The first thing that should be understood about more though is that adding tens of thousands of troops to the U.S. military isn't instant. Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month that it would take two years to recruit and train a new division. In other words, it is not about winning in Iraq now. (my emphasis)

As I have mentioned before, propaganda and information content management have become major pre-occupations of the US armed forces in the post Vietnam era. Why? It is because all of us who experienced defeat in Vietnam have spent decades trying to understand why that happened and the conclusion reached (mistakenly I think) is that the left successfully propagandized the American people against us and our effort. As a result the military now speaks of "kinetic operations," (fighting with material weapons) and "information operations," (propaganda and media manipulation.

In January 1963 there occurred an action the aftermath of which destroyed good relations between the press and the military in South Vietnam — the battle at Ap Bac in the northern Delta between an armored element of the ARVN [South Vietnamese Army] Seventh Division and a Vietcong unit. It was a disaster for the ARVN; yet American headquarters in Saigon referred to it as a victory. The American and British correspondents who were there knew otherwise, and reported what they knew. Some stories quoted John Paul Vann, then a lieutenant colonel, on the high quality of the VC and the cowardly actions of the ARVN.

The reaction of the American Mission [in Vietnam] was violent — the correspondents were "inexperienced," "unsophisticated," "irresponsible," and their reports "sensationalized." In Washington, reports coming from field correspondents were characterized as "emotional" and "inaccurate." [David] Halberstam [of the New York Times], in particular, was singled out to the point where President Kennedy tried unsuccessfully to have him reassigned.

After Ap Bac, correspondents, convinced that the Mission was lying to them, relied on their own sources — in fact, withdrew into their own community. It should be noted that they were not questioning the propriety of the American presence; that was to come later. No doubt existed at this point regarding the premises of United States involvement or of its ability to prevail. There were questions about the South Vietnamese ability to fight and about the tactics being employed, but as yet the correspondents were not raising the big question of whether we should be there at all. (my emphasis)

[William] Westmoreland's [commander in Vietnam under Lyndon Johnson] generals shared his negative view of the performance of the news media in Vietnam. That they would have such a view is not surprising, but the intensity of their feelings is: 89 percent negative toward the press, and 91 percent negative toward television. On only one other matter in the survey, the quality of ARVN, was a consensus so nearly approached. It should be noted that the different wording of the two negative questions on each medium indicates a far deeper negative orientation toward television than toward the [print] press...

There was a great deal of commentary on these questions. It can be grouped into clusters. Several of the respondents felt that the reporters had made up their minds in advance that going into Vietnam was a mistake and were out to prove their point. Many generals attributed a lack of support of the war by the American people to the media. One senior general said that the media conducted "a psychological warfare campaign against the United States policies in Vietnam that could not have been better done by the enemy."

A large number of respondents commented on the media's representation of the war, some saying that the reporters simply did not understand the war, and in other cases that reporting was distorted for effect. In some instances editors at home were blamed for distorting stories or writing misleading headlines. A former Chief of Staff studied combat photography closely and was convinced that much of it was staged. One Division Commander tells of seeing a telegram from one of the major TV networks to a field reporter in his area which read, "Get footage of American soldiers misbehaving." [Kinnard does not cite any documentation of this other than this survey response comment.] (my emphasis)

Not all of the generals were critical of the media. A minority saw shortcomings in the military's handling of reporting the progress in the war. One respondent put it this way: "We placed too much emphasis on the positive, and were over-sensitive to criticism, while engaging in false reporting to cover up setbacks. This, in time, led to our losing credibility." (my emphasis)

One would expect the military managers of the war to have a negative attitude toward media coverage of events in or concerning that tragedy. Aside from problems of waging the war itself, there are more fundamental reasons. The traditional authoritarian nature of military services requires a tight control of all events, including news distribution. The professional expertise of officers concerning military operations permits them to be more critical of news coverage of such matters than civilians. Also, their deep involvement in military matters causes them to evaluate the treatment by media of matters concerning the military. (my emphasis)