that much.

the book is Subtitled "Pearl Harbor and Midway-breaking the secrets"
_________________
Leeman

"We are all Ghost now"
"But once we were men"

from an unsigned diary recovered from Cabanatuan Camp

[gmez2001]

Doll; I'm guilty also forgetting this magnificent commander,we hear about Bull Halsey and Nimitz often with no mention of Spruance.

As for the press and broadcast media:
what they've been doing for decades I find unconscionable,unethical and for loss of a better word.........EVIL.
May they stand before their creator someday in judgement.
_________________
Tin Can Gunline Vietnam
2nd generation Navy

[Doll]