This time the children are smiling
Professor Reynolds has not only the link to a Michael Yon’s latest update, but also a personal email he received from Michael.
A favorite paragraph of mine in this latest dispatch:
Most Iraqis I talk with acknowledge that if it was ever about the oil, it’s not now. Not mostly anyway. It clearly would have been cheaper just to buy the oil or invade somewhere easier that has more. Similarly, most Iraqis seem now to realize that we really don’t want to stay here, and that many of us can’t wait to get back home. They realize that we are not resolved to stay, but are impatient but to drive down to Kuwait and sail away. And when they consider the Americans who actually deal with Iraqis every day, the Iraqis can no longer deny that we really do want them to succeed. But we want them to succeed without us. We want to see their streets are clean and safe, their grass is green, and their birds are singing. We want to see that on television. Not in person. We don’t want to be here. We tell them that every day. It finally has settled in that we are telling the truth.
After reading both the Professor and Michael I ventured over to Power Line to read their latest. A post from today linked back to one they published on July 3.
We’ve written about the fact that the wire services employ stringers in Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East, who are of doubtful reliability at best. Worse, these stringers sometimes have a political agenda. As a result, the “news” that the Associated Press reports as fact has sometimes turned out to be based on little more than rumor, or to be fabricated altogether.
The latest example comes from Bob Owens, who sums up the story at Pajamas Media. On June 28, the AP reported that 20 decapitated bodies had been found in a village near Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad. If you read the fine print, though, it turned out that the story was based on reports from two anonymous “police officers”–one from Baghdad and one from Kut, some 75 miles from the scene of the alleged atrocity. It was apparent on the face of the AP story that these officers’ claims were hearsay, at best.
Owens details how the story was re-told in subtly different ways by news outlets that picked up the AP account. The Washington Post, for example, “actively obfuscated the distant locations of the anonymous police sources, and instead merely allowed that the came from ’separate commands.’ The Post account also rewrote the story in such a way that it appears that there were three anonymous police sources.”
Owens was no doubt reminded of the infamous “Jamil Hussein,” the Baghdad policeman (if such he was) who long served the AP as a “source” for events all over Iraq, some of which never happened. So Owens decided to investigate by contacting the Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) Public Affairs office, and liaisons with the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT) Public Affairs Office, to ask what they knew of this incident. The upshot was a definitive statement by those agencies that the beheading story was “completely false and fabricated by unknown sources.”
Interestingly, reading the above article led me to another post at Instapundit where the suspicions many have were confirmed by one of todays journalists.
A journalist whose name you’d recognize emails:
Yon’s story doesn’t get attention because it is humiliating.
It is humiliating because it is obvious that we media – and our allies in the state department, the legal trade, the NGOs, the Democratic Party, the UN, etc., - can’t do squat about such determined use of force.
Our words, images, arguments and skills can’t stop the killing. Only the rough soldiers and their guns can solve the problem, and we won’t admit that fact because the admission would weaken our influence and our claim to social status.
As I read the balance of the email, I found myself admiring this person for admitting the faults of the MSM.
For now, I will stick to those who I tend to believe. The boots on the ground, the military blogs and Michael Yon.
Thanks Professor Reynolds for the link and welcome Instapundit readers.
Thanks also to Eric and the readers at Classical Values.
Written by Sue
Guss Says:
July 6th, 2007 at 4:17 pmVisit Guss
Who is this Michael Yon that you keep talking about? Is he a columnist?
Sue Says:
July 6th, 2007 at 4:40 pmVisit Sue
Guss:
He is a free lance reporter who has been on the ground in Iraq working alongside the troops for some time now.
If you want to know more about him, check out the links both in this story and in the archives.
You may or may not like his reports. I just happen to trust the majority of what he writes.
Guss Says:
July 6th, 2007 at 5:25 pmVisit Guss
I’ve heard a lot about him and was just wondering who he was. Thank you for the information and from now on I will know who you are talking about.
Sue Says:
July 6th, 2007 at 6:09 pmVisit Sue
Guss:
You are most welcome.
Michael McNeil (Impearls) Says:
July 7th, 2007 at 4:37 amVisit Michael McNeil (Impearls)
Michael Yon is terrific. My only criticism of his site (not of him nor his dispatches) is that (best I can tell) it doesn’t present and juxtapose some of his work in a way calculated to deliver a unified story. In this regard, two years ago Yon had a terrific series of connected stories — known as the “Battle for Mosul” — which as a whole is somewhat ponderous, I think, to ferret out of his archives. As a result, for everyone’s convenience I’ve gathered the links for that together here:
2005-05-14 the-battle-for-mosul.htm
2005-05-21 the-battle-for-mosul-dispatch-ii.htm
2005-06-13 battle-for-mosul-part-iii.htm
2005-08-16 the-battle-for-mosul-reality-check.htm
2005-09-09 battle-for-mosul-progress-report.htm
2005-09-23 battle-for-mosul-iii-prelude.htm
2005-10-04 the-battle-for-mosul-iv.htm
~J~ Says:
July 7th, 2007 at 5:37 amVisit ~J~
Thank you for visiting and for your comment, Michael. I haven’t read those posts and I appreciate your sharing the links with us.
I was reading what I thought was a 4 part dispatch on the Brit troops a few weeks ago, but I never found part 4, so I know what you’re saying about it being difficult to find all the links on his site.
He is a very good writer and I admire him for living the life of a soldier while on his own time and his own dime in order to give us a fair view of what’s going on in Iraq in real time.
His photography is excellent, and when he incorporates it the way he does in his dispatches I feel as though I am there feeling, smelling and seeing what he is feeling, smelling and seeing.
He doesn’t write a favorable story just to be favorable and he does write about the bad as well as the good. That’s why I think so many people like his work.
I’ll certainly read the posts you referenced later on today.
Again, welcome and thanks for the comment.
Sue Says:
July 7th, 2007 at 11:34 amVisit Sue
Michael:
Thanks so much for the links.
You are correct about the site, it can be difficult at times to recover past information.
I remember reading the series on Mosul but will take the time to read again as I never tire of Yon’s work.
Hope to see you back visiting and thanks once again for the links.