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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 19, 2005 / 9 Shevat, 5765

Another ‘mainstream media’ disgrace

By Jack Kelly


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Washington Post's Dana Priest has demonstrated yet again why so many Americans don't trust the "mainstream" media to tell the truth about what is going on in the war on terror.


Her story Jan. 14th on a study by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA's think tank, ran under the scare headline: "Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground. War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report."


One wouldn't gather from the headline or Priest's lead that the study, "Mapping the Global Future," has next to nothing to do with Iraq. Based on interviews with 1,000 non-government experts around the world, it paints three possible scenarios for what the world might look like in 2020. The most important developments in the next 15 years, these experts said, will be the rise of China and India as economic powers that could rival the United States, and the decline of Europe, due to its shrinking and aging population and sclerotic welfare states.


Priest hangs her scary lead on a single sentence in the 119 page report: "The al-Qaida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq."


This is the rather commonplace observation that over time, veterans of the current war will replace veterans of the war against the Russians in Afghanistan 20 years ago as the leaders of al Qaida. The calendar alone guarantees that. But Priest describes this single sentence as: "an evaluation of Iraq's new role as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists."


Except, of course, there is nothing "new" about Iraq being a breeding ground for terrorists. Saddam Hussein had a special camp at Salman Pak to train terrorists from other lands, and had given sanctuary to terrorist leaders, including one of the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing, and Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian who is the leader of al Qaida in Iraq. The biggest thing that's changed since the American invasion is that now there is a high likelihood that jihadists who come to Iraq will be killed there.

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But if Priest told the truth, she couldn't turn a story on a report that has little to do with Iraq into an attack on Bush administration policy.


Priest and the Washington Post are hardly the only news organs to slant their reportage to put the situation in Iraq in the worst possible light.


Marine Corporal Isaac Pacheco, who works in the Coalition public affairs office in Baghdad, wondered why no one in the "mainstream" media has seen fit to do a story on Sgt. Addie Collins, an Army reservist from Los Angeles, who -- through donations from friends back home -- has supplied 10,000 pairs of sneakers, sandals and boots to children in Ar Ramadi.


"Many service members shake their heads in frustration each time they see their daily rebuilding efforts ignored by the media," Pacheco said. Web logger Bruce Thompson (Machias Privateer) notes that even with all the terrorist attacks, the murder rate in Iraq, on a per capita basis, is about the same as in Chicago. Don't expect to see this fact reported in the Washington Post anytime soon.


"I just read yet another distorted and grossly exaggerated story from a major news organization about the 'failures' in the war in Iraq," LtCol. Tim Ryan, a battalion commander in the First Cavalry Division, wrote in an email to friends.


"Print and video journalists are covering only a small fraction of the events in Iraq, and more often than not, the events they cover are only the bad ones," said Ryan, who is now stationed in Fallujah. "Many of the journalists making public assessments about the progess of the war in Iraq are unqualified to do so, given their training and experience. The inaccurate picture they paint has distorted the world view of the daily realities in Iraq."


Ryan wondered why journalists devote so little attention to atrocities committed by the resistance, and so much on scandals like Abu Ghraib that reflect poorly on Americans.


"The media serves as the glass through which a relatively small event can be magnified to international proportions, and the enemy is exploiting this with incredible ease," Ryan said. "It's a disgrace when many on whom the world relies for news paint such an incomplete picture of what actually has happened."

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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. Comment by clicking here.

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© 2005, Jack Kelly