am war. Stories about villages being burned and possibly innocent people being massacred were actually being reported more in Vietnam, something that didnt sit well with a public that had a hard time accepting that we were in a war and that in wars unthinkable acts are committed on a daily basis. This coupled with the fact that the government never really gave us a real reason for even being in the conflict in the first place made public opinion for the war steadily turn sour. The media hadnt anticipated the huge effect that its coverage of the war would have on the public. It swayed the publics opinion so much that many of the men who fought in Vietnam came back to much less than a heroes welcome. People were outraged at what was going on and refused to accept our involvement. Many have heard first hand stories of how Vietnam veterans were treated when they got home, and much of the way they were treated is due to the way the war was presented to the public. My Swim coach in high school told us stories about how he would get into fights everyday when he got home from Vietnam because of the way he was treated. This is a very major drawback to covering a war so objectively. Is it fair for our soldiers to be treated like dogs for the benefit of our information. This is a very hard question to answer because we feel that we are entitled to all the information that is out there when it comes to our national security, but can we really handle all of the information? The government and media decided that less was more in the case of the Gulf War in light of the way Vietnam was treated. The government chose to just have press conferences to release the information that it felt was necessary for us to have. This led us to be very supportive of the Gulf War and the troops that fought in it. Whether or not public support affects the outcome of a war is also a tough question in itself, but it didnt seem to hurt in the case of the ...
