How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I had hoped Marla would come over, but she sat with some women from a PSYOP unit. What they did was work on the minds of the enemy. Sometimes they dropped leaflets, sometimes they did nasty little propaganda things, like spreading rumors about the enemy's officers. They spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the enemy was thinking. (3.65)
Talk about manipulation. There's a whole unit of the army dedicated to affecting how the enemy thinks.
Quote #2
"If he said he was scared out of his mind he wouldn't get on television," Marla said.
"If they stick a camera in my face I'm going to say the same thing that marine said," Jonesy said.
"I ain't never been on television before!" (4.8-9)
Marla's right that the American news is invested in showing brave soldiers, not necessarily honest soldiers. Soldiers who admit that they're scared might make the American public a little uncomfortable.
Quote #3
"You think the bombs are hitting anybody?" Marla said. "I don't see any bodies laying around."
That was true. They were still talking about shock and awe and how many bombs were falling around Baghdad but they weren't showing any casualties. I didn't want to see any, either. (4.11-12)
The news footage of Baghdad being bombed show only the explosions from far-off, no sights of actual bodies. Do you think they purposely chose to show it this way?
Quote #4
The president said that our mission has been accomplished. But there are still guys getting killed, and Captain Miller said they were only counting guys who died on the spot.
"A lot of them are being rotated back to Germany or the States and might not make it down the road," she said. "And nobody's talking about the wounds over here. Blast wounds are terrible." (8.2-3)
The media picture of America's success in the war is far from the full one. Keeping the death count as low as possible makes the American side look good.
Quote #5
The coalition forces had won the hot war and the newscasts kept telling us that we were in the stabilizing and rebuilding phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but the situation was getting hairy. I couldn't understand what the Iraqis were about, or what they really wanted. The television coverage showed interviews with them, always men and usually, according to Jamil, Kurds, talking about how glad they were that Saddam Hussein was overthrown. It was Jonesy who had the question we all wanted to ask.
"If all the Racks are so happy with that we are doing over here, who the hell is shooting at us and laying out all the IEDs?" he asked. (11.28-29)
Good question, Jonesy. The news is broadcasting to people like Jonesy, who think of the Iraqi people as one single group. Jamil, an Iraqi, knows they're only showing the opinion of a small part of the population.
Quote #6
"I just wondered if they knew how many people are getting wounded here," Coles said. "I don't see any of that in the news at night."
"That's because we're still in a war zone," the chaplain answered. "Do we really want to broadcast everything we know?" (12.69-70)
The reasons for showing media propaganda are pretty complicated. Anything that Americans see, the enemy also can access. And it's helpful to have the enemy to think the American side is doing just fine.
Quote #7
"Stock footage," one of the cameramen said. "They have huge vaults of this kind of stuff in case they need it as background for a real story."
"Are you saying this isn't a real war?" Captain Coles asked.
"Not this part of it," the cameraman said. "This is about as real as Little Red Riding Hood." (12.127-129)
The ceremony Birdy and the others are watching is nothing more than the creation of propaganda. The next phase of the war is supposed to be Iraqis taking control of their own country, and the news is trying to show that Americans are that far along.
Quote #8
Earlier that morning we had received word that Saddam's two sons had been killed in a firefight. Reporters were running around shoving mikes into faces and getting the responses they expected. Al Jazeera was trying to spice up their stories with talk about whether the sons' bodies should have been displayed.
"They're tryng to play it down the middle." Evans was sipping from a plastic cup of coffee. "I bet they're coming off a lot different when they talk to the Arabs." (12.183-184)
Al Jazeera is an Arabic news network. Evans is probably right that the way they report on the deaths would be different than the reporting in American news.
Quote #9
What was the right way to report a war? A neat list of names in a hometown newspaper? Maybe your picture in The New York Times?
That was all that mattered. Nothing was ever settled. It was just who was dying and who was coming home. (12.184-185)
Pendleton has just died, and Birdy is coming into his point of view on the war—that it's about survival. Nothing is more important than who dies and who survives.