This is journalism? (UPDATED)

Today’s Washington Post is running a story writen by Griff Witte and Javed Hamdard entitled “100 Civilians Killed in NATO, U.S. Assault, Afghan Officials Say“ – pretty serious charge, huh? The brief on the front page says;

Possibly 100 or more killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault in southern Afghanistan, Afghans say.

Well, the main story goes like this;

Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being “careless,” Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault.

I’m sure the Afghanis should be mad if NATO and the US were bombing civilians in groups of a 100. But let’s read on shall we?

The battle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was prompted by a Taliban ambush, began Friday night and continued into Saturday morning, Afghan officials said. It ended with international forces bombing several compounds in the remote village of Hyderabad.

“More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren’t Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there,” said Wali Khan, a member of parliament who represents the area.

The Taliban was far away. This is a member of parliment telling us the Taliban was far away. Ok, let’s see if any one else was interviewed;

Another parliament member from Helmand, Mahmood Anwar, said the death toll was close to 100, and that the dead included women and children. “Very few Taliban were killed,” he said.

Very few Taliban were killed – but wait the other member of Parliment said the Taliban was far, far away – so which was it. A few – or none?

Spokesmen for the international forces acknowledged that civilians were killed in the battle, though they disputed the numbers. Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO-led force, said the civilian death toll was “an order of magnitude less” than what the Afghan officials reported.

Thomas said U.S. ground forces helping carry out a NATO mission had come under fire by Taliban insurgents using small arms, rocket propelled grenades and mortars. Thomas said the troops responded by firing on insurgents who were shooting from a compound and a network of trenches. U.S. helicopters and NATO bombers were later brought in for support, he said.

Thomas said troops returned to the area after the battle and found what appeared to be civilian bodies among the dead insurgents in the trenches. “This confirms for us again that militants are willing to fire from among civilians,” he said.

OK, so now there civilian bodies “among” the dead insurgents. That sounds like there were more fighting forces in those trenches than civilians. Civilians who happened to be going about their daily business in those trenches from which rockets, mortars and missiles were fired.

So out of the three available scenarios, the Washington Post’s “writers” (I refuse to call these people who write stories from information they probably got over the phone “journalists”) picked the scenario least likely to be closest to the truth for their headline. Seems to me that someone could’ve gone out to the village and looked for themselves before they wrote this bogus-ass headline.

So why would they do it? Well, so the illiterate and attention-deficit stricken “intellectuals” on the Left will write things like this;

So, not surprisingly, the US has killed more civilians in Afghanistan in the last year than the Talaban has. link

And I wonder what the government “officials'” reaction was to this;

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Saturday, three civilians were killed and seven injured when a Taliban rocket missed a NATO base in the eastern province of Kunar.

Karzai should be lecturing the Taliban about being more “careful”, too.

UPDATE: From CNN, of all places;

An investigating team was sent to Helmand province’s Gereshk district, where fighting took place between insurgents and Western forces late Friday, said Dur Ali Shah, the mayor of Gereshk, and Mohammad Hussein Andewal, the provincial police chief.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force has acknowledged some civilians were killed in the southern battle but has said the death toll was nowhere near as high as Afghan officials have claimed.

Because of the battle site’s remote location, it was impossible to independently verify the casualty claims. Afghan officials said fighter jets and ground forces were still patrolling the region and that the fighting continued into Saturday.

So, if the Washington Post goofs had waited a day until this investigation was completed, they might have saved themselves from this embarassment.

Category: Media, Terror War