How to lose in Iraq by fighting the Media.

Yes, the American media is biased.

But it isn't a liberal bias, a conservative bias or even a pro or anti American bias as much as it is a lazy bias.

Time and again the media all over the world gets military issues wrong simply because they can't be bothered to take the time to become educated on the subjects they cover.

Take one of the great events in 20th Century media, the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times was spoon fed an internal government document, printed it verbatim and changed the course of a war.

It's useless to blame the Press for bad press. They simply aren't capable of the sort of detailed analysis required to make sense of the big issues and attacking the media simply gives them the chance to rerun the items complained about which takes even less effort on their part.

The Bush Administration has access to the media (when was the last time bin Laden or al-Zarqawi gave a press conference attended by western media?) and the responsibility for ensuring favorable media coverage lies in the White House.

The American armed forces cannot lose in Iraq. All of the islamic nations on Earth combined cannot match the power of the Pentagon and the american losses in Iraq to date are far less that what America has suffered in a single day's fighting in previous wars.

But Operation Iraqi Freedom can be lost in the American heartland. If the Republican congress revolts and demands an immediate pullout of American forces then Iraq will crumble and fragment into another Somalia, this time in the heart of the Middle East.

The current Bush plan for Iraq is almost correct. Even more important than an Iraqi government of national unity are Iraqi security forces of national unity. As long as the Iraqi security forces are seen as various militias in different uniforms then the Iraqi people will all turn to their own militias for defense against their government rather than working with the government to defeat the insurgents.

If the American policy was simply that American forces will not train, equip or operate with segregated Iraqi forces then the Iraqis would be forced to come together and work as one nation.

While this unified Iraqi army is being put together the President needs to hold the country and the Congress together.

The Congress is easy to manage. Simply give them time in the spotlight to expound on the issues of the day and they won't be too tempted to actually do anything. The best way to handle this is to put a high profile charismatic administration figure before a congressional committee every week. There's no need to put a big panel together as it would waste the time of all of them as the congress critters make speeches rather than asking questions. Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Peter Pace and the rest of the joint chiefs are good choices for this because their personal negative ratings are manageable enough to keep them from being the headlines.

As for the Press, the three biggest dangers are Dick Chaney, Donald Rumsfeld and Scott McClellan.

The Vice President needs to be kept far away from foreign policy. A great backdrop for a Chaney speech would be some small family owned firm that has managed to stay in business because of the President's tax cuts or some event by a socially conservative group.

The Secretary of Defense needs to speak more about transformation. Send him out to meet with the Striker brigades, the Marines testing the V-22 or the workers building the first LCS. When he talks about Iraq it shouldn't be a debate with the media about what mistakes were made. Instead he should talk about lessons learned, the unknown unknowns that happened and how Americas armed forces are learning from them and always striving to do better.

The White House Press Secretary is still the same privileged brat that he was in high school and it's hurting the war effort. Scott needs to learn to be calm and rational and appear humble and spin free in public. Instead of blasting the press he needs to learn to say that he doesn't know the details in question but that he'll check with the people who do and get back to the journalist. Any day when the headline is that the Press Secretary yelled at a journalist and hurt their feelings is a distraction away from the job of spoon feeding the media with the President's message in small easily digestible chunks.