AP’s Vain Attempt to Rescue Obama
Not even a day after Barak Obama and his campaign tossed a little slander bomb at our troops, the Associated Press comes riding in to try to rescue him. Here’s what Nedra Pickler, objective journalist, had to say:
The suggestion whispered by Obama’s opponents was that he was maligning the efforts of troops fighting in Afghanistan by stating they are “just” out there killing civilians.
And that’s untrue how? Did Obama not use the word “just”? Did his spokesman say that the soldiers were “solely” bombing villages from the air and attacking civilians?
Oh, and folks weren’t whispering the accusation. They were putting out press releases with quotes with their names behind them or writing very public blog posts. That’s not “whispering” by any definition of the word.
Nedra Pickler’s so-called Fact Check didn’t start out well and it only got worse.
Now we’re into the meat of her rescue effort.
A check of the facts shows that Western forces have been killing civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents have been killing civilians.
The U.S. and NATO say they don’t have civilian casualty figures, but The Associated Press has been keeping count based on figures from Afghan and international officials. Tracking civilian deaths is a difficult task because they often occur in remote and dangerous areas that are difficult to reach and verify.
As of Aug. 1, the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can’t be attributed to one party.
Okay…and?
No one’s saying that our soldiers haven’t killed civilians. They have. That is the very unfortunate result of a war where the enemy hides among the innocent and uses them as shields.
But that’s not what Obama said. Obama said, very clearly that our soldiers were “just air-raiding villages and killing civilians”. That is patently untrue and Nedra Pickler has to know it. If she doesn’t, she’s incompetent and shouldn’t be writing for Highlights for Children much less one of the most prestigious news organizations on the planet.
The proof that both Obama and Pickler are completely full of it is amply provided by Ed Morrissey and Jim Geraghty.
But how about a little more?
Here’s a report from the U.S. Institute for Peace on some soldiers who are not in airplanes bombing civilians. They are, instead, helping to rebuild Afghanistan and provide safe ways for humanitarian aid to get to the needy.
Here’s a news story about a group including US soldiers who hiked supplies over four hours to a village in sore need.
Here’s a story about some of those air-raiding soldiers who “…helped rebuild schools, wells and irrigation systems vital to re-establishing the economy of the small agrarian villages” and another one about soldiers who “…assisted in building local schools, bridges, wells, irrigation, health clinics and roads”.
I won’t hold my breath for a full retraction, nor for an apology from Obama. Neither he nor the AP seems aware of just how foolish and insulting their actions were.
No related posts.
Category: Oh, THAT liberal media.
Its not the troops faught
BUT he is right
the problem is the strategy and tactics being used
THE FACTS ARE more civillians are killed by our soldiers than by the insurgients in Afghanistan
Sean, that's not what he said. That's the same lame defense the AP tried to use earlier today.
But, as I pointed out several times, he said that all we were doing was bombing civilians from the air. That's not true.
[...] good analysis, see Captain Ed, Hot Air, The Sundries Shack, Gateway Pundit, Q and O, and [...]
[...] are not the answer, but that’s an assertion that he just can’t honestly make. As Morrissey and Geraghty demonstrated when responding to the AP’s silly defense, we’re not “just” or [...]
Er, the facts aren't right.
The AP's source for its numbers is given as "press reports." Press reports out of Afghanistan, if they include civilians killed by the insurgents, come from the Coalition or the Afghan government, and you may be sure that for each reported death there actually was a dead body.
The AP also does not count dead non-Afghans who are killed by their Taliban pals, including the recent murders of German and Japanese hostages. If you look at their other coverage, the AP glossed over the murdered hostages but have been fawning all over the Taliban for the released hostages (and full of excuses for why the terrorists still hold hostages).
When the AP counts dead killed by the coalition, it accepts reports from the Taliban's spokesman-of-the-week in Pakistan, an agency with a worse track record than even AP; as well as hearsy and rumours. For example, the AP reported the strike on Dadullah Mansour at the start of the month, which was aimed at a group of Taliban gathered to watch the hanging of accused spies, as having killed a few Taliban but dozens of civilians.
This wanton-killing-of-civilians has been an emergent propaganda theme for the TB and the AP since July. It's previously been used from time to time, but take a look at the instances in Google News in the last month and you'll see they've really spiked. This isn't an accident, this is an attempt to steer the public discourse in a direction favorable to the insurgency.
The AP's US editors are not overt participants in the propaganda campaign in the way some of their local stringers are. But it's a line of argument that's congenial to their prejudices and expectations, so they come willingly on board.
Obama and his campaign people have much less excuse. He comes off as callow.