Here are just some of the ways the media either misunderstands Iraq, or deliberately distorts it: Myth 1) We are losing the war The war has actually become something of a stalemate at this time.
If we are losing then the terrorists must be winning.
Problem is, they don't dare openly control any territory and disappear pretty quickly whenever any coalition forces or ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) show up.
Moreover, they haven't achieved any of their objectives other than terrorizing the population.
Casualty wise, we are certainly winning.
And while we have captured thousands of insurgents, they have captured only a very small handful of US soldiers.
We made a great deal of progress initially, but then it stagnated.
So why aren't we doing better? Progress now is difficult because we are simply too divorced from the culture, language, and society.
We can't blend in with the population or go deep undercover to root out the insurgents from their lairs.
We don't spend much time socializing with the locals and hearing the latest rumors.
We're getting better, but its always been hard for us to always know what's going on, even just outside the gates to our bases.
Part of the reason for this is on us, but part of it is simply Iraqi culture.
In any case, for this reason, the Iraqis really do have to be in charge (and they are), but they can't do it alone.
Not yet.
Myth 2) Every time we kill/capture an insurgent, more just takes his place, so the war is just creating more terrorists.
This is true to a point, but there is also the other side of the coin.
Every time terrorists kill an Iraqi national, it drives his family members to want to fight the terrorists - many join the ISF (Iraqi security forces) for this reason, and are among the best and most loyal I have ever met.
Unfortunately, many join a competing terrorist group to take out their revenge instead.
Myth 3) Iraq is in a Civil War/Not in a Civil War Neither is exactly a myth; This is actually entirely how you define civil war.
It certainly isn't what you imagine as a classical example of Civil War, such as the US or Spanish Civil Wars.
There aren't two clearly definable sides to the conflict.
Each insurgent group (and there are many) is either Sunni or Shia, never mixed.
But even these groups fight among themselves and both fight against US troops or Iraqi forces.
If the US completely pulled out, my prediction is that it would turn into open civil war, with more easily definable sides as factions join together to create as large a force as possible.
The danger is that the surrounding nations would also get involved, and could be a very messy war.
Myth 4) It's a scandal that we didn't have more body armor for the troops or vehicles at the start of the war This one really galls me and I hear it a lot.
Its strange that people who allege this didn't see it also as a scandal that Clinton didn't have body armor for soldiers in Somalia, Bosnia, or for that matter, any President in any prior war in US history (we have had flak jackets since Vietnam, but they stop shrapnel only - they aren't bulletproof).
The reason why not every soldier had the IBA at the start was that it was just being introduced for the very first time when the invasion took place! Now there is some misunderstanding on this among the public - if police departments have had bulletproof vests for a long time, why did it take the military so long to get them? The types of vests that police use would be pretty useless in wartime.
Police vests stop handguns only, they don't stop any rifles unless they are of a very low caliber, and can't stop armor piercing bullets at all.
The IBA is capable of stopping almost every kind of bullet there is (at least for a few hits).
But it is bulky and hot as hell in the summertime!! Incredibly, some people are calling for more armor, like full arm and leg protection...
I would ask them to try themselves going through an Iraqi Summer with all that on!! Also incredibly, sometimes the press is still claiming we don't have enough body armor, which hasn't been true for the last three years.
Vehicle armor is a little different issue, and to be fair, plenty of soldiers don't agree with me here.
I feel the administration could have done more, but not much.
If, before the war, Rumsfeld tried to budget hundreds of millions for armor upgrade kits for Humvees, congress would have slammed him for it, and rightly so.
There was no justifiable reason to spend millions of $$ to put armor on a vehicles that still couldn't stand up to even the weakest Iraqi tank.
Keep in mind that Humvees were meant to be military cars, like jeeps.
They weren't supposed to be armored fighting vehicles.
For that job we already had the Abrams tank, the Bradley, or the M113.
But shortly after the invasion, it was decided that these vehicles were not ideal for regularly patrolling city streets, so they decided to go with Humvees for some patrols.
I guess they could have waited a couple months until more uparmored Humvees were available, but that would have given the insurgents a faster head start.
I'm not sure if there really is a perfect answer here.
Myth 5) The war was illegal It may have been immoral, if that's your opinion (not mine), but the war was technically legal.
The UN had a mandatory resolution (no.
687) on Iraq authorizing the use of force if they didn't comply with inspections.
Saddam didn't comply for 10 years and we let him get away with it (although we bombed him sporadically during the Clinton years).
After such a long period of time, maybe it would have been better to get another resolution, but that's another story.
Myth 6) Bush is to blame for all this violence Bush is certainly most to blame or credit for the invasion, but primary blame for sectarian violence is on those who actually commit it.
I saw this same attitude a couple years ago when so many commentators blamed French society for the riots in Paris.
I think there is an element of racism here; as if Arabs or Muslims in general just by nature can't help rioting or bombing other people, and so Bush's war set them all off and now of course that's all they will do.
But that's wrong.
They can help it.
They don't have to kill each other if they don't want to.
If they don't want the US there, the Iraqi government can now simply ask us to leave.
Even if they were justified in attacking coalition forces, what justification is there for them to blow up oil pipelines, hospitals and even crowded market places? That doesn't hurt us, it only hurts them.
Around May of 2006, there was a very shocking murder in the Monsour neighborhood right next to ours.
An 8 year-old boy was found dead with drill holes in his body and head.
Let me say this plainly: an EIGHT year old boy (same age as my daughter) was not just murdered, but tortured several times with a power drill.
I'm sorry if that sounds upsetting (it upset me greatly) but there's no way to sugar coat it.
It was almost certainly done by the Jaysh Al Mahdi (Sadr's militia), since drill torture is one of their trademark techniques.
Now there's no possible way this little boy was involved in terrorism.
The only purpose of this torture and murder was to terrorize that particular Sunni neighborhood, and I'm sure it worked.
Now in spite of all their religious justifications (it's weird how every threatening letter in Baghdad is signed "in the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful"!), the terrorists are human beings and deep down even they know they are doing something wrong.
Of the hundreds of prisoners I have dealt with, some of whom were literally caught in the act, I have yet to see one proudly admit he is fighting a just cause, or doing something right.
You know what insurgents do when they get caught? They cry, cry, cry and deny, deny deny.
Even if they are caught with overwhelming evidence, they make the most ludicrous stories about their situation (one guy claimed he was setting off bombs only to protect children because children kept trying to play with them!!!), or they will claim they were forced to join the terrorists because of threats to their family.
It's usually not true, but even if true, I don't believe that being threatened is a justifiable excuse for murdering innocent people.
Strangely, for all their ferocity, they are extremely docile after capture and almost always spill their information very freely.
If they truly believed they were fighting a just cause, I believe they would resist capture a little more and be proud of their role, not trying to deny it.
Myth 7) Soldiers rape, murder and torture They do, but so do people everywhere.
Certainly not at the rates you see in the press.
My experiences here have forced me to challenge some of my past assumptions.
For example, years ago when I saw the movie "Platoon", like everyone else I took it for granted that just like in the film, soldiers in Vietnam regularly tortured/raped/killed civilians, and got away with it.
Now I am much more skeptical of these claims; I'm sure they happened, but I believe it may have been much more rare than people assume.
In my experience, only about 30% of what you see in the media about Iraq is accurate, especially for very recent reports.
I can't tell you how often a news report said civilians were killed here or there in Baghdad, when I was there and no such thing happened at all.
Or three were killed but the news outlets say 30.
Or they label the dead as "civilians" when more accurately they were actually armed insurgents in civilian clothes.
Moreover, there is no balance at all.
On the very rare occasions when a soldier was accused of rape, it makes front pages everywhere.
Yet, there have only been a handful of rape allegations in Iraq and even fewer verdicts.
Moreover, anytime you have between 100-200 thousand people in one place, you are likely to have some incidents of rape and sexual assault.
In fact, the rate in theater is probably lower than the US average.
Heck, once in 2003 my unit stopped a rape in progress at an Iraqi home.
Did the press report it? Of course not, that's not newsworthy to them.
In fact, going back to the murdered boy I spoke about earlier: the press didn't report that either.
And why should they? It happens in Iraq every day.
But one incident alone was far more egregious than all of the "tortures" done at Abu Gharayb put together, yet Abu Gharayb was splashed on the front page of the NYT at least two dozen times.
Speaking of Abu Gharayb, I have had Iraqi prisoners sent there on my orders.
A few of them were later released and I met them again (they sometimes come back trying to find out what happened to other prisoners, or looking for their missing belongings or some such).
This was both before and after the big scandal broke.
I asked them how they were treated, and not a single one of them told me he was abused there.
They did have plenty of complaints about the food, the length of time, visitation, etc.
But not abuse.
In any case, I think a lot of this distortion is because people want to discredit Bush, and so they do it by criticizing the military, like they are one and the same.
But I need to emphasize this: It is NOT George W Bush's military! We are not his personal force.
I have served since the Clinton years and seen very little difference in the way the military is run then and now.
Bush is the Commander in Chief, but he actually scarcely gets involved in the day to day operations.
Myth 8) We armed Saddam in the first place I see this falsehood repeated a lot, and a lot of authors have tried to cash in on it.
The US did provide some assistance, but we never directly sold weapons to Saddam.
The US did sell some artillery pieces to Iraq, but the last was in 1967, before Saddam's time.
During the Iran-Iraq war, the US also sold some unarmed helicopters, and some US companies sold chemicals, some of which were deceitfully used by Saddam to help make chemical weapons later.
But the chemicals themselves were perfectly legal to sell, and Saddam was also buying them from other countries anyway.
Some other nations, had no such qualms about weapon sales, and for some reason, are rarely criticized for it.
For example, France sold Saddam Roland missiles, Mirage fighters and Super Etendard bombers, while Argentina sold thousands of anti-personnel mines.
One popular weapon of choice among insurgents is a particular Italian-made anti-tank mine, which I myself saw dozens of times in Baghdad.
Myth 9) The US used chemical weapons in Fallujah This was a huge lie spread over a year ago in a short film by RAI, an Italian company, and was debunked, but not loudly enough in my opinion.
It showed footage of blackened bodies of Iraqis, with locals claiming that it was done by napalm and white phosphorous from US attacks.
But they didn't seem to notice that the bodies still had clothes on them, and the clothes weren't burnt at all! The bodies were actually dug from the ground and were black from decomposition, not burning.
In any case, napalm has never been used in Iraq to my knowledge, and in the desert it wouldn't be very useful anyway.
White phosphorous has been used to smoke out insurgents, since it makes a lot of smoke, but it doesn't work well as a weapon.
But even if it was used as a weapon, it is not a chemical weapon under any international agreement.
This is an important distinction, because every weapon on Earth, whether bullets, knives or bombs, uses chemicals.
Myth 10) The Iraqi people hate Americans and want to kill each other I see this attitude among a lot of soldiers too.
But believe it or not, we still get cheers when we drive through Baghdad streets.
The locals know that at least while we are rolling through, the militias and kidnappers will leave the area.
The truth is, probably less than 1% of Iraqis want to kill Americans, and over 90% want the violence to end.
But even 1% in a nation of 23 million is 230,000 people, so it's still a lot of people! That's more than the coalition forces combined.
The point is however, the vast majority of Iraqis are decent people, and they really do want and end to the fighting and just to be able to live in a respectable country.
I'm not just saying this in some obligatory way.
I have met many Iraqis that astounded me with their character and courage.
There are also several Iraqis that I still keep in contact with, am very proud to call my good friends, and would be welcome in my home anytime.
Believe it or don't.
Myth 11) No WMDs were found It's true that no WMD making capability, or any brand new weapons were found.
But saying "no WMDs were found" might be a surprise to the convoy who had a sarin gas artillery shell IED explode on them in May 2004.
It was on highway 8, in the middle of Baghdad, on a section of road that coincidentally, my unit, the 1-1 Cavalry Squadron, had turned over to 1-7 Cav just two months before.
That was not the only one either; hundreds of other shells were found, and there were brief press releases about it.
I have read much more of the reports, but since most are still secret for some reason, I can't discuss them.
But the bottom line is, while it probably won't appease critics of the war, illegal WMDs were found.