From Confederate
Yankee comes the story that an Iraqi journalist named Ali
Fadhil claims U.S. soldiers invaded and shot up his home, then hustled
him off for questioning before inexplicably returning him unharmed.
What’s supposed to make this especially shocking is that he was
working for a British newspaper, the Guardian.
Yes, that would be the same corrosively anti-American left-wing rag
known to some pro-war bloggers as “al-Ghardiyan”, the one that has
called for the assassination of George Bush on its editorial page, and
that cheerfully serves as a megaphone for la Pilger and la Fisk and la
Galloway and every frothing nutcase of a Wahhabist cleric in the
British Isles.
My first thought on reading this was “What’s the big deal here?” I
mean, I’ve read the Guardian; if I were an
American intelligence officer in Baghdad, I’d feel safe in assuming
that anybody working for that particular newspaper was not only having
sloppy sex with the local terrorists every night of the week, but
collecting a bonus from the head office for doing it without a
condom. Confederate Yankee says “This story, as
reported, is shocking and should result in an immediate
investigation”, but to hell with that — if anything, some G2
ought to be congratulated on intelligent target selection.
Alas. On reading further, it looks like the whole story is probably
a put-up job a la Juliana Sgrena. There are no witnesses, no physical
evidence, and (most tellingly) Fahdil’s description of the soldiers’
behavior doesn’t match the way American troops are trained to secure
prisoners. Not that any trifle like the mere lack of evidence is
likely to stop al-Ghardiyan from ranting about “proven American
brutality” until well into the next century!
I wish I could expect that CENTCOM would issue an unapologetic
statement reminding everybody that Iraq is a war zone, and that any
“journalist” believed on information received to be actively
cooperating with terrorists is at exactly the same risk of being
interrogated, jailed, and consequently shot as any other collaborator
with the enemy.
But naah, that won’t happen. If they truly held journalists
responsible for aiding and comforting the enemy, they’d have to shoot
half the American correspondents in Iraq. I’m not yet disgusted
enough with our mainstream media to wish that fate on them. Not quite,
though they’re pushing it.