The Times originally posted this picture, captioned: “Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border ” The same photo with corrected caption is now here.

Skeptics on Free Republic and Reason noticed that the photo actually featured an (unfired) artillery round. Thomas Lifson of American Thinker supplies the whole story.

One more instance of MSM misreporting has been debunked by the Blogosphere, and this one demonstrates all too clearly the unbecoming eagerness of the MSM to publish, in time of war, when US forces are operating under fire overseas, reports damaging to the reputation of American forces, reports calculated to manipulate the emotions of its readers in favor of the enemy. So eager is the liberal MSM to engage in this kind of journalistic treason that it will consistently publish uncritically, not only staged propaganda photographs like the one above, but also the most hostile and partisan characterizations of US war actions , and evaluations of their results, by foreign adversaries.

The often unreliable Depkafile is reporting that the CIA was fooled by an enemy disinformation operation. Depkafile claims that:

al Qaeda or Taliban had managed to plant a false lead with US intelligence by means of informers. This decoy operation had two objectives:

1. To confuse the commanders of the American forces hunting for bin Laden and Mullah Omar and expose their failure to penetrate al Qaeda’s top ranks.

2. To expose US pursuit tactics and uncover any American collaborators in their midst. The speed with which the news of the air raid appeared on US TV channels Friday night was a mark of the CIA’s certainty that this time it had hit one of its primary marks in the war on terror, Zawahiri.

DEBKAfile’s Special Correspondent in Pakistan reported earlier:

The target was a cluster of three houses owned by a jeweler named Abdul Ghafoor, whose relatives were among the victims.

The Pakistani authorities pointed out that in December, the Americans claimed to have killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a leading al-Qaeda operative, in an air strike in the Pakistani tribal area. However, the body was not produced, leaving the American claim in doubt.

DEBKAfile adds: Bajaur is one of the seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA running down the border with Afghanistan. These mountain areas, home to six million inhabitants, have long been used as sanctuaries and rear bases by Al Qaeda and Taliban.

This item is offered, not as a probably factual analysis to be believed, but simply as yet another rumor, evidencing the profusion of possible versions of what actually occurred in the case of one covert wartime action, whose facts we are unlikely to know any time very soon.

Can one imagine British and American papers during WWII operating in the fog of war during the uncertain aftermath of necessarily secret military operations happily publishing characterizations of Allied efforts by enemy spokesmen and echoing the viewpoint of the German press? Not very easily, but in our modern, more enlightened age, the MSM in both Britain and the United States has evolved an internationalist perspective, unburdened by patriotic loyalties, characteristically anti-America, anti-Bush Administration, and anti-Iraq War, which treats any murderous outrage by the forces of barbarism in the manner it would treat a particularly successful soccer play by a prominent visiting team, which carefully studiedly ignores Allied successes, and which makes a policy of publishing enemy allegations as factual news.

Under 48 hours after the US attempt to eliminate Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri by missile fire in remote tribal regions of Pakistan, the Guardian and the Washington Post pretend to have all the answers. There was a “botched operation” based upon “flawed intelligence” which resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians, including women and children. They know all this on the basis of the testimony of a combination of irate Islamic villagers, who –of course– would be among the hosts of targetted Al Qaeda terrorist commanders, and sundry Pakistani officials representing a government obliged in the circumstances created by precisely this kind of reporting to assume a posture of indignation in order to avoid bringing down upon itself the wrath of its own domestic Islamofascist sympathisers by appearing too closely aligned with Western governments.

Regrettably, the CIA is not in the habit of playing “Gotcha!” with the MSM, but they may have a good opportunity on this occasion. Earlier reports mentioned five terrorist bodies being carried off for further investigation. And even the New York Times quotes a senior Pakistani official as admitting that

11 militants had been killed in the attack. Seven of the dead were Arab fighters, and another four were Pakistani militants from Punjab Province, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the news media.

Whether Zawahiri was killed or not is obviously, at present, unknown, whatever local Pashtoons, Pakistani officials, the WaPo or the Guardian claim.

Earlier report

—————————————————————————–

Today’s front-page coverage in the same papers, by some strange coincidence, accidentally overlooks the story of the rescue of a British free-lance journalist in Iraq by US forces.

The MSM had a field day emoting over the disaster, misreporting, and blaming Bush. Lisa of Bohemian Conservative links an illuminating perspective by Wilfred M. McClay:

Anyone who has ever lived in New Orleans recognizes the state of mind that prevailed before Katrina. That something like this could happen, and probably would happen, was utterly common knowledge. Equally known was that local officials were too corrupt and incompetent to manage a catastrophe. But a combination of fatalism and denial, and a good stiff drink, always served to banish the reality principle.

link

——————————————-

Hat tip to Ratty.

I was discussing the (indeterminate at this point) results of yesterday’s CIA attempt to nail al Qaeda number 2 man Ayman al-Zawahiri with a friend, who had not yet seen news of the previous day’s report by Michael Ledeen of the alleged death last month of Osama bin Laden. For his convenience, and those of any others who have not seen it, I am quoting, and linking, the story:

According to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden gave the world the most marvelous Christmas present he could possibly give by departing from it in mid-December. The Al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Iranians who reported this note that this year’s message in conjunction with the Moslem Haj came from his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for the first time.

Edward Feser on TCS Daily responds to Jeffrey Hart’s recent essay which proposes uniting Burkean Conservatism with Pragmatism by evoking the memory of Richard Weaver’s (author of Ideas Have Consequences) Metaphysical Realism.

Hat tip to Jonathan Berry.

Susan G., over on Daily Kos, waxes indignant over the president’s imaginary transgressions, strikes a pose of death-defying resolve, and formally spurns the protection of her own government.

Mr. Bush, I’ve decided the price is too high for my conscience. If Gitmo – and the torture and denial of due process accompanying it – is a necessary part of protecting me, I hereby officially release you from the obligation. I’m opting out of this protection racket you’ve set up. Think of me as just one less tile on the human shield you’ve created, using the safety and fear of American citizens to hide behind while you seize more power.

After years of soul-searching, I’ve decided to take my chances in a risky and unpredictable world – one from which your administration can’t fully insulate me anyway, even with the best of intentions – than to live my life duct-taped and “safe” in a wire-tapped American closet where I’m not free to tell you I think you’re a nincompoop and a danger to humankind…

Stop trying to terrorize me with Islamic boogeymen…

Unlike an apparent majority of American voters, I don’t think membership in our national cult of exceptionalism has automatically exempted me from personal death. The fact that I was born on a certain continent in a certain era does not automatically signal to me that nothing bad – especially dying – will befall me.

I can live with the fact that someday I will die, no matter how many of my “freedoms” you take away. Please, direct your future energies toward protecting those who think denial of death and bargaining away the raucous, electrically vivid and unpredictable present moment is a wonderful way to live a life. Count me out…

no matter how many rights you take away from me, you can’t protect me from my biggest fear: You.

Exactly of what rights Mr. Bush may have deprived this lady is unclear. Certainly her right to indulge in adolescent displays of self importance appears untouched. Her right to throw around wild accusations seems completely intact. And her fuzzy-thinking privileges appear inviolate.

If the lady has any genuine complaints, they ought to be directed at the Left, of whose pathological culture of ersatz self-righteousness and perpetual indignation she is obviously a disastrous product.

Edward Everett Hale, during another time when many Americans were indulging in public expressions of disloyalty (1863), published his famous story The Man Without a Country. I wonder if Susan G. has ever read it.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch thinks it should, and may, happen.

The Anchoress takes on the Times leak theme. A lot of blogs, including this one, have commented on the obvious connection between yesterday’s news of large-scale disposable cell-phone purchases by suspicious persons in a variety of cities and last month’s New York Times’ story on secret NSA communications surveillance, but no matter how many of these you have already read, you’ll still want to take the time to read this one. I see 23 trackbacks already, but I’m adding another.

link

Name & Product provided.