Rumsfeld claims that the bad news coming out of Iraq is planted by Al-Qaeda. WTF?

This is from an editorial by Molly Ivins. She is a no nonsense Texas journalist and not terribly proud of her fellow Texan George bush.

I’m sure glad to get the straight skinny from Ol’ Rumsfeld, who has been in Iraq many times himself for the typical in-country experience. Like many foreign correspondents, Rumsfeld roams the streets alone, talking to any chance-met Iraqi in his fluent Arabic, so of course he knows best.

“From what I’ve seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation,” Rumsfeld said. “We do know, of course, that al-Qaida has media committees. We do know they teach people exactly how to try to manipulate the media. They do this regularly. We see the intelligence that reports on their meetings. Now I can’t take a string and tie it to a news report and then trace it back to an al-Qaida media committee meeting. I am not able to do that at all.”

We do know that their goal is to try to break the will; that they consider the center of gravity of this—not to be in Iraq, because they know they can’t win a battle out there; they consider it to be in Washington, D.C., and in London and in the capitals of the Western world.”

I can't help but relate this to an incident I witnessed between two boys just today. One of the boys came up to tell me something that the other child had just done. Before he could speak the other boy yelled "He's lying! He's lying". The shouted denial just made it that much clearer as to who was and who was not telling the truth.

I have no doubt that Al-Qaeda would love to get as much negative news about Iraq to the Untied States as possible. But how would they accomplish that task? Would they pay American journalists to falsify news reports to give a picture that is totally the opposite of what is really happening on the ground? Just how low is the pay for war correspondents?

I hate to be a cynic but the only country that I have heard paying journalists to falsify news reports is the good ole U S of A. I just find it hard to ever believe this administration's version of events and that fault lies completely with them and their habit of playing hard and fast with the facts. Or as Molly Ivins so eloquently put it.

Could I suggest something kind of grown-up? Despite Rumsfeld’s rationalizing, we are in a deep pile of poop here, and we’re best likely to come out of it OK by pulling together. So could we stop this cheap old McCarthyite trick of pretending that correspondents who are in fact risking their lives and doing their best to bring the rest of us accurate information are somehow disloyal or connected to al-Qaida?

Wrong, yes, of course they could be wrong. But there is now a three-year record of who has been right about what is happening in Iraq, Rumsfeld or the media. And the score is: Press—1,095, Rumsfeld—zero.