For a good example of how not to report the Afghan War, check out the lead story in today's USA Today (2/15/11):

General: Taliban 'Beaten' by Surge
Momentum Shifts in Afghanistan

The piece--by Jim Michaels, who has an unfortunate history of this kind of reporting--is mostly sourced to Richard Mills, the Marine general who's in charge of the fight in Afghanistan's Helmand province. Unsurprisingly, he thinks he's doing a bang-up job; Michaels' story begins:

Coalition forces in Afghanistan have beaten the insurgency in an important stronghold of Taliban fighters, though pockets of resistance remain, a U.S. commander said Monday in an interview with USA Today.

Mills provides a variety of self-congratulatory quotes to Michaels: "This is really the heart of the insurgency.... I believe they have been beaten."... "They've suffered defeat after defeat on the battlefield."... "You saw a population that turned on the Taliban."

But surely USA Today doesn't believe you can make an entire story out of somebody talking about what a good job they're doing? No, Michaels also turns to a representative of a right-wing think tank to tell you what a good job Mills is doing:

The progress in Helmand province "shows you the momentum is shifting," said James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Loosening the Taliban's grip on the drug trade "could have a cascading effect in the years ahead," he said.

Michaels also gets a quote from military analyst Anthony Cordesman, a former McCain aide known for his faithful following of the military line. He cautions that the success in Helmand doesn't mean that the United States will be able to leave Afghanistan anytime soon: "We haven't shown that Afghan forces can hold. It's going to be a couple of years before we know what these accomplishments mean."

Compare this credulous, boosterish coverage to the approach of Politics Daily's David Wood, whose story from yesterday (2/14/11) begins:

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, likes to describe the tactical gains his troops are making against insurgents. But a stream of independent data and analysis suggests a wide gap between those battlefield gains and the strategic progress needed to convince a skeptical President Obama, Congress and the public to stay with the war effort for at least three more years.

Rather than relying solely on the military itself and cheerleading analysts to evaluate the state of the war, Wood turns to knowledgeable independent experts, like the NGO Safety Office, a group helping humanitarian groups in Afghanistan, whose report finds "indisputable evidence that the situation is deteriorating.'' The full report, which Wood links to, describes the Taliban as "securing new strongholds in the north, west and east of the country," with "momentum...unaffected by U.S.-led counterinsurgency measures." The military's "massive interventions in Helmand and Kandahar," the report found, "achieved little other than to diversify and diffuse the insurgency."

Why is this picture so different from the one presented by U.S. military officials? The military's public pronouncements, explains NGO Safety Office director Nic Lee, "are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion.'' Judging by this article, USA Today would seem to have the same intention.

Start with USA Today's headline (2/3/11):

Mubarak Supporters Weigh In: Anti-Government Rallies Shaken by Rival Protesters

The forces attacking the pro-democracy demonstrators in Tahrir Square were not "rival protesters"; they were government agents, complete in many cases with police ID cards that were confiscated when violent provocateurs were apprehended by activists (Al Jazeera English, 2/2/11). As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (2/3/11)  put it in his firsthand report from the square:

The events were sometimes presented by the news media as "clashes" between rival factions, but that’s a bit misleading. This was an organized government crackdown, but it relied on armed hoodlums, not on police or army troops.

The USA Today piece, by Jim Michaels and Theodore May, was a prime example of the kind of deceptive coverage Kristof was talking about. In USA Today's version, the thugs bringing violence to heretofore peaceful demonstrations were civic-minded individuals "worried that groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood would take over if free elections are held" and "saving Egypt from the Islamic extremism that has infected the Middle East." The piece even quoted Egyptian state TV as explaining that the camel-riding goons running down protesters were actually "pyramid workers who were protesting the negative economic impact of the crisis."

Contrary to other eyewitness accounts, in USA Today's world both sides are equally responsible for violence, as "protesters took chunks of concrete from the street to use as ammunition and occasionally tossed Molotov cocktails at each other."

Michaels has a history of deceptive, credulous reporting from the Middle East and Afghanistan (FAIR Blog, 7/1/10, 8/6/10, 8/27/10; Extra!, 9-10/08). But this report is a poor effort even for him.

"Seven Years of War Provides Many Answers" is USA Today's front-page headline (8/27/10) over a story by Jim Michaels and Mimi Hall that attempts to take stock of the Iraq War. But one issue that the paper can't seem to get right seven years later is how the war started.

USA Today provides this stunningly deceptive summary:

In October 2002, the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to authorize force against Iraq. In November, the United Nations Security Council adopted a unanimous resolution offering Saddam "a final opportunity" to comply with disarmament. Three months later, Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S. and European intelligence agencies believed Iraq was hiding its weaponry and seeking more.

The final U.N. inspection report stated that Iraq failed to account for chemical and biological stockpiles. U.N. inspector Hans Blix said he had "no confidence" that the weaponry had been destroyed.

In his 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush said: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late."

At 5:34 a.m., March 20, 2003, a U.S. force backed by 34 nations crossed into Iraq. The war was on.

A more accurate chronology of the weapons inspection--like this one from the Arms Control Association--reveals that while inspectors expressed frustration with some Iraqi behavior, they were encouraged by the progress they were making. They determined rather early in the process, for instance, that there was no Iraqi nuclear program to speak of. That was one of the Bush administration's most damning claims against Iraq; its falsehood should figure into any account of the pre-war period.

That chronology also recalls that there was an effort to get the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution that would formally endorse the war, even though the weapons inspections process was not finished. The U.S. failed to prevail in that effort, and the inspectors were removed. Again, it's hard to imagine a summary of the run-up to the war that discounts the fact that the United States launched the war without the U.N. approval it sought.

It's not entirely clear where the Hans Blix quote ("no confidence") comes from. He does use that phrase in regards to a "preliminary assessment of Iraq's weapons declaration" (12/19/02)--pretty much the opposite of a "final U.N. inspection report"--explaining why such declarations have to be verified and can't be taken at face value.

In his February 14 presentation to the U.N., Blix seemed  pleased with Iraq's compliance:

Mr. President, in my 27th of January update to the Council, I said that it seemed from our experience that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, most importantly on prompt access to all sites and assistance to UNMOVIC in the establishment of the necessary infrastructure.

This impression remains, and we note that access to sites has, so far, been without problems, including those that have never been declared or inspected, as well as to presidential sites and private residences.

Blix also said:

How much, if any, is left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programs? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed.

Recalling this history merely as Blix saying that he had "no confidence"  that Iraq had destroyed any weapons is terribly misleading. But it is helpful to those who still wish to argue that the Iraq War was a good faith effort to destroy the weapons of a madman.

USA Today had a piece yesterday (8/5/10) about new rules of engagement issued in Afghanistan by Afghan War commander Gen. David Petraeus. The new rules--much like the old rules--"are aimed at limiting civilian casualties," the paper's Jim Michaels reports in its own voice, explaining:

At the heart of counterinsurgency doctrine is the principle that winning over the population is the key to defeating insurgents. Civilian casualties can alienate the population.

That's the surviving population, presumably.

USA Today doesn't quote anyone skeptical of the Pentagon's claim that not killing civilians is a top priority, instead reprinting the official assertion of good intentions without comment: "We must continue--indeed, redouble--our efforts to reduce the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum."

Such deference is not, of course, extended to the official enemy, which as it happens recently released its own rules regarding protection of civilians:

The update comes as the Taliban's top leader also issued guidance aimed at limiting civilian casualties. The allied command dismissed Mullah Mohammed Omar's guidelines, surfacing last month, as propaganda.

"Mullah Omar's new directive has done nothing to protect the Afghan people from further harm," Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz, a military spokesman, was quoted in the statement.

"This is either a smoke screen to repair the Taliban's well-earned reputation for brutality, or insurgent groups are simply ignoring their leader," he said.

The United Nations has said insurgents in Afghanistan have caused more civilian casualties than international and Afghan government troops.

Since Omar's document was released, insurgents have killed 43 Afghan civilians and wounded 65, according to the allied command in Kabul.

The article lacks any statistics on how many Afghan civilians have been killed by the U.S. and its allies. According to estimates made by the U.N., Human Rights Watch, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Watch and other observers, at least 5,568 noncombatants were directly killed in U.S.-led military actions in the first nine years of the war. In 2009, when Petraeus predecessor Gen. Stanley McChrystal issued the rules ostensibly  protecting civilians, the U.N. reports that there were nevertheless 596 civilians killed by the U.S. and its allies, making it a more or less typical year.  Since these figures did not appear in the USA Today report, there was no call for a quote wondering whether such rules were a "smoke screen" or whether they were simply being ignored by troops on the ground.

The lesson of USA Today's article is clear: The intentions of official enemies are to be judged by their actions, whereas the actions of one's own government are to be judged on what it proclaims its intentions to be.