Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, in a speech on Monday at Johns Hopkins, very easily, calmly and well, chastised the media for their partisan reporting on the war in Iraq.

The other question I posed is of critical importance: why does Iraq’s success or failure matter to the American people?
Consider this quote: “What you have seen, Americans, in New York and Washington, D.C., and the losses you are having in Afghanistan and Iraq, in spite of all the media blackout, are only the losses of the initial clashes.”

The speaker is Ayman al-Zawahiri, a senior member of the terrorist group al Qaeda and a top leader in the effort to defeat U.S. and coalition forces around the world. The terrorists’ method of attack, simply put, is slaughter. They behead. They bomb children. They attack funerals and wedding receptions.

This is the kind of brutality and mayhem the terrorists are working to bring to our shores. And if we do not succeed in our efforts to arm and train Iraqis to help defeat these terrorists in Iraq, this is the kind of mayhem that a terrorist, emboldened by a victory, will bring to our cities again–let there be no doubt.

Indeed, the most important reason for our involvement in Iraq–despite the cost–is often overlooked. It is not only about building democracy, though democracies tend to be peaceful and prosperous and are in and of themselves good things. It is not about reopening Iraqi schools and hospitals or rebuilding infrastructure, though they are proceeding apace and are desirable and essential to ensure stability.

But, simply put, defeating extremist aspirations in Iraq is essential to protect the lives of Americans here at home.

And he tells the media,

So I suggest to editors and reporters–whose good intentions I take for granted–to do some soul searching. To ask: how will history judge–if it does–the reporting decades from now when Iraq’s path is settled?

I would urge us all to make every effort to ensure we are telling the whole story. To take a moment for self-reflection and reassessment.

Further it is worth noting that there are 158,000 Americans in uniform who are sending e-mails back to friends and families, telling them the truth as they see it. And much of it is different than what those in the United States are seeing and reading about every day.

Yes, this is an angle the liberal Mainstream Media doesn’t seem to be considering all that much — that while they are now playing footloose and fancy free with the news they deliver to the American public, when the smoke of Iraq clears and all the truths are lain on the table of public scrutiny, they will be exposed before the American people as purveyors of half truths and downright lies who misled their trusting readers, viewers and listeners in order to peddle their liberal agendas.