Osagie Ighile's March 21 column on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bemoans the lack of media coverage and public knowledge on the issue. I also am sad that there is not more media coverage to raise public knowledge of the wars, but not because there is some need to ignore the "crimes" of the U.S. military. The reason we are not seeing more media coverage is because we are winning the war, and there have not been incidents of abuse like Abu Ghraib in years (notice that the testimony cited in Friday's article is all from 2004). If it was widely known in America that David Petraeus has drastically improved the military situation and that the Iraqi government is finally getting off the ground, then it would be tough to scream about how awful President George W. Bush is.
Moreover, Ighile's article itself ignores lots of recent news regarding not only current events but research confirming the United States' original suspicions about Saddam Hussein. This research is based on the millions of pages of captured documents that have taken a long time to translate and examine, but we are finally seeing that, yes, Saddam Hussein had ties with terrorist networks and, yes, he wanted to build WMD. But of course this research comes from the Pentagon, so not only will the media ignore it but Ighile and others will believe it to be a bunch of lies following the original "lies." If we had more coverage of this war and the issues involved, I am confident that Ighile would have little to say in the face of the facts: it was the right move and we're winning.
Mike Jenista
Graduate student, math department
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