I’d like to inject a little reality into all this outrage. First of all, it didn’t take AP “days” to cast doubt on the story… It in fact took hours. The day they reported the 20 beheaded bodies, they immediately had sources saying it may not be true. This is the AP’s lead that day:
BAGHDAD (AP) _ A car bomb killed 22 people Thursday in a bus station in western Baghdad, and police said 20 beheaded bodies had been discovered on the banks of the Tigris River southeast of the capital. Government security officials raised doubts about the decapitation report.
The AP story says a U.S. aircraft spotted what appeared to be 5 bodies, but a searach team went out and found nothing. Giving a reason why someone might believe the report to be credible, but at the same time, raising the likelihood that is was false.
But more broadly…. All this fury that the MSM is purposely “ignoring” al-Qaida massacres puzzles me, in light of the 20 bodies story from Salman Pak. Note this paragraph in the Salman Pak story:
Salman Pak and the surrounding area have been the focus of new U.S. military operations to oust extremists from the Baghdad’s outskirts. Salman Pak was once a major headquarters for Saddam Hussein’s security services and was long reported to be a training center for non-Iraqi Arab terrorists.
“Non-Iraqi Arab terrorists”? ie- al-Qaida. In other words, AP and others were TRYING to report on what appeared to be an al-Qaida massacre. It turned out to be false and incorrect. Now they’re getting attacked for trying to report one al-Qaida massacre, AND attacked for NOT reporting on another. Seems odd to me.
I don’t know why the AP and MSM aren’t reporting on the massacre reported by Michael Yon. Someone has to ask them.
But I do know that some people are going nuts over a non-issue.
