The only thing that ABC announcing crew can report on a typical play is ... "When the ball was snapped, all hell broke loose, and there was a huge blur that sped past me, it might have been Ray Lewis, and he only missed running full speed over me by less than 2 inches. That was close. To repeat, I saw what appeared to be a running play, but then all I saw was a lot of fast and violent movemement, and what could have been Ray Lewis barely missed me. To add further details, I heard plastic protective pads and helmets loudly cracking, a pounding of feet on the turf - and a horrible grunting. The outcome of the play and the location of the ball is at this point not clear."
That's what real time war journalism is worth. The risks to these guys and the soldiers who protect them isn't worth the return in news.
As I have stated in earlier posts, the media will not be satisfied to wait until the "game is over" to report on the outcome. They do not care if they see the ass-end of a lineman for the entire game as long as it they are involved in the process. If the media waits until the end of the game to report the score, its no longer "news". The same thinking is now being applied to war reporting.
The DOD kept all journalists on the sidelines for their own individual safety in GWI and got ripped for it by the media. Now they're embedded and they share the same risks as soldiers. The media cannot be 100% safe reporting a war and be involved in the provess. They cannot have it both ways.
There's no other place on Earth like this. Not North Korea or Syria or Iran or Mexico or Indonesia. Not Russia or China or Phillipines. This is a regime bolstered by institutions of terror and significant resources that perfected their tactics and threat capability for 30 years. They've exploited cynical international political and diplomatic cover. They operate absent any larger State survival interest, and thus are without all hurdles to the use of mass destruction weaponry and strategic civilian slaughter. We needed to seize and occupy this territory, and kill the murderers who threaten everyone and everything.
Going forward, it's going to be about CIA street assets, Spec Ops targeting precision Air Force and Naval Air assaults, Airborne and Marine quick strike units with light artillery and armor designed to destroy enemy terror cells in heavily populated 3rd World urban centers and undeveloped and rugged wastelands.
This is the last time we're lining up like this. We couldn't possibly afford to wait for the Heavy Armor like the Wesley Clarks and Hugh Sheltons demanded, we'd still be waiting in Kuwait City for the 4th ID to stage their parade and the Hussein boys would have fortified their command and the Fedayeen Saddam and Al Qaida/Hizbollah hitmen would be entrenched and everywhere.
The journalists won't have the forewarning or long-term stories to springboard from in our future military operations. They're going to have to get the news of our projection of military prerogatives straight from the fiction writers at Reuters, Al Jazeera, New York Times and the BBC. We didn't nip Saddam in the bud when we should have. Future Saddam's are non-starters.
Baghdad still is frought with peril and deadly risk but .... now about that Pyongyang cancer ...