Slate Promotes Knight Ridder Reporter

In a credulous, one-source piece about Operation Matador, Slate's Fred Kaplan uses the work of Knight Ridder's Mohammed al-Dulaimy to paint a typical leftist view of military action in Iraq. Kaplan also refers to Dulaimy as a "staff reporter".

This is not true. Dulaimy is a "special correspondent", an appellation that implies someone hired temporarily in an area where Knight Ridder didn't want to send permanent employees. In fact, Dulaimy's "career" seems to span only May 3 through May 16 of this year, and virtually every story he has covered for Knight Ridder has been virulently anti-American. Dulaimy's reporting, along with that of his colleague Mohammed Barakat, who writes for the Associated Press, and whose career seems to span exactly the same time frame as Dulaimy's, have been responsible for the lion's share of the "reporting" coming out of Operation Matador. Barakat is as relentlessly anti-American as Dulaimy.

Oddly, both AP and Knight Ridder have refused to supply me any background information about these men. I would feel more comfortable if AP and Knight Ridder could give me some assurance that they haven't inadvertently hired Jihadis to do their "reporting" for them.