One question I get quite often is "how were things over there compared to what we would see in the news everyday?"  Or in other words, "how bias was the news that filters down to the American public?"

A lot of times, soldiers are tempted to speak as if they are the authority on what is ACTUALLY going on, but this is somewhat of a mistake.  Although living the war in person gives people a better view than those who only experience things through the news, our perspective is still very very limited.

Case in point:

Our brigade, the 116th BCT of Idaho, occupied much of north-north eastern Iraq.  As members of the National Guard, many of us grew up together and have known each other for most of our lives - we are after all, Idaho boys.  Our main FOB was in Kirkuk where at that point the brigade headquarters was stationed, while a small group of us were in a FOB two hours away directly east of Kirkuk.

One day, we were enjoying a relaxing day at our FOB, in the middle of nowhere, when my buddy opens the Internet on his laptop.  While I'm lying on my bed, I hear him yell out, "Hey, some of our guys just got killed in a Blackhawk in Kirkuk."

"What?  How do you know?"

"It says it here on Yahoo News."

Some of our own brethern, people that we went to grade school with, had just paid the ulitmate price, and we were finding out about it the same way everybody else in the world was finding out about it - on the news.

In the end, our point of view was sometimes the same point of view as the rest of America and the world, even though we were right there when it happened.  The news shaped our opinions just like everybody else.  And although we had a better intrinsic understanding than the people back home, it was not as much as people would typically think.

That's too bad. I'm sorry you had to hear about your friends' deaths through the news.