From the folks at the Media Research Center:
…In reporting on the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein, on Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News Jim Miklaszewski griped about how “there are questions today why the U.S. military used such heavy firepower to take down a few lightly armed men.” But his complaint about overkill in firepower came after he recounted how the U.S. forces escalated their weaponry to overcome the resistance as the four men in the house opened fire and injured three soldiers, prompting the U.S. servicemen to “pound the house with rockets, grenades and heavy machine gun fire while helicopter gun ships fire rockets through the roof.” Yet, in Miklaszweski’s own term, “unbelievably” those inside continued to shoot back.
Every heard of the term “overwhelming force”?
…At the White House press briefing on Wednesday, ABC’s Terry Moran wanted to know if President Bush felt “bound” by the Geneva Convention rule that the dead are “honorably interred…according to the rites of the religion to which they belong.” A few hours earlier in Iraq, international reporters grilled U.S. Army General Ricardo Sanchez about why the lightly armed Uday and Qusay were not waited out so they could be taken alive and questioned. One reporter insisted the operation represented “a failure” because “you didn’t use commandos to come and surprise them both.” CNN’s Aaron Brown also wanted to know: “Why not wait ’em out, starve ’em out? Try and take ’em alive?”
In other words why not spend an extra few months in Iraq, or risk a few more American troops?
…Odai and Qusai Hussein, as the AP spells their first names, are the lucky beneficiaries of the fact “that the Bush administration has not bothered to enforce the prohibition” on “political assassinations,” AP reporter George Gedda asserted in the lead of a July 23 story. “Odai, Qusai Deaths Go Against U.S. Ban,” announced the AP’s headline.
Another war crime against that President Bush? Perhaps this is why CNN’s Aaron Brown wanted them taken alive. Oh, another lost interview–“Tell our CNN audience, Odai, is it true as some commentators and editorialists have stated, that the American embargo forced you and your brother to the dark side.”
…The best news in weeks, if not since the taking of Baghdad three months ago, came out of Iraq on Tuesday with the announcement of the killing of Saddam Hussein’s two henchmen sons, second only to Saddam himself in brutality and instilling fear, but Katie Couric led Wednesday’s Today by pairing the news with how the good news was “tempered” by how “two more American soldiers have been ambushed and killed today.” In contrast, ABC’s Good Morning America led by trumpeting the good news of the killings (“a triumphant day for President Bush”) as well as Jessica Lynch’s return to her hometown.
This is sad news. It is also the reason why the U.S. should use “overwhelming” force more often to prevent such ambushes.
…Of the gunfire in Baghdad after the killing of Uday and Qusay, “some of it was most certainly” in “anger,” insisted CBS’s Byron Pitts in the capital city. His assertion on the Wednesday Early Show followed a Tuesday Evening News contribution in which he expressed confusion over whether the gunfire was prompted by “anger or jubilation.”
Obviously Bryon Pitts is still angry. He probably voted for Al Gore.
Related: Saddam Hussein’s Real Ministers of Disinformation Come Out of the Closet