When You Screw Up

Just admit it. Seriously, last week I discussed briefly the Jamil Hussein story and how some right wing blogs are out to prove the AP just made up 61 stories wholecloth. But it hasn’t been a good week for them. Glenn Greenwald has a rather long post on the Jamil Hussein affair, Khamenei’s death, and lonely John Kerry.

The thing about the Jamil Hussein story is that the story regarding the six Shia’s burned to death was corroberated by AP with other sources, it’s just the right wing bloggers that were on the crusade wouldn’t accept it and insisted they were making up the story.

I understand jumping on a story and screwing it up–I’ve done it and done it pretty spectacularly in two instances. The thing is after you realize you screw-up, you just admit it instead of trying to either continue the story as Malkin and others have tried to do. I can understand the initial response waiting for confirmation even, but at some point, when the key evidence of a conspiracy falls apart–and in fact there was never any evidence of such a conspiracy with Jamil Hussein, it’s time to give it up.

For today’s right-wing warbloggers, whose contempt for journalists is matched only by their unbridled hatred of Arabs and Muslims, the AP kerfuffle represented a perfect solution that, at least temporarily, lifted their November blues. By early this month, they had dubbed the scandal “Jamilgate,” with Malkin referring to the AP as “The Associated (with terrorists) Press.” (Get it?)

Keep in mind that in the seven days surrounding the Burned Alive story, hundreds and hundreds of Iraqis were killed in sectarian violence. Here’s a very small sampling, via Reuters, of the bloodshed that flowed around the time of the Burned Alive dispatch:

Mosul — Police said they recovered 14 bodies, including three women, in different areas of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. [November 22]
Baghdad — Up to six car bombs killed 133 people in a Shi’ite militia stronghold in Baghdad and a further 201 people were wounded, police said. [November 23]
Baghdad — Baghdad police recovered 30 unidentified bodies around the capital in the 24 hours to late Friday, an Interior Ministry source said. [November 24]
Baghdad — Baghdad police retrieved 30 bodies of victims of violence on Friday and 17 on Saturday, an Interior Ministry source said. [November 25]
Baquba — Police in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, found the bodies of 25 people, including seven teenagers blindfolded and each with a single gunshot wound to the head, in various parts of Baquba in the past 24 hours, police said. [November 26]
Baghdad — Baghdad police retrieved 39 bodies in the 24 hours to Monday evening. [November 27]

To date, warbloggers have not raised serious questions about any of those slayings or the reporting surrounding them. Yet viewing Iraq through the soda straw that is the Burned Alive story, they insist the press, thanks to its pro-terrorist sympathies, is creating the illusion of “chaos” in Iraq.

Whereas readers like you and me might see a completely illogical obsession with the Burned Alive story, given the statistical fact that the Iraqi civil war will likely claim six more victims within the next hour, for the warbloggers the half-dozen fatalities represent something much more important — an exit strategy, a way out of their own man-made disaster that is Iraq. Because warbloggers think they can claim the whole Iraq fiasco was the media’s fault, that the press did the terrorists’ bidding, spread their propaganda, turned Americans against their fighting sons and daughters, and ruined what would have otherwise been a brilliant Bush foreign policy maneuver to spread Western-style democracy throughout a troubled part of the world.

In other words, the press lost the war. Period. And worse, the press lost the war through phony, biased reporting. My hunch is the Burned Alive excitement revolves around the fact warbloggers see an opening to try to raise doubts about, and even dismiss, all the Iraq reporting. “In short, the AP has been relying on a bogus source for much of its reporting on Shia violence against Sunnis since at least April,” right-wing blogger Jeff Goldstein wrote at Protein Wisdom.

The thing is that these fantasies do serve a purpose and a little different than Boehlert points out. Boehlert argues it’s a way out to blame the press and he’s correct in one sense, but in another the Chewbacca defense is perfect because when faced with report after report of chaos and civil war, pretending that there is a conspiracy and concentrating on one piece of evidence that might be wrong allows them to distract themselves and others from the reality that Iraq is a giant shit sandwich which we are savoring.

Never mind that there is a one in 6 billion chance that the blood could be someone else’s blood besides OJ’s on the gate at Nicole Simpson’s place, if the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit. If we can find one instance of a reporter getting something wrong, the vast conspiracy will be demonstrated even if all the other evidence is still there and uncontested.

The distraction allows the cognitive dissonance to continue. One of the most obvious aspects of the campaign is that no evidence can prove them wrong. There are no falsifiable hypotheses, only faith based claims that look for evidence to support those claims.

Kerry isn’t being shunned by the troops as he was having a conversation with reporters, he was shunning the troops.