As the media cartel has been glorifying violent Antifa thugs by comparing them to the Americans who landed at Omaha and Utah beaches in Normandy on D-Day, one senior media official even smeared Iraq War veterans as extremists on Twitter.
Washington Post’s Beirut-based Middle East bureau chief Liz Sly took to Twitter to warn:
A whole generation of Americans was potentially radicalized in Iraq.
She deleted the tweet several hours later.
Remarkably, Sly co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post a few weeks ago attempting to rehabilitate the image of Hezbollah terrorists after Hezbollah took her on a press junket around Lebanon.
Sly’s rant last night began with her now-deleted tweet:
After taking heat for her sweeping generalization, she delivered a “sorry, not sorry” apology for the tweet — but she continued to push the “veterans are potential extremists” narrative:
I do think it would be interesting to explore (in more than 140 chars) the link between experiences of the wars and extremism
— Liz Sly (@LizSly) August 16, 2017
"Military experience is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement"- the FBI https://t.co/Z4PcxIo8FG
— Liz Sly (@LizSly) August 16, 2017
This seems to be a bit of a hobbyhorse for Sly. She raised the issue last year after Black Lives Matter supporter Micah Xavier Johnson, who served in Afghanistan, shot and killed five Dallas Police officers while a BLM march was ongoing. She described the attack as “blowback”:
So this was veterans vs veterans, the fighters returned from foreign wars. In the Middle East it's called blowback. https://t.co/Nt1Bq4VV30
— Liz Sly (@LizSly) July 8, 2016
Of course, it would be terribly unfair for anyone to use incidents of Islamic extremism and terrorism by U.S. Muslim service members — such as Major Nidal Hasan, Sgt. Hasan Akbar, or Pvt. Nasser Abdo — to cast blanket suspicion on all Muslim servicemembers by saying that there has been “a whole generation of Muslim Americans potentially radicalized by service in the U.S. armed forces”:
https://twitter.com/TheAtlanticRSS/status/318791731724296192
FBI Checking 100 Suspected Extremists In Military http://t.co/Mbx9U9vq
— NPR (@NPR) June 25, 2012
Sly’s glowing editorial in the Washington Post claimed Hezbollah, not Donald Trump, were fighting terrorism in Syria:
On tour with Hezbollah in Lebanon, where they're out to show that they, not Trump, are the ones fighting terrorism https://t.co/dPoWDYYu5A
— Liz Sly (@LizSly) July 30, 2017
Hezbollah takes journalists in Lebanon on a tour to prove Trump wrong https://t.co/AWe7CvNVHK
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 31, 2017
President Bill Clinton designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in October 1997. Before 9/11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than any other terrorist group in the world, including 241 U.S. Marines and sailors in Beirut in 1982. U.S. officials still identify Hezbollah as an active terrorist threat to the United States:
US counter-terror chief: Hezbollah able to use its resources “against the US, including here in the homeland" https://t.co/gZ1FKh926g pic.twitter.com/VZmN2gGWL9
— AJC Advocacy (@AJCadvocacy) July 31, 2017
But Sly and her co-author gathered some choice quotes from Hezbollah officials during their press junket:
“The current American president is ignorant of the region,” said Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif, speaking to reporters in a cave until recently occupied by Nusra. “We are the force that fights terrorism while the United States continues to support terrorism in many forms.”
[…]
“We are the ones defeating terrorism, the Americans and their allies are the ones who are supporting terrorism, and they are the last ones who should be criticizing Hezbollah.”
Other terror groups would literally kill for the kind of propaganda in a major U.S. news outlet which Sly provided. Needless to say, many were outraged at her:
Wait, you are the "Mid East Bureau chief" of the @washingtonpost and are pushing a narrative that Hezbollah are not terrorists?
— Rob Eno (@Robeno) July 31, 2017
Hezbollah gives PowerPoint presentations to journalists, as it claims it is the United States funding terrorism. https://t.co/QwjIBssdR2
— Kelly Jane Torrance (@KJTorrance) July 31, 2017
ARE YOU SERIOUS? @washingtonpost: Hezbollah, not @realDonaldTrump, Combating Terrorism https://t.co/LcIwLkBqOK
— NewsBusters (@newsbusters) July 31, 2017
SICK: Washington Post Is Touring With Terrorist Group Hezbollah https://t.co/I6t0EqCmv8
— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 31, 2017
It does seem a bit incongruous for a senior member of the media cartel to cast aspersions on American war veterans as a generation of potential extremists just weeks after giving Hezbollah terrorists a polish job as freedom fighters.
But these are the outrageously stupid times we live in.
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