November 11, 2004

FIRST CASUALTY:

VICTORY IN FALLUJAH (RALPH PETERS, November 11, 2004, NY Post)

The legions of pundits ("Will talk for food") now suggest that a win in Fallujah will be meaningless because we failed to kill or capture the terrorist leadership, because some of the thugs ran away and because Fallujah won't resemble Darien, Conn., by next Sunday.

On Tuesday, as our troops handily pierced the defenses terrorists had spent months erecting, The New York Times carried two front-page stories implying that our forces were facing possible defeat. The Times' military analysis was incompetent and just plain wrong. And the photo its editors ran above the fold showed a Marine curled in a ditch under enemy fire.

It wasn't reporting. It was a mix of anti-American propaganda and wishful thinking. Al-Jazeera couldn't have done it better.

Now that our troops are winning so lopsidedly that it can't be denied, the Times likely will tell us that Fallujah didn't matter, anyway, that our efforts were wasted. Then Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker's greatest living fiction writer, will follow up with a fairy tale called "Failure In Fallujah."


How does the Times differ from Al-Jazeera?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 11, 2004 9:19 AM
Comments

The Times probably follows Al-Jazeera, thinking that they know the situation on the ground.

Sy Hersh and Johnny Apple have declared defeat so often, they have become recordings. It makes one wonder. Perhaps the Pentagon should offer to send them to Fallujah this afternoon, so they can see the city won. But what would they write tomorrow?

Posted by: jim hamlen at November 11, 2004 9:46 AM

Al-Jazeera supports our enemies unhypocritically. No phony neutrality (as opposed to objectivity for them).

Posted by: Jeff at November 11, 2004 10:46 AM

Their typeface.

Posted by: luciferous at November 11, 2004 11:01 AM

One of them is bankrolled by a US ally.

Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at November 11, 2004 12:49 PM

The women on al jazeera have bigger mustaches than the women on American tv news.

Posted by: M. Murcek at November 11, 2004 1:19 PM

One of them is a poor parody of a news organization, utterly disinterested in truthfulness or objectivity, staffed by writers who neither comprehend nor sympathize with America, attempting to subvert the war effort. The other is an Arabic language TV station.

Posted by: brian at November 11, 2004 2:59 PM

Al-Jazeera's more pro-Bush and pro-American.

Posted by: Ken at November 11, 2004 8:18 PM
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