On going bad reporting by US Press on the "Surge Successes"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: June 30, 2007 9:34:01 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] On going bad reporting by US Press on the  
"Surge Successes"

[Note:  This item comes from reader Robert Berger.  DLH]

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: June 30, 2007 4:33:30 PM PDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, David Farber  
<dave () farber net>
Subject: On going bad reporting by US Press on the "Surge Successes"

Our rotted press corps, a division of "Camp Victory"

Glenn Greenwald <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/06/30/ 
war_reporting/index.html>

On June 22, the BBC -- under the headline: "'Al-Qaeda gunmen' killed  
in Iraq" -- reported (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/ 
6230234.stm),  along with virtually every major American media  
outlet, the following claim, without any challenge or questioning:

US helicopters have killed 17 gunmen with suspected al-Qaeda links in  
Iraq's Diyala province north of Baghdad, the US military says.

But unlike the American media outlets which mindlessly reported these  
"Al Qaeda kills," the BBC at least followed up on this story and  
found that there are substantial grounds, to put it mildly, for  
believing those claims were false. In a follow-up article -- prompted  
by protests from residents of the village where the "Al Qaeda kills"  
occurred -- the BBC reported (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/ 
6239896.stm):

A group of villagers in Iraq is bitterly disputing the US account of  
a deadly air attack on 22 June, in the latest example of the  
confusion surrounding the reporting of combat incidents there. . .

On 22 June the US military announced that its attack helicopters,  
armed with missiles, engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen who had  
been trying to infiltrate the village of al-Khalis, north of Baquba,  
where operation "Arrowhead Ripper" had been under way for the  
previous three days.

The item was duly carried by international news agencies and received  
widespread coverage, including on the BBC News website.

But villagers in largely-Shia al-Khalis say that those who died had  
nothing to do with al-Qaeda. They say they were local village guards  
trying to protect the township from exactly the kind of attack by  
insurgents the US military says it foiled.

Minutes before the attack, they had been co-operating with an Iraqi  
police unit raiding a suspected insurgent hideout, the villagers said.

They added that the guards, lightly armed with the AK47 assault  
rifles that are a feature of practically every home in Iraq, were  
essentially a local neighbourhood watch paid by the village to  
monitor the dangerous insurgent-ridden area to the immediate south- 
west at Arab Shawkeh and Hibhib, where the al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab  
al-Zarqawi was killed a year ago.

According to local witnesses, then -- none of whom were interviewed  
by the media outlets obediently reciting the U.S. military's dramatic  
narrative about "17 Al Qaeda fighters killed" -- those who were  
killed by the U.S. strikes had absolutely nothing to do with "Al  
Qaeda," but instead were guarding their own villages against the very  
Sunni insurgents whom we now call "Al Qaeda."

<snip>

UPDATE: As Chris Floyd pointed out
(http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/Slandering_the_Dead% 
3A_The_American_Massacre_at_al-Khalis/)
in writing about this BBC investigation, that the 17 individuals we  
killed had nothing to do with "Al Qaeda" means, of course, that this  
incident -- as part of our Glorious War of Liberation, to Win Hearts  
and Minds -- is yet another "horrific massacre of Iraqi civilians."  
That is simply true by definition. And as Floyd notes, the media's  
mindless recitation of the military's Al Qaeda narrative here is  
particularly pitiful given that "al-Khalis is a largely Shiite  
village, on the side of the American-backed Iraqi government."


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