Rumsfeld assails U.S. news coverage from Iraq

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld assailed U.S. news coverage of the Iraq war on Monday and accused journalists of rushing to find fault with the United States and its military.

He spoke just days after the U.S. military acknowledged that it had paid Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American news stories written by an "information operations" task force. Rumsfeld complained that the issue "has been pounded in the media" but "we don't know what the facts are yet."

"We've arrived at a strange time in this country where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press, and reported and spread around the world, often with little context and little scrutiny, let alone correction or accountability after the fact," Rumsfeld told an academic audience.

Opinion polls show eroding public support for the war and declining confidence in President George W. Bush's leadership as the U.S. military death toll, now at 2,127, climbs.

FULL STORY