December 13, 2004 - Recently Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held a town hall style news conference in Kuwait. The audience and participants in this news conference were supposed to be Kuwaiti based US troops awaiting deployment to Iraq. But just like any other simple, straightforward thing presented it, the fifth column element within the mainstream media had to complicate the situation by adding a component that can only be described as tactically underhanded. This shouldn’t surprise us and, for the person keeping a running evaluation of their conduct, this would have to be added to the pathetically despicable column.

It would seem that today’s mainstream media deems itself exempt from any rule or ethic that it considers unpalatable. We saw it in 60 Minute II’s use of documents so ineptly altered that a blind helper monkey would have discarded them as forgeries. We saw it again in the biased force-feeding of the Abu Ghraib story to the American people by the New York Times. We saw it in the existence of Jason Blair and we see it still in the overtly biased writings of jaded, radical has-beens like Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman. Where a "journalist” used to seek the corroboration of multiple independent sources as a standard for verifying the facts of a story, today we see the repeated and almost exclusive use of leaked information from unnamed sources as the standard. While the media insists we should always question authority they are also insisting that we trust them to tell the truth, many times without validation of their assertions. This in an agenda driven age that would make the mainstream media the "gullible chump” for any disgruntled and/or ideologically motivated "highly placed unnamed source.”

While the question posed to Secretary Rumsfeld was legitimate, there is a disingenuous element to the motivation for the query. Rather than being an inquiry from a member of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, the question about armor plating for the Humvees used in Iraq was planted by a reporter from the Chattanooga Times Free Press who is embedded with the unit. This flies in the face of the very nature of the event, a town hall style news conference featuring questions from the troops, not the press. So, once again, the "rules of engagement” were laid out well in advance and once again the media felt compelled to exempt themselves from adhering to them. This may not be as serious as shooting at our soldiers from the confines of a mosque or feigning death in order to kill our soldiers as they tend to wounded enemy combatants but the total disregard for the ground rules created so the media could cover what did not include their participation surely places them squarely in The Fifth Column.

Secretary Rumsfeld’s statement, "As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," is a fair statement. To say that it’s not would be either insincere or from the mouth of someone without a grasp of the realities of war.

It can be said with a great deal of confidence that we all want our troops to have the very best equipment and training. But in this age of hind-sighted accusations and instant gratification it is easy to forget that there is more to the process of military procurement and equipment production than the will of the Secretary of Defense. Congress has a very integral part in what the Defense Department can and cannot do when it comes to procurement, training and equipment. That’s why John Kerry’s statement about voting for the $87 billion dollar supplemental package for our troops in Iraq before he voted against it was so hypocritical. One cannot be for something yet vote against it out of a conflict of ideology. Sometimes it is necessary to simply say you are in or you are out. In this instance wanting to have it both ways costs lives. In this instance the mainstream media again refused to report the whole truth and the facts of the matter. In this instance, as well as many others having to do with the liberation of Iraq, the mainstream media has been disingenuous with the American people.

Long gone are the days when the news reporter was held in high esteem. A recent Gallup Poll on honesty and ethical standards had reporters rated poorly in the public’s eyes, and rightly so. It used to be that the quest for truth was the ultimate goal for the reporter. Now it would seem that the scoop, the almighty rating and the advancement of ideological agendas trumps the truth. And the mainstream media wonders why the American public is turning to alternative sources for the facts.