Thursday, May 29, 2008

McClatchy Newspapers Once Again Being Used as Useful Tool ?

I stumbled across this story over at Memeorandum, and out of curiosity decided to go see what it was all about. On the surface I think that once again the McClatchy newspapers are being used by the propaganda arm of the Islamists. It won't be the first time. While they ran with the story and they have a picture of the coin in question they did not offer that they had done any sort of independent verification of the writing on the coin.

I do not read or write Farsi or Arabic so any readers who do, feel free to go the link and enlarge the picture and translate away.

I really don't believe the story and the military is of course once again wasting valuable man hours and resources to investigate the story since they have finally learned that allegations like this must be responded to promptly, and I am sure that any information that comes out proving the story to be false will not make it into their papers. While the paper did approach a Marine spokesman, I wonder why they decided to run the story now before the Marines had completed their investigation.

I really find the story unbelievable. It is some of the quotes contained in the story that give rise to my skepticism.
"The occupier is repeatedly trespassing on God and his religion," said Omar Delli, 23. "Now the occupier is planting seeds of strife between the Muslims and Christians. We demand the government in Fallujah have a new demonstration to let the occupier know that these things are humiliating Islam and the Quran."
The constant use of the word "occupier" is standard fare for folks like the Mahdi army and from Iranian backed agents.

UPDATE: Celtic, one of the folks who left a comment, after engaging in the obligatory childish name calling associated with anti war and leftist crowd, left a link to another McClatchy story which seems to confirm the story of one (1), count 'em, 1 Marine who was handing out the coins. It was not part of an organized effort, Marines were not handing out the coins to residents as a normal routine, which is what the tone of the original article would lead you to believe. It appears to be a case of one over zealous Marine acting on his own. Not quite worthy of all the attention it was given.
I stand by my characterization of McClatchy newspapers being a tool of the Islamists since they still feel it necessary to continue quoting the rhetoric about the occupiers, although strangely none of these occupiers were present in the market place that the interview took place. I always thought an occupying would you know, sort of be omnipresent and visible.

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