Centcom reports, Bay invites

Spc. Claude Flowers writes from Centcom Public Affairs that he has posted a press release Centcom site reporting last week’s successes (August 12-18). The site includes an electronic newsletter with updates on reconstruction projects.
Spc. Flowers also directs us to a feature package in last Sunday’s Tampa Tribune:

Did you see the Tampa Tribune’s Iraq section on Sunday, and
its accompanying request for comments on how the media is covering the war? Very interesting. Check it out here.
Look for the section “Special Report: Iraq War Coverage” at the upper left. The first three links have stories (including a nice bit of CENTCOM info, which is great!) while the last is the one requesting feedback. I’d love to know what people have to say!

The lead piece in the Tamp Tribune’s package is a long article by editorial page editor Rosemary Goodreau: “Good news from Iraq.” Goodreau addresses Mark Yost’s criticism of the press’s war coverage. The package also includes the AP’s citation of stories reporting good news from Iraq: “Upbeat e-mail misleading.” It would be interesting to know what newspapers ran the cited stories; the Tribune doesn’t tell us.
At NRO, James Robbins also recommends the Combined Joint Task Force 7 site and the DoD’s Defend America site. For general DoD information, Robbins recommends Defenselink.
For a serious consideration of the press’s Iraq war coverage, see Austin Bay’s “Roll forward: Why the Bush White House needs the press to win the big one” at Jay Rosen’s Pressthink. This is an important piece. In a message to us, Austin adds:

I structured a response…that lays out the conservatives’ case against “the national media” (my NY-DC-LA axis) in a way that is tough for them to dispute. The usual suspects fail to address Gary Sick (1991 precursor to Joe Wilson) and 1983 (anti-Reagan rhetoric morphs into anti-GW Bush).

Austin hopes that we or our readers might “expand on these historical points.” As to Sick, Austin adds:

Sick had the SR-71 alegation — that GHW Bush had flown in an SR-71 in 1980 to meet with the Iranians.

The point being that there seems to be a long-term agenda at work. This is a point to which I hope to return later, and to which Austin invites our readers to advance the discussion.

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