CNN?

[Plane]

(CNN) -- Pulling U.S. forces from Iraq could trigger catastrophe, CNN analysts and other observers warn, affecting not just Iraq but its neighbors in the Middle East, with far-reaching global implications.

Sectarian violence could erupt on a scale never seen before in Iraq if coalition troops leave before Iraq's security forces are ready. Supporters of al Qaeda could develop an international hub of terror from which to threaten the West. And the likely civil war could draw countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran into a broader conflict.


http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/02/iraq.scenarios/index.html


Not a surpriseing article , but that it is on CNN is  .

[Plane]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged "death trap," the U.S. military said Thursday.

The plot at the Huda Girls' school in Tarmiya was a "sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims," military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

The military suspects the plot was the work of al Qaeda, because of its nature and sophistication, Caldwell said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/03/iraq.school.bomb/index.html


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Is Al Queda honor free or honor light?

I wonder what military objective is served by killing a few hundred school girls?

I am just guessing but I think the objective of much of what Al Queda does is makeing an impression on the American electorate.

[Mucho]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged "death trap," the U.S. military said Thursday.

The plot at the Huda Girls' school in Tarmiya was a "sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims," military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

The military suspects the plot was the work of al Qaeda, because of its nature and sophistication, Caldwell said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/03/iraq.school.bomb/index.html


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Is Al Queda honor free or honor light?

I wonder what military objective is served by killing a few hundred school girls?

I am just guessing but I think the objective of much of what Al Queda does is makeing an impression on the American electorate.

Maybe they werent after the girls but the Marines that were screwing them.

[Amianthus]

Maybe they werent after the girls but the Marines that were screwing them.

I didn't realize that UN Peacekeepers were stationed there.

[Michael Tee]

<<The plot at the Huda Girls' school in Tarmiya was a "sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims," military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.>>

I wouldn't believe a word that comes out of their lying bastard mouths.  The Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman stories are sterling examples of their reputation and credibility.  Only the dumbest of the dumb would fall for any of their garbage now.

[domer]

Rather than condemn officers for imagined character flaws, I would nonetheless factor in institutional pressures, the fog of a war theater, and the human tendency to just get things wrong often enough to be noted to take these reports as a "hypothesis" subject to further investigation and elaboration. And this is not to imply that our adversaries are simply not capable of such horrific, premeditated acts: they clearly are.

[Plane]

<<The plot at the Huda Girls' school in Tarmiya was a "sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims," military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.>>

I wouldn't believe a word that comes out of their lying bastard mouths.  The Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman stories are sterling examples of their reputation and credibility.  Only the dumbest of the dumb would fall for any of their garbage now.

In the Jessica Lynch incident none of the lieing was done by military personell.

[Michael Tee]

<<In the Jessica Lynch incident none of the lieing was done by military personell>>

Oh, the MSM just made it all up with no military input whatsoever?  I find that kind of hard to believe.  What about the fake "raid" on the hospital to "free" the "hostage" at gunpoint?  Who staged that little charade?  The MSM?

And I don't seem to recall any rush on the military's part to let Jessica set the record straight after she was safely back in the corral either.

[Amianthus]

Oh, the MSM just made it all up with no military input whatsoever?  I find that kind of hard to believe.

The report released by the Pentagon said that she had not fired a shot, which is consistent with her own story.

[Michael Tee]

from the Guardian (second or third hit in a Google of "Jessica Lynch")

In the early hours of April 2, correspondents in Doha were summoned from their beds to Centcom, the military and media nerve centre for the war. Jim Wilkinson, the White House's top figure there, had stayed up all night. "We had a situation where there was a lot of hot news," he recalls. "The president had been briefed, as had the secretary of defence."

The journalists rushed in, thinking Saddam had been captured. The story they were told instead has entered American folklore. Private Lynch, a 19-year-old clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, was a member of the US Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company that took a wrong turning near Nassiriya and was ambushed. Nine of her US comrades were killed. Iraqi soldiers took Lynch to the local hospital, which was swarming with fedayeen, where he was held for eight days. That much is uncontested.

Releasing its five-minute film to the networks, the Pentagon claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated. It was only thanks to a courageous Iraqi lawyer, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, that she was saved. According to the Pentagon, Al-Rehaief risked his life to alert the Americans that Lynch was being held.

[Amianthus]

from the Guardian (second or third hit in a Google of "Jessica Lynch")

So, what part of that was a lie promulgated by the military?

[Michael Tee]

<<So, what part of that was a lie promulgated by the military?>>

The part that starts with the words "The Pentagon claimed that . . . " in the first sentence of the third paragraph.

[Amianthus]

The part that starts with the words "The Pentagon claimed that . . . " in the first sentence of the third paragraph.

Actually, those claims were from "leaked reports" from the Pentagon. The official Pentagon releases did not make those claims, IIRC.

Which is one reason why "leaked reports" are suspect in my mind.

[Michael Tee]

Here's how the Guardian reported it:

<<Releasing its five-minute film to the networks, the Pentagon claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated.>>

Doesn't sound like a leak to me - - there's a clear inference that the one act (claiming Lynch's wounds) and the other (releasing its film to the networks) are joined.  One took place in the course of the other.  That's the only inference I can draw from that kind of sentence structure.  Highly unlikely they'd "leak" their film to the networks.

[Amianthus]

Here's how the Guardian reported it:

<<Releasing its five-minute film to the networks, the Pentagon claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated.>>

Regardless of how the Guardian reported it, the initial reports were leaked. And they were mainly leaks of Mohammed Odeh al Rehaief's story, which is mostly discredited.

From the initial story in the Washington Post:

Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said. The ambush took place after a 507th convoy, supporting the advancing 3rd Infantry Division, took a wrong turn near the southern city of Nasiriyah.

"She was fighting to the death," the official said. "She did not want to be taken alive."

So, here an "unnamed official" has given the Post the story of her heroics. However, way down at the bottom of the article is the "official" response from the Pentagon:

Several officials cautioned that the precise sequence of events is still being determined, and that further information will emerge as Lynch is debriefed. Reports thus far are based on battlefield intelligence, they said, which comes from monitored communications and from Iraqi sources in Nasiriyah whose reliability has yet to be assessed. Pentagon officials said they had heard "rumors" of Lynch's heroics but had no confirmation.

Looks like the guy writing for the Guardian didn't bother to read down to the end.

Both quotes from the original article.