Ghost of war post 2

The book brings up issues revolving around the war, but specifically the military not having the supplies needed to get the job done.  Spec. Smithson (the main character and author) is part of and engineering and equipment maintains platoon which has just been deployed in Iraq to build barracks, repair bridges and transport supplies.  the trucks that they had when deployed had little to no armor the base they stayed at was promised tents, but never got any we cannot fight a war with insufficient equipment.  While Smithson and the rest of the platoon is on a mission (building stuff) he talks about the part of the war no one in America ever sees on the news and in movies and TV shows and how its "the half of the truth that sells newspapers... The only people who understand [the war] are stuck here with us."(94).  Before this line he tells us of children who come up to the convoy holding brown water with specs of stuff floating in it, the kid says that it is his drinking water.  Someone in the platoon throws the kid a bottle of his water and tells the kid that this is what water is supposed to look like if it is to be drank.  During the drive into Iraq the soldiers threw packets of food into the street for the kids who lined the side of the road with their families, but nobody sees this part of the war; nobody sees the people who built the barracks so that others can sleep, America does not see the soldiers protecting a small town from slaughter in the middle of the night and no one sees the Iraqi people of that village celebrating and giving food they don't have to the soldiers who protected them.  The media is bias, Smithson mentioned that CNN was against the war, they wouldn't show these kids being helped, they would show these kids being shot at by soldiers (according to the book it is Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to shoot at children who start throwing rocks at the convoys).  They wouldn't show the food packets being tossed out the windows of the convoy to the kids on the road, instead, they would show another truck running over the kid as the kid goes for the food (SOP says the soldiers cannot throw food to the villagers not because soldiers are mean and don't want to help them, but because they've had incidents of children getting hit be cars while running to claim the food; the soldiers do it any way, but they make sure the food gets thrown away from the road).  So how does America get its fair news? Where can we see the big picture of what is going on with out the media only showing the side they support to sway opinion towards them? the media is all about ratings, if the population is against the war they are going to show only the footage that supports, or builds on, the majorities opinion of the war to get more views. They would show the unjustness of it and the unprepared state which the army throws its' soldiers into war rarely do they ever show or speak of the good the soldiers were doing there.