# Posted 12:55 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

FOOLS AT THE PENTAGON: If you haven't already, go read Josh's Daily Standard article now. As Josh and I have shown before, anti-war activists make irresponisble predictions about civilian casualty figures before the US goes to war and then inflate the body count once the war is over.

Yet for some unknown reason, the Pentagon is refusing to take advantage of its critics' embarassing failure by conducting an authoritative study of civilian casualty figures in Iraq. As Josh points out in the Standard, the media -- both American and European -- respond to this silence by publishing the absurd figures provided by anti-war activists.

Unfortunately, this total incompetence when it comes to public relations is nothing new at DoD. As OxBlog noted before the war began, Pentagon spokesmen tend to alternate between hyperbolic bragging about the accuracy of American weapons and evasive, superficial responses to media interest in the actual performance of such weapons on the battlefield.

The apparent cause of the Pentagon's self-destructive behavior is its paranoid belief that being honest with the media will only intensify journalist's negative portrayal of the military. While the history of animosity between the military and the media is well-known, the fact is that the media have always been kinder to the military when they believe that it is being honest. That was true at the height of the war in Vietnam and it is true today.

While no amount of honesty could have prevented some negative coverage of setbacks in Vietnam, the fact is that the military is now covering up its success. Yet its rationalizations for doing as absurd as ever. The WaPo quoted one Air Force general who argued that

it has been more cost-effective to pour resources into increasingly sophisticated weaponry and intelligence-gathering equipment...

He suggested that once the Pentagon started down the track of studying collateral damage caused by bombs, it could lead to endless assessments.

"I do wonder if we're going to do this every time the Army fires an artillery shell or every time a Special Forces soldier fires a 50-caliber" gun, he said.

Of course weapons development is more effective when it comes to saving civilian lives. But if no one can show that this objective has actually been accomplished, unfounded accusations of military cruelty will continue to abound.

As for the prospect of "endless assessments", that just doesn't seem credible. NGOs such as Human Rights Watch have conducted excellent studies of civilian casualties figures everywhere from Gulf War I to Kosovo despite running on a shoestring budget.

While such reports go some way toward countering the disinformation distributed by anti-war activists, the latter still get considerable play in the media. The only way to level out the playing field is for the military to take its head out of the sand, the fork out of its tongue and talk straight about what actually happens on the battlefield. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion