January 28, 2007
Clinging to Truthiness
It is quite amusing to see the braintrust at liberal blog Sadly No! go after Michelle Malkin's debunking of the AP's Hurriyah reporting.
First, if you are going to claim to link to the original AP report, make sure that you are, in fact, linking to the original AP report.
SN! links to an ABC News report that was released sometime on November 25, in a report that appears to be no better than the third version of the story. The best I can determine, this report is a day ahead of Sadly's "original" post, and this account published at 6:01 AM on November 25 claimed that:
In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said.
"Burned and blew up," said Captain Jamil not-Hussein.
There is quite a bit of difference between Sadly No!'s hand-picked "original" article saying mosques were "burned" and the earlier article's claim that the mosques were "burned and blew up." Cherry-pick much?
Why, of course they do.
They focus almost exclusvely on the fact that the abandoned Nidaa Allah mosque took an RPG round which collapsed much of the dome. I'd like to make two points about this.
First, "Allah" is not spelled "Alah," you morons. We've been at war with radical Islam for five years, and you can't even spell the name of their God right?
Second, a partially collapsed dome does not a destroyed building make. To be sure, Nidaa Allah took some serious damage to its dome and some fire damage to several rooms, but this damage is still quite a stretch from what I picture when I hear that a building has been "burned and blew up."
Let me break it down to something even Sadly No! readers can understand... pictures.
Burned and blew up:
This was a building in Lebanon before Israel took exception to it. Notice most of it is rubble. This is what most people think of when they hear burned and blew up.
Not burned and blew up:
This mosque, the al-Muhaimin, looks pretty good for one of the four "burned and blew up" mosques. This specific mosque is where the AP uncritically relayed a report from the al Qaeda-affiliated Association of Muslim Scholars that "18 people had died in an inferno." Some inferno. To date, the AP still officially stands behind the claim of this terrorist-related group over that of coalition forces.
Of course, Sadly No! doesn't want to discuss this mosque's inconvenient intactness, any more than they want to look at any of the other AP claims about their Hurriyah reporting that simply doesn't stand up to further scrutiny.
The Associated Press claimed that 24 people died when four mosques were "burned and blew up." More than two months later, the damage they've claimed to the mosques has been conclusively proven to be exaggerated, and the Associated Press has been completely unable to substantiate one death, much less the 24 deaths they claimed.
But Sadly No! has little interest in presenting any of the other evidence that does not support their narrative. Instead, they side with the media and their terrorist-supplied storyline over that of American forces and our Iraqi allies. Does that surprise me?
Sadly, no.
Update: Bryan guts Sadly No! further.
I put your example in their comments, h/t'd ya, but forgot to link it to you. Actually, that may have been an act of kindness. They get pretty rude in the comments section when cornered.
Posted by: Kevin at January 29, 2007 09:40 AMSN! links to an ABC News report that was released sometime on November 25, in a report that appears to be no better than the third version of the story. The best I can determine, this report is a day ahead of Sadly's "original" post, and this account published at 6:01 AM on November 25
All three of those articles, the one quoted by SN! and the two you refer to all contain the same statement you quote about mosques being burned and blown up. Even if it had not said the same thing (as you appear to believe), SN! states this themselves directly after they link to it.
Also, you will find that with Jerusalem being between 7 and 10 hours ahead of the US that they will, as a matter of couse, be publishing the previous day anything that is timestamped 6am when published in the US.
""Burned and blew up," said Captain Jamil not-Hussein.
There is quite a bit of difference between Sadly No!'s hand-picked "original" article saying mosques were "burned" and the earlier article's claim that the mosques were "burned and blew up."
Well there's actually not "quite a bit of difference" between these articles in terms of the quote cited, as this statement features in all three articles referenced:
ABC: "Earlier that day, rampaging militiamen burned and blew up four mosques..."
Gainesville: "In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques..."
JPost: "The militiamen attacked and burned the Ahbab al-Mustafa, Nidaa Allah, al-Muhaimin and al-Qaqaqa mosques..."
First, if you are going to claim to link to the original AP report, make sure that you are, in fact, linking to the original AP report.
That would have been the perfect opportunity to do precisely that yourself. I mean, if you intended that statement as a type of "here's how you do it" exercise.
Instead though you went on to refer to the later editions of the AP article as quoted above. As you would no doubt know by this point, and after having invested so much time on this story, the *original* AP article is none of those mentioned and contains no mention of Sunnis burned alive as these later articles cited do.
In fact SadlyNo! repeatedly asked for someone to supply them with such a link in their first post about this before citing the available ABC article. Nobody concerned with rebutting them (as you are here) supplied them with one, which is a bit puzzling until you find out what it contains.
Especially since SN! is attacking Malkin's articles about the state of these mosques and her repeated assertions that they are not "destroyed" as being of particular significance in rebutting the AP reporting. A statement which doesn't appear in any of the articles you mention.
In previous posts you have tried to pass this off as an interpreted outcome from the quoted "burned and blown up" statement. But that's not the source of this claim Malkin repeatedly cites and it would be implausible you are unaware of that at this point.
Here is the *original* AP article featuring the "destroyed" claim which Malkin is stating has been refuted...
http://tinyurl.com/2455xx
11/24/06 10:10:28
"...revenge-seeking Shiite militiamen had destroyed four Sunni mosques, burned homes..."
...and here is what replaced that edition a mere 30 minutes later...
11/24/06 10:40:28
""...members of the Mahdi Army militia burned four mosques, and several homes...""
This Townhall article from Noonan was linked to from Malkin's website. It reveals that in focusing on refuting that these mosques were "destroyed" in Jan-07, Malkin has blown out of the water a claim which the AP retracted 2 months ago a mere 30 minutes after it was made.
"Cherry-pick much?"
Indeed.
Posted by: Nidaa Alah Allah at January 30, 2007 10:04 AM
