The Disinformation Machine Inside Iraq

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I’m sure you’ve heard all about the six “atrocities” committed in Iraq over the last six weeks, and found by Gateway Pundit.  All six of the incidents happen to be untrue of course, but what does that little fact matter to our MSM. 

Now Michael J. Totten, embedded in Fallujah, has come across a reporter who is doing his own little version of disinformation:

I just returned home from a trip to Fallujah, where I was the only
reporter embedded with the United States military. There was, however,
an unembedded reporter in the city at the same time. Normally it would
be useful to compare what I saw and heard while traveling and working
with the Marines with what a colleague saw and heard while working
solo. Unfortunately, the other Fallujah reporter was Ali al-Fadhily
from Inter Press Services.

Mr. al-Fadhily is unhappy with the way things are going in the city right now.
It means little to him that the only shots fired by the Marines anymore
are practice rounds on the range, and that there hasn’t been a single
fire fight or combat casualty for months. That’s fair enough, as far as
it goes, and perhaps to be expected from a reporter who isn’t embedded
with the military and who focuses his attention on Iraqi civilians. The
trouble is that Mr. Al-Fadhily’s hysterical exaggerations, refusal to
provide crucial context, and outright fabrications amount to a serious
case of journalistic malpractice.

~~~

My colleague (of sorts) at least acknowledges that “military actions
are down to the minimum inside the city.” He adds, however, that “local
and U.S. authorities do not seem to be thinking of ending the agonies
of the over 400,000 residents of Fallujah.”

This is nonsense on stilts. Marines distribute food aid to
impoverished local civilians. The electrical grid is being repaired now
that insurgents no longer sabotage it. Solar-powered street lights have
been installed on some of the main thoroughfares and will cover the
entire city in two years if the war doesn’t come back. Locals are hired
to pick up trash that went uncollected for months. A new sewage and
water treatment plant is under construction in the poorest part of the
city. Low-interest microloans are being distributed to small business
owners to kick start the economy. American civilians donate school
supplies to Iraqi children that are distributed by the Marines. Mr.
al-Fadhily would know all this if he embedded with the U.S. military.
Whether or not he would take the trouble to report these facts if he
knew of them is another question.

He claims seventy percent of the city was
destroyed during Operation Phantom Fury, also known as Al-Fajr, in
November 2004. This is a lie. If he really went to Fallujah himself, he
knows it’s a lie. It’s possible that as much as seventy percent of the
city was damaged, if a single bullet hole in the side of a house counts
as damage. I really don’t know. It’s hard to say. But I saw much more destruction in nearby Ramadi than I saw in Fallujah.
Even there the percentage of the city that was actually destroyed is in
the low single digits — nowhere near seventy percent. And I spent
triple the amount of time in Fallujah as in Ramadi. I didn’t personally
see every street or house, but I followed the Marines on foot patrols every day and never once retraced my steps.

~~~

“All of the residents interviewed by IPS were extremely angry with
the media for recent reports that the situation in the city is good,”
he wrote. “Many refused to be quoted for different reasons.”

This is about as believable as his seventy-percent destruction
claim. What media reports from Fallujah are the residents talking
about? Fallujah is very nearly a journalist-free zone. Mr. al-Fadhily
and I are practically the only ones who have been there for some time.

Another stringer for the MSM machine inside Iraq.  Problem is that with so much going well in that country they either have to make up bigger and bigger “atrocities” or just spread rumors as fact.  Par for the course I suppose.

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The same people who believe that Bush is responsible for 9/11 consider a victory in Iraq against the laws of nature. No amount of supporting evidence will convince them of victory, but they will always provide a market for any wildly exaggerated negative news. The enemy within is more dangerous than the enemy without for they participate in chosing our leaders.

First rule of propaganda, no one talks about propaganda

Hah! I just unpublished my morning entry from here, because you beat me to it Curt.

Lol….well, the story deserves a bit more attention so two stories are better then one.

Good find Curt. I just saved it in my “insurgent stringers” bookmark folder.