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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (61142)	7/20/2007 9:48:35 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Still a Fool New York Times falls for enemy propaganda, New York Times reports Best of the Web Today BY JAMES TARANTO Thursday, July 19, 2007 3:26 p.m. EDT Here's a fascinating story from today's New York Times: <<< For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, Mr. Baghdadi issued incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by an Iraqi Interior Ministry official in May that Mr. Baghdadi had been killed, he appeared to have persevered unscathed. On Wednesday, the chief United States military spokesman here, Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, provided a new explanation for Mr. Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: he never existed. General Bergner told reporters that a senior Iraqi insurgent captured this month said that the elusive Mr. Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose declarations on audiotape were read by a man named Abu Abdullah al-Naima. General Bergner said the ruse was devised by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born leader of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Although the group is mostly Iraqi, much of its leadership is foreign, and Mr. Masri was reportedly trying to mask the outsiders' dominant role. >>> So the enemy has engaged in a propaganda effort designed to fool people into thinking that the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda is a domestic outfit. Among those fooled, as we noted last week, were the editors of the New York Times, who, according to public editor Clark Hoyt, "circulated a memo with guidelines on how to distinguish Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia from bin Laden's Al Qaeda." And the Times continues to follow those guidelines even in a story that shows how it serves enemy propaganda! By the way, remember Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the highest-ranking Iraqi member of al Qaeda in Iraq, who turned out not to be very high-ranking at all? We wondered yesterday if the Times would get around to reporting his capture. The answer is yes--in the ninth paragraph of the story on the fictitious Baghdadi. It turns out Mashhadani was the one who told the Americans that Baghdadi was fictional. The Times notes the amusing detail that Mashhadani worked as al Qaeda's "Media Emir, or publicity director." Maybe he quit because the Times was making his job too easy. opinionjournal.com nytimes.com opinionjournal.com