The rush to press

I read and watched incredulously the CNN broadcast of the “Reliable Sources” bit on why the media isn’t reporting lower casualties and successes in Iraq. Noel Sheppard from Newsbusters transcribes;

After introducing the subject, Kurtz asked, “Robin Wright, should that decline in Iraq casualties have gotten more media attention?”

This was Wright’s amazing answer:

Not necessarily. The fact is we’re at the beginning of a trend — and it’s not even sure that it is a trend yet. There is also an enormous dispute over how to count the numbers. There are different kinds of deaths in Iraq.

That’s funny because two days into the invasion of Saddam’s Iraq, our troops ran headlong into a sandstorm – immediately the media called Iraq a quagmire and wondered if we’d ever remove the Hussein regime from power because of one little sand storm.

The media had no problem trotting out the Hadditha story before the facts were known in order to smear the American soldiers, and now according to Little Green Footballs, Gateway Pundit and Michele Malkin, it might have been an al Qaeda plot – because they knew the media would pounce all over it without any real investigation.

al Qaeda used the treacherous media against our struggle for national security with articles entitled “The Shame of Kilo Company” and “Did Marines Kill In Cold Blood?”. The New York Times even ferreted out a law professor who allowed them to quote that even though there isn’t enough evidence to prosecute the Marines, it doesn’t mean they’re innocent. Despite the fact that our Bill of Rights guarantees us the right of being innocent until the government proves otherwise; 

“We can’t say those guys didn’t commit a crime,” said Michael F. Noone Jr., a retired Air Force lawyer and law professor at Catholic University of America. “We can only say that after an investigation, there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute.” 

And still there’s no apparent shame from the media.

Here’s another example; Abdul Sattar Abu Risha met with President Bush after he led the Sunni effort to run al Qaeda out of his little fiefdom – nary a word about the meeting in the press. Two weeks later the sheik was killed and it was in headlines across every newspaper as proof that al Qaeda was unbeatable in Iraq. Then we saw the pictures of the sheik and Bush. Apparently the media was wrong – it only reinforced efforts in Iraq against al Qaeda among the Sunnis – that’s not being reported either.

Need more? The Washington Post has avoided reporting on increased security and the lessening lethality of terrorists in Iraq by running a four part series on the front page last week on IEDs – typical act of avoidance. Today the Washington Post runs the headline that “Top Iraqis Pull Back From Key US Goal“;

For much of this year, the U.S. military strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce violence so that politicians could bring about national reconciliation, but several top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in that broad goal.

Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services.

Nevermind that broad leaps have been made in the last few weeks towards Iraqi unity – nevermind that Iraqis rejected Joe Biden’s plan to divide their nation into pieces nearly unanimously.

Sister Toldjah writes that Omar from Iraq the Model – an Iraqi on the ground in Baghdad – has written a piece for the Wall Street Journal detailing the signs that al Qaeda is losing in Iraq. Wonder why it’s not in the Washington Post. Oh, because today, they’re predicting political defeat for the Iraqis. That would be inconvenient to provide competing opinions, wouldn’t it?

Who does the Washington Post, Robin Wright and the rest of the ignoramouses that claim to be the guardians of our freedoms think we are? They deride the blogs, just like they derided talk radio – but the mainstream press created the alternate news sources – by pompously deciding what we need to know and when we need to know it.

Curt of Flopping Aces sums up;

They struggle to explain why this news isn’t being reported but we all know why.  If it doesn’t fit their narrative, that being the “we’re losing in Iraq” storyline, then they want nothing to do with it.  If they were true reporters they would report this stuff because it IS news.

Well, given that CNN never reported Hussein’s atrocities and continues to ignore atrocities in Cuba to save their precious access to propaganda, who can be surprised that they’ll continue to focus on the US shortcomings since Constitutionally we can’t restrict their access. CNN is just taking the route of least resistance. I don’t what is eating the Washington Post, besides a bad case of the dumbass – playing to these goofballs.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Media, Politics, Terror War