Breaking: Here's a shocker the anti-American, anti-war in Iraq AP has been making up reports about the war in Iraq. More to follow.
and from David Yeagley at the Autonomist with a quote from Rocco that seems appropriate:
Outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan delivered his libelous, traitorous assessment of Iraq just today, on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC):
Given the level of violence, the level of killing and bitterness and the way that forces are arranged against each other, a few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war; this is much worse.
These are certainly the words of an enemy of the United States, for they flatly contradict the facts, and undermine goog thing America is trying to do in Iraq. But these words also angered and "shocked" the Iraqi national security advisor Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie. Al Rubaie accused the UN of shying away from its responsibility towards the Iraqi people.
And in the midst of all this apparent lying on the part of the apparently deceptive Kofi Annan, in all this delusional and negative media ambience, we have an eye-witness over there right now, our own Rocco DiPippo, who just told us:
The killers here are playing to a press that longs for the defeat of the U.S. And the press could care less how its obsession effects Iraq or its people. In my opinion, a lot of violence in Iraq results from that symbiotic relationship. If all Western leftwing "journalists" were banned from Iraq, I'm convinced that the level of violence here would drop significantly. And if along with them, the Arab pro-terror media outlets were shut down, violence targeted towards Iraqi civilians would lessen even more.
Americans and our allies in Iraq have served as missionaries! It has been an unprecedented intervention. It is a remarkable thing, to rebuild a nation, especially one like Iraq. The murderous violence is all between street gangs and political factions, and all supported by Iran and Syria, and probably Osama Bin-Laden, if not Saudi Arbia directly. Many of the IEDs are manufactured in Iran. They cost money. Some one is paying for them.
And "civil war" has two sides. There are fifteen sides in Iraq, families, clans, gangs, sects, and outside instigation (Iran and Syria). But the fighting is actually on a very small scale, and only in certain places. The bigger picture of a prospering Iraq is simply withheld from the world. There is no civil war in Iraq. "Sectarian violence" is also a misnomer. It's not really about Shiites and Sunnis. It's about families, clans, ethnicities, and tribes. This is also withheld from the world.
There are enemies of freedom and democracy in the world. There are enemies of the United States. There are enemies of George W. Bush. We find them all gathered in Iraq. This is obviously not withheld from the world.
h/t Cube for the Boston Herald Story
Say no to AP’s shoddy work
By Jules Crittenden
Boston Herald City Editor
Sunday, December 3, 2006 - Updated: 02:46 AM EST
When a company defrauds its customers, or delivers shoddy goods, the customers sooner or later are going to take their business elsewhere. But if that company has a virtual monopoly, and offers something its customers must have, they may have no choice but to keep taking it.
That’s when the customers, en masse, need to raise a stink. That’s when someone else with the resources needs to seriously consider whether the time is ripe to compete.
The Associated Press is embroiled in a scandal. Conservative bloggers, the new media watchdogs, lifted a rock at the AP.
Curt at Floppingaces, www.floppingaces2.blogspot.com, led the charge. He thought there was something strange about an AP report, and took a second look at it, then a third look. He and others blew the lid off it. The AP is making up war crimes. But the resulting stink in the blogosphere has barely wrinkled a nose in the mainstream press. The ethics-obsessed Poynter Institute seems to be oblivious to it.
It has to do with the AP’s Iraqi stringers and an oft-quoted Iraqi police captain named Jamil Hussein. Problem is, the Iraqi police say Capt. Hussein does not exist. The Iraqi police and U.S. military say an incident described in an AP report - Iraqi soldiers standing by as people were burned alive in a mosque - didn’t happen. Another AP-reported incident, U.S. soldiers shooting 11 civilians, also never happened, the military says.
When the AP was forced to acknowledge this situation, it did so in a story about a new Interior Ministry policy regarding false reports. The AP buried the fact that its own false report prompted this new policy.
The AP stands by its reporting.. The AP has cast “Capt. Jamil Hussein” simply as someone not authorized to speak, and AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll has sniffed morally: “Good reporting relies on more than government-approved sources.”
The AP has another Iraqi stringer problem. Photographer Bilal Hussein is in U.S. custody, and the AP has been clamoring indignantly for his release. AP reports have buried the U.S. explanation that Hussein is being held without charge because - quite aside from producing photos that showed him to be overly intimate with terrorists in Fallujah - he was in an al-Qaeda bomb factory, with an al-Qaeda bombmaker, with traces of explosives on his person when he was arrested.
The AP, of course, has been delivering unbalanced reports about U.S. national politics for some time, as when President Bush, whom AP reporters despise, is barely allowed to state his case on an issue before his critics are given twice as much space to pummel him. The AP, once a just-the-facts news delivery service, has lost its rudder. It has become a partisan, anti-American news agency that seeks to undercut a wartime president and American soldiers in the field. It is providing fraudulent, shoddy goods. It doesn’t even recognize it has a problem.
This is the point at which, another big American industry learned, people start buying Japanese. But as an American newspaper, if you want to provide your readers with affordable regional, national and international news, you have to deal with the AP.
If newspapers don’t have an alternative, readers do. It’s called the Internet. That’s why newspapers, if they don’t want to be dragged further into irrelevance and disrepute, have to tell The Associated Press they are dissatisfied with its product.
Al-Reuters and ap-Jerzeera.
Comment by Brooke— 2006/12/05 @ 03:39 AM — (Reply)