'A Reverse Vitenam' http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p01s02-usmi.html

Mark Sappenfield, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, had an ingenious idea: Why not interview an actual serviceman who fought in Iraq? The result, datelined Brook Park, Ohio, is a groundbreaking bit of journalism:

Cpl. Stan Mayer has seen the worst of war. In the leaves of his photo album, there are casual memorials to the cost of the Iraq conflict--candid portraits of friends who never came home and graphic pictures of how insurgent bombs have shredded steel and bone.
Yet the Iraq of Corporal Mayer's memory is not solely a place of death and loss. It is also a place of hope. It is the hope of the town of Hit, which he saw transform from an insurgent stronghold to a place where kids played on Marine trucks. It is the hope of villagers who whispered where roadside bombs were hidden. But most of all, it is the hope he saw in a young Iraqi girl who loved pens and Oreo cookies.
Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity--if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences.

You've gotta love this. Looking at "the broader picture" means disparaging the "individual experiences" of those who are actually sacrificing to defeat the enemy and rebuild Iraq, and it means presenting Iraq as pretty much "solely a place of death and loss." It means, in short, following a predetermined script: Iraq as another Vietnam.