When Wire Services Attack

Just what did brigadier general Abdul-Karim Khalaf of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior do to cause the Associated Press, in an absurdly hysterical wire story compare him to deposed dictator Saddam Hussein?

Khalaf's sin was unpardonable. He pointed out to the Associated Press that a source they had been using since at least April of this year, whom the AP identified as "police captain Jamil Hussein," was not only not an official spokesperson, but was unknown to the Ministry of the Interior and therefore not a police captain. Then Khalaf went on to say that Iraq would no longer tolerate organizations like the AP spreading rumors and propaganda from terrorists as if they were properly vetted new stories.

This sent the "journalists," - lazy incompetents preparing sensational, unconfirmed stories while sitting in Green Zone hotel bars; fantasizing about being lazy incompetents preparing sensational, unconfirmed stories while sitting in Saigon hotel bars - around the bend. Not only has the AP stuck with the Dan Ratheresque fake-but-accurate mantra on their thoroughly discredited story of the six burning Sunnis, they attacked the messenger, brigadier general Khalaf:

Under Saddam Hussein's regime, the government imposed censorship on local media and severely restricted foreign media coverage, monitoring transmissions and sending secret police to follow journalists. Those who violated the rules were expelled and in some cases jailed.

If anyone really needed any more evidence that the Western Press lives in a fantasy world, here it is. A duly appointed representative of an elected government is compared to a brutal dicator for committing the sin of speaking truth to power.