I had every intention of letting "Cheney Flag-gate" go uncommented upon as a non-story. Vice President Cheney went pheasant hunting at an exclusive preserve in Dutchess County, New York yesterday, and the hunt itself left only pheasants hitting the ground. It was a local interest story for the most part, until a sharp-eyed photographer and a self-promoting blowhard turned this local interest story into a national non-story when it was discovered that the inside of the back door of a garage at the hunt club was draped in a Confederate battle flag.

There is precisely no evidence that Cheney or anyone on his staff saw the flag, but that didn't keep the Daily News from running straight to Al Sharpton. The story ended in lots of hot air being spit by a man in love with the sound of his own voice, and many people fruitlessly wishing they had a way to somehow blame the Vice President.

I only mention this story at all because of the eye for detail it reveals in our media. Consider this a "teachable moment" for media fact-checkers.

Here is the flag photo, as captured by a Daily News photographer.

Note the detail the Daily News posted about the flag itself:

A Daily News photographer captured the 3-by-5 foot Dixie flag affixed to a door in the garage of the Clove Valley Gun and Rod Club in upstate Union Vale, N.Y.

Not to be outdone, Austin Fenner of the Post claimed:

But the veep only shot him self in the foot - by visiting the exclusive Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club in Union Vale, a sprawling preserve nestled along the western side of Clove Mountain, where a 5-foot-by-5-foot Confederate flag hung in a garage attached to the club headquarters.

Led by the tabloids, the Times "Cityroom" blog blindly follows, and ups the ante with a rather blatant embellishment:

Reporters who covered Mr. Cheney’s visit on Monday — including Fernanda Santos of The Times — were not permitted to enter the grounds of the hunting estate. But at least one eagle-eyed photographer captured images of a Confederate battle flag — about 3 feet by 5 feet in dimension — hanging in plain view in a garage attached to the club’s headquarters.

If it was in "plain view" as alleged, why didn't the Times' Fernanda Santos—or any other reporter or photographer than the one from the Daily News —notice it? Clearly, Sewell Chan had a much better view of the action from Manhattan.

But let's talk about the view for a moment, and about media accuracy. It is admittedly a small matter, but indicative of a greater pervading sloppiness.

Look at the picture again, and the descriptions. The Daily News and the Times puts the flag at "about" 3-by-5 foot in dimension, and the Post, inexplicably, determines the flag is 5-by-5 foot, proving that they failed rectangles and squares.

But before you laugh too much at the Post, make sure you include the Daily News and the Times, for they are far off the mark as well, as a little common sense would tell you.

Look back at that flag again.

Actually, look at the door.

When is the last time you saw an entry door that is 5-feet wide? This door is at most 36 inches wide, and many older buildings have rear garage doors commonly just 2'8" in width.

The flag, it would seem, is roughly half the size of that which the media claimed. This isn't malice, of course, just carelessness over the details.

The same sort of carelessness, however, gives us stories of brutal massacres that didn't happen. It gives us bullets that were never fired or never made. All of these stories are equally untrue because of reporters wanting to rush stories to print without getting the details right.

Speed to press will never save the print media. Bloggers will always be faster. The media must be more accurate, more diligent, and more credible. To date, they show little sign of learning this lesson.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:13 PM | Comments (35) | Add Comment
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"We've won the war."

"The news out of Iraq just keeps getting worse."

Writing at his blog, Jules Crittenden, a Boston Herald editor and columnist notes the continuing failure of another media organization, the Associated Press, to also honestly deal with evolving conditions on the group in Iraq that have seen both Iraqi civilian deaths and U.S. military deaths drop in recent months.

In his new home at the Weekly Standard, Dean Barnett notes the plunging casualties:

The results of the surge, or "the escalation" as Harry Reid derisively called it, have been obvious in the Icasualties.org numbers. Before the surge, a bad month would claim the lives of roughly 3,000 Iraqi civilians and security force members. In February '07, the exact number was 3,014 Iraqi casualties. In March, the figure was 2,977. As the surge began to have its effects, that number dropped to 1674 in August. In September, with the surge taking full effect, the numbers showed a profound change--the Iraqi death toll plunged to 848.

Happily, September's figures don't appear to be an aberration. October has seen 502 Iraqi casualties so far. If the trend continues though the end of October, the final number should be around 650 for the entire month. That represents better than an 80 percent improvement from the war's nadir.

YOU'D THINK THIS would be a big story. After all, the mainstream media makes such a show of "supporting the troops" at every turn, you'd think it would rush to report the amazing story of our soldiers accomplishing what many observers declared "impossible" and "unwinnable" not so long ago.

But the mainstream media can't actually support the troops, can they?

Despite the onionskin-thin layers of nuance favored by those on the extreme edge of the progressive movement, the leadership (but not the rank and file) of the Democrat Party, and the editorial offices of many newsrooms, in real-life, supporting the troops really does mean supporting the mission.

The platitude of those that claim "we support the troops, but not the war," is an empty one; analogous to claiming that they support doctors, but not practicing medicine on certain patients even if they have the same disease.

"Iraqis? No. Why don't you go treat those people in Darfur instead..."

And so we get stories like the latest from APÂ’s Steven R. Hurst noted by Crittenden, where every possible silver lining is discarded in worship of the cloud.

We get editors that would rather torpedo their careers than admit they were wrong.

We get columnists that refuse to concede to hope.

And of course, we get faked massacres, fauxtography, gross inaccuracies, false premises, buried stories and preferrential treatment for fellow defeatists, all because those multiple layers of reporters, fact-checkers, and editors are determined to craft a message that they can be comfortable with publishing, that echoes their values and their beliefs of how the world should work.

In that world, a bumbling, semi-articulate President with approval ratings in the 30s, that has made on mistake after another related to the war, simply cannot be in charge when we win a war that they do not support, because of him.

As they have told us repeatedly: This. Is. Bush's. War.

They might be able to do a better job moderating their disdain for the military if it was simply run by the right POTUS; just preferably not a simpering idiot from Texas, or at least not a Republican one.

But as much as he is detested in newsrooms and dining rooms across America, George W. Bush is the President of the United States, and because of this unpalatable fact, it is simply unfathomable to the media and theri supporters on the fringe left that General Petraeus and the soldiers under him could shift strategies to take advantage of and exploit shifting public opinions in Iraq to execute a counterinsurgency doctrine that has Sunni and Shia joining forces with the U.S. and Iraqi security forces to stamp out criminal gangs, insurgents, rogue militias, and terrorists at what seems like an exponential rate.

We find ourselves in late October of 2007 with a war that, while not "over" in terms of ending all violence and all terror attacks, is "over" in that there is little doubt who the winner of the conflict will be.

There will not be a sectarian ""civil war" in Iraq, perhaps best evidenced by the fact that the media—excuse me, actual reporters in Iraq, not plaintive Times editorialists—have quietly let the claim die. Just as quietly, they have stopped wondering if Iraqi security forces will be able to hold together, and instead focus on corruption in the higher ranks.

At the present rate, the only way the media could shift goalposts faster is if the crane moving the goalposts was attached to Jeff Gordon's stock car.

While the opinion of the Iraqi people has drastically changed in past months and they seem to see the outcome being decided in their favor and sooner rather than later, the world media, led by the U.S. media, is refusing to acknowledge the possibility that the outcome of the war (if not the end of the counterinsurgency effort) may be decided before President Bush leaves office, making him the victor.

While the security forces of Iraq and allied nations seem to be turning/defeating the insurgency in Iraq, we are having considerably less success fighting an insurgent media that refuses to yield ground—unless forced every step of the way—by what they consider an unpleasant reality. The dead-enders of the Iraqi insurgency will likely meet their end via a bullet from Iraqi soldiers, policemen, or the growing number of civilians styled as "concerned citizens."

Some of the insurgent media is being "killed off" in rather spectacular blaze of glory, and some dead-ender media companies may one day collapse utterly for being unwilling to change. That admitted, most journalists, if for no other reason than their personal bottom lines, will eventually begrudgingly admit success, or at least change the subject.

Like the terrorists our soldiers fight, the biased media doesnÂ’t have to like being defeated. Sometimes "winning hearts and minds" amounts to just beating them enough to take the fight out of them and focus their efforts elsewhere, which is already occurring on newspaper front pages.

This is the way "Bush's War" will end in the media: not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:35 AM | Comments (27) | Add Comment
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I was rather amused by some of the comments made by bloggers and commenters from the community-based reality yesterday in response to Michael Yon's Resistance is Futile. Many seemed eager to dismiss Yon as a partisan with an agenda, or dismissed his work as anecdotal in nature only.

In their minds, it is obvious that wire services, network and cable television news channels and major newspapers are providing "better" and "more accurate" news out of Iraq than embedded journalist-bloggers such as Yon, Totten, Roggio, Aradolino, Emanuel, and Johannes.

Those that would continually downplay the accounts from these citizen-journalists make the argument that these men are only reporting anecdotes of what they see with their own eyes, and therefore cannot be trusted to present "the big picture."

Really?

With all of the citizen-journalists listed above, you are typically getting first-hand reports from people at the scene of the news. With a few notable exceptions, you will not get that from most western news agencies operating in Iraq.

When you see a story by a Western reporter bylined in Baghdad, in the overwhelming supermajority of instances you are not getting a firsthand account of what he or she saw. Wire services and news agencies send out local Iraqi reporters called "stringers" that have unknown allegiances, alliances, competencies, and track records, to do the field work of reporting. They take (and occasionally stage) pictures, talk to witnesses (or make them up), and compose a rough account of the events (or completely fabricate them) for the agency they work for. These stringers then turn over the rough-draft information to "reporters" who write news accounts on events they have not witnessed, relying on information they often cannot verify.

This is the normal state of affairs of media reporting in Iraq. Those who have their names on many stories aren't reporters, they're essentially transcriptionists who have very little idea at all if the stories they report are true, or just "truthy."

So you tell me who is providing the better news: is it the guy relating what he can see, or the guy relaying a story he can't verify?

Now consider the fact that the "big picture" so many rely on is built out of hundreds of accounts where some or all of the information being presented as the truth is uncorroborated or unverified by the writer with his name on the byline, and you start to understand how there can be such a huge discrepancy between what citizen-journalists and soldiers blogging from Iraq see, and what the "professionals" relay in our media outlets.

The dirty truth of modern mass-market journalism is that it is retail news, and re-told news, and often anything but reporting.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:59 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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Don Surber does an excellent job of reminding us why Americans have so little faith in the media:

Why do people absolutely detest the media? Is it the laziness? Is it the incompetence? Is it the bias?

This report from the ABC News blog shows all 3 elements. The headline: ”Bidding Over $2M for Dems Anti-Rush Letter”

It is not until Paragraph 7 that ABC bothers to mention that Rush put the letter on eBay.

As Matt Drudge correctly pointed ABC was crediting the perpetrators instead of the victim, Rush. That letter was not written to raise money — it was written to get a man fired for broadcasting opinions that 41 Democratic Senators wanted censured. He dares to support a war that a Democratic Senate authorized in 2002.

[snip]

Now ABC credits these anti-constitutional senators with the $4.2 million Rush raised — half of it from his own pocket.

Not one of those 41 senators — all of whom enjoy salaries that place them in the top 3% of the country — has matched that gift with 21 cents, let alone the $2.1 million Rush will give.

ABC News knows what it can do with its blog entry.

Perhaps not surprisingly, crediting Democrats for something they didn't do isn't the only display of bias and incompetence in this ABC blog entry.

The content of the seventh paragraph shows that ABC didn't even both to do the basic research necessary about the charity benefiting from Limbaugh's fundraiser:

All proceeds from the auction of the letter will go to the Marine Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation, which distributes aid to the families to the children of fallen Marines on behalf of law enforcement officers.

First--and this is just a pet peeve of mine-- all of Marine Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation should be in the link. That's just sloppy, amateur work.

Second, the content of the ABC News claim is inaccurate. ABC claims that MC-LEF "distributes aid to the families to the children of fallen Marines on behalf of law enforcement officers."

It would have taken reading all of seven sentences to get the basic mission of the foundation right:

The recent war in Iraq has certainly illuminated America�s commitment to freedom. We are reminded that freedom is not free. The price is great. No one knows that better than the left-behind sons and daughters of America�s fallen heroes.

Through the continuous support of our donors, we have distributed aid with a value of more than $29,000,000.00 to eligible children. This assistance was primarily rendered to children of Marines or Federal law enforcement personnel who were killed on duty or died under extraordinary circumstances while serving our country at home or abroad.

It would have taken ABC News perhaps 10-15 seconds to read that far.

Apparently ABC News felt that it wasn't worth spending those extra 10-15 seconds to get even one fact of their story correct.

Update: ABC is also censoring comments on the blog (mine, among others) for content that is anything other than profane, simply rewriting or deleting comments they do not like on apparent whims.

The former gatekeepers do not like to be told that they are wrong.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:01 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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Quite a lot of people are ripping the behavior of Dallas, TX KDFW-TV reporter Rebecca Aquilar right now and deservedly so. The journalist ambushed 70-year-old Army veteran James Walton as he got into his car, and bullied him into tears. She has since been suspended.

Why?

Walton is owner of Able Walton Machine & Welding in West Dallas, a salvage business where he lives in an upstairs apartment, that has been robbed no less than 42 times.

On September 22, at about 2:00 AM, Walton shot a man who was breaking in through a pried-open window. The man later died. Three weeks later on October 14 at 9:00 AM, Walton shot and killed another thief who had broken in.

After each shooting, Dallas police, as a matter of policy, processed each firearm used as evidence for the grand jury, meaning that a victimized Walton had to purchase yet another firearm with which to defend his life and besieged property.

It was as he was leaving the store after purchasing this replacement shotgun (a Remington according to the box markings) that Aquilar staged her ambush:

I'd ask you to note her choice of language, her obvious bias, accusatory tone and abrasiveness, and the careful positioning of her body between the car body and door, an old television reporter's trick that traps the victim as a hostage, so that he could neither exit the vehicle, nor close the door to leave in the vehicle.

Glenn Reynolds notes:

I was struck by reporter Rebecca Aguilar's body-language, literally standing over him in judgment with tailored suit and umbrella. The way she looked down, literally and figuratively, on an old man who had defended his life, entirely legally, and reduced him to tears seems to me to be representative of the worst stereotypes of Old Media.

Stereotypes become stereotypes because of behavior recreated and witnessed enough times that the behavior witnessed is thought to be a group norm.

I've witnessed it firsthand in the aftermath of an armed standoff with hostages. Minutes after the suspect surrendered himself, a television reporter with cameraman in tow came inside the building and started peppering the just-released hostages with questions, jabbing at them and I with a microphone. As news consumers, we've seen other instances of this ambush style of journalism, as other journalists have perfected it in both local and national media.

And there are instances where an ambush style of journalism is indeed warranted, such as confronting con artists or corrupt CEOs. But where journalists have failed the moral test is when they lost basic human empathy, and begin treating citizens as suspects, and victims as criminals, as Aguilar does here, without apparent remorse. This was horrific, but only grossly atypical in that the lopsided assault was broadcast in its entirety, and not edited.

It seems that what has happened to journalism is that far too many journalists have placed the importance of the story they would like to tell as the foremost thought in their minds, and made both facts and people subservient to that agenda. They've traded their empathy for an angle, and honest journalism for advocacy.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:12 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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Estes Thompson and Mike Baker of the Associated Press note that America's all volunteer military isn't taking advantage of opportunities the way their predecessors did:

American troops killed their own commanders so often during the Vietnam War that the crime earned its own name - "fragging."

But since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has charged only one soldier with killing his commanding officer, a dramatic turnabout that most experts attribute to the all-volunteer military.

[snip]

Both Roland and Anderson said today's all-volunteer military, compared with soldiers being forced into duty in Vietnam, is the primary reason why fragging attacks are almost nonexistent in Iraq and Afghanistan. The conditions in Iraq are also much less conducive to the crime, Roland said.

"There's not as much isolated operation," Roland said. "One of the things about Vietnam was the extremes of small-unit activity, where a squad or platoon would go out on patrol and it was just them and the jungle. They were out of sight of other Americans.

"In Iraq, you never know when a helicopter might be going over or a newsman comes along," he said.

You can almost feel their pain.

Update: Wretchard looks into what the "experts" cited in this story got wrong.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:26 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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Via a reader in the comments of the my most recent TNR post, a story about a solider wounded and a squad virtually wiped out in an apparent youth suicide bombing in Iraq in the Cleveland Daily Banner in Cleveland, TN:

Christopher H. Bagwell, grandson of Nancy and Richard Hughes of Cleveland, was severely wounded Tuesday, Sept. 18, in Iraq.

Bagwell and his squad leader were the only two survivors of a 12-member squad decimated when an Iraqi youth detonated explosives wrapped around his body.

A graduate of York Institute and Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Bagwell spoke with his grandmother last week.

She said the young soldier told her he had just passed the youthful bomber with his squad leader, with his squad following behind handing out candy to children. The Iraqi village was believed to be a friendly zone for the U.S. military.

The youngster, believed to be 10 to 12 years old, detonated the explosives as the soldiers were walking by. Ten members of the squad were killed, along with the youngster.Bagwell was severely injured.

The thing is, I can't find any such record of a young suicide bomber causing so many fatalities among U.S. troops in Iraq, or for that matter, even ten U.S. fatalities on Sept. 18 in total.

Anti-war casualty clearinghouse icasualties.org has no record of such an attack, or even anything similar. According to U.S. Central Command Casualty Reports, there was one attack on Sept. 18, where 3 soldiers were killed and 3 wounded near Tikrit. There was nothing like a suicide bombing attack that killed ten soldiers and wounded two. A search of Google News also fails to uncover a similar account.

Update: The military weighs in:

Sir,

After reviewing available information, we are unable to confirm the
story's legitimacy. Thank you.

V/R,

BRYON J. MCGARRY, 1Lt, USAF
OIC, JOC Public Affairs
Multi-National Corps - Iraq

10/15 Update: Catherine Caruso of the Fort Lewis PAO responds via email:

4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team) is a
unit stationed here at Fort Lewis, and is currently deployed to Iraq.
Madigan Army Medical Center is also located on the installation, but I
do not have access to patient names or information and can't release
names of wounded Soldiers due to patient privacy laws- MAMC has their
own public affairs office which may be of more help if you would like to
contact wounded Soldiers who are assigned to the hospital.

There was an incident on Sept. 18th in which three Soldiers from the
brigade's 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, were killed...

...The editor of that paper called here a few minutes ago, and it appears
this may have been the same incident the paper referred to. I could not
answer all of his questions, but it appears he also believes the paper
may have inadvertently published inaccurate information re: the number
of casualties. For my part, I can confirm there was an incident that
date, but don't have details about the incident beyond what was in the
DoD release, nor do I have information about any Soldiers wounded in the
incident.

However, 2-23 IN has suffered 10 casualties since their deployment in
April through their most recent loss on Sept. 22 (this includes all
causes- accidents, combat, and medical). It seems likely that this could
be the source of the confusion re: the number of Soldiers involved, if
this is the same incident in which the Soldier referenced in the story
was injured.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:29 AM | Comments (24) | Add Comment
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From Mike Yon this morning, via email:

Bob,

Basra is not in chaos. In fact, crime and violence are way down and there has not been a British combat death in over a month. The report below is false.

The NEWSDAY report he casts doubt on paints a far different story:

British pullout in Iraq leaves Basra in chaos

BY TIMOTHY M. PHELPS.timothy.phelps@newsday.com; This story was supplemented with wire reports.

October 9, 2007

WASHINGTON - The British troop pullout from Iraq announced yesterday leaves Basra, Iraq's second largest and most strategically important city, in near total chaos both politically and militarily.

It comes at a time when at least four Shia militias are fighting over the city, which is surrounded by most of the nation's tremendous oil reserves and provides Iraq's only gateway to the sea.

Equally vital for U.S. strategists, the city also controls the southern portion of the road from Kuwait to Baghdad, along which mostly all U.S. supplies are brought in...

The article continues, of course, but is it worth reading?

Who are you going to believe... the reporter with th Washington byline, or the embed on the ground in Iraq?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:40 AM | Comments (40) | Add Comment
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The U.K. Telegraph, not exactly the voice of reason or accuracy when it comes hand-wringing hype of the possibility of war between the United States and Iran, has an amusingly self-contradictory post today by Tim Shipman that claims that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is "The man who stands between US and new war."

The thrust of the headline and the urderlying premise drummed up by the article is that Gates, and Gates alone, is the sole voice of sanity keeping the U.S. from a bombing campaign of Iran.

Unfortunately, the second half of the editorial (I hope this isn't supposed to be hard news) seems to exist merely to debunk that underlying premise:

Officials say Mr Gates's strategy bore fruit when Admiral William Fallon, the head of US Central Command, charged with devising war plans for Iran, said last month that the "constant drumbeat of war" was not helpful.

He was followed by General George Casey, the army's new chief of staff, who requested an audience with the House of Representatives armed services committee to warn that his branch of the military had been stretched so thin by the Iraq war that it was not prepared for yet another conflict.

Gen Casey told Congress the army was "out of balance" and added: "The demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply. We are consumed with meeting the demands of the current fight, and are unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as necessary for other potential contingencies."

Mr Gates has forged an alliance with Mike McConnell, the national director of intelligence, and Michael Hayden, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, to ensure that Mr Cheney's office is not the dominant conduit of information and planning on Iran to Mr Bush.

The fact that the Army's Chief of Staff Casey, D-CIA Hayden, head of CENTCOM Admiral Fallon, and National Director of Intelligence McConnell have joined Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Defense Gates in advocating that we try other means prior to war, apparently didn't register with Shipman, even as he wrote their names.

A great newspaper, the Independent. They never miss a thing.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:31 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Sexual assault is no caused by a bacteria or prion. Rape is not a virus, with gang rape being a more virulent strain of a virus.

Rape is an act of power, control and brutality. It is not an epidemic, and attempting to call it such strips away the fact that it is caused by a brutal act of will. It is not an unfriendly act of nature, a microbe following what it is designed to do, and using language that portrays it is such is inexcusable.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:42 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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I don't know much about the "World News Network," but I can tell them this: if you're going to write a story about people killed in bombings during Ramadan in Iraq, it is probably best that you don't use a picture from a March truck bombing in Tal Afar.

Update: As noted in the comments this photo apparently came from--where else?-- a Reuters feed. At least that gave the military photographer, Chris Brogan, the credit.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:40 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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The televised death of Muhammad al-Dura on Sept. 30, 2000 at the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada was replayed over and over again as propaganda by Palestinians, in a conflict that eventually claimed thousands of lives.

Seven years later, the footage has been denounced as fauxtography by the Israeli government:

Seven years after the death of the Palestinian boy Muhammad al-Dura in Gaza, the Prime Minister's Office speaks out against the "myth of the murder".

An official document from Jerusalem denied – for the first time – that Israel was responsible for the death of al-Dura at the start of the second intifada.

The document argued that the images, which showed al-Dura being shot beside his father and have become a symbol of the second intifada, were staged.

"The creation of the myth of Muhammad al-Dura has caused great damage to the State of Israel. This is an explicit blood libel against the state. And just as blood libels in the old days have led to pogroms, this one has also caused damage and dozens of dead," said Government Press Office director Daniel Seaman.

The arguments were based on investigations that showed that the angles of the IDF troops' fire could not have hit the child or his father, that part of the filmed material, mainly the moment of the boy's alleged death, is missing, and the fact that the cameraman can be heard saying the boy is dead while the boy is still seen moving.

In The Atlantic in 2005, James Fallows explained why the story matters:

Al-Dura was the twelve-year-old Palestinian boy shot and killed during an exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators on September 30, 2000. The final few seconds of his life, when he crouched in terror behind his father, Jamal, and then slumped to the ground after bullets ripped through his torso, were captured by a television camera and broadcast around the world. Through repetition they have become as familiar and significant to Arab and Islamic viewers as photographs of bombed-out Hiroshima are to the people of Japan—or as footage of the crumbling World Trade Center is to Americans. Several Arab countries have issued postage stamps carrying a picture of the terrified boy. One of Baghdad's main streets was renamed The Martyr Mohammed Aldura Street. Morocco has an al-Dura Park. In one of the messages Osama bin Laden released after the September 11 attacks and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he began a list of indictments against "American arrogance and Israeli violence" by saying, "In the epitome of his arrogance and the peak of his media campaign in which he boasts of 'enduring freedom,' Bush must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura and his fellow Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. If he has forgotten, then we will not forget, God willing."

It is quite possible that this defining moment in the Palestinian intifada cited even by Osama bin Laden was not the death of an innocent at the hands of callous Israeli soldiers, but the deliberate murder of a child for propaganda purposes in which the Palestinian cameraman may have been a willing actor.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:49 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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I've pretty much avoided this entire non-story, but the entire situation has become such a farce that I feel compelled to link this.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:22 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Both U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties have plummeted in Iraq. Thousands have apparently been killed and their bodies dumped in the jungle in clashes with government forces in Mayanmar/Burma. A college football player is gunned down and classes are cancelled for thousands as the search for the suspect continues.

A volcano erupts in the Red Sea, killing soldiers on a remote island outpost. There is yet another story about U.S. plans for attacking Iran.

And yet with all these developments affecting or potentially affecting lives around the globe, CNN and Fox News focus on the death of an irate passenger who apparently managed to strangle herself with her handcuffs after being arrested for disorderly conduct after missing her flight.

Don't get me wrong. It is a tragedy that this 45-year-old mother of three died. But this shouldnÂ’t be a top story in national news.

For those not related to her, her death is merely an exploited curiosity, a carny act inexplicably promoted to the the center ring. It matters little that she is the daughter of relatively obscure political figures, or that the cause of her death is being ascribed to the oddest of circumstances. This is sideshow material promoted to the front page for it's ability to shock and entertain.

I thought that the Weekly World News collapsed because they couldn't find readership for their kind of "news." Apparently, they were simply driven out of business by larger organizations more adept at exploiting a more brutal kind of infotainment.

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