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‘Why no one trusts media’: WaPo reamed for ringing in new year with whopper Baghdad headline

January 2, 2020 | | Print Article
(Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images)

To some, it seems like the media just can’t stop lying …

Early Wednesday morning, long after the full details of the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq’s capital of Baghdad had emerged, The Washington Post rang in the new year and decade with what some are claiming was its very first piece of fake news for 2020.

“Protesters storm U.S. Embassy in Baghdad,” the Post’s leading front-page headline read.

“Rage at Strikes on Iran-Backed Militia,” one of the Post’s leading front-page sub-headings likewise read.

Critics felt that the Post had tried via its headlines to frame the men who stormed the embassy Tuesday morning as justifiably aggrieved “protesters” upset over the Trump administration’s “strikes on Iran-backed militia.”

The men were affiliates of an Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militia known as Kata’ib Hezbollah. The U.S. State Department classifies Kata’ib Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), and in recent months this particular FTO has been attacking U.S. targets without consequence.

And so in response to the attacks, the Trump administration launched airstrikes against Kata’ib Hezbollah facilities in Iraq and Iran on Sunday.

“U.S. airstrikes against an Iranian-backed militia group were the direct result of the Baghdad government’s failure to act against repeated attacks on American bases in Iraq,” Military.com reported a day later.

“In unusually harsh wording aimed at an ally in the fight against the Islamic State, three top State Department officials, speaking on background in a briefing to reporters, said the U.S. had no choice but to hit back at the Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) militia when Iraq’s security forces took no action following at least 11 attacks on U.S. bases in the last two months.”

The unnamed officials added that the watershed moment came Friday when one of the FTO’s terrorist attacks led to the death of an American contractor.

So to recap, the so-called “protesters” were in reality veritable terrorists who stormed the embassy in retaliation for the United States defending itself, which raises the question of why the Post chose to use the word “protesters” in the first place.

See some of the backlash below:

Note how the latter tweet mentioned The New York Times. In its own write-up, The Gray Lady described the terrorists as “mourners” …

Writing for The Federalist on Wednesday, George Mason University fellow Erielle Davidson theorized that the media’s decision to frame the terrorists as “protesters” and “mourners” stemmed from a desire to make President Donald Trump look bad.

How? By falsely conflating Kata’ib Hezbollah’s repeated attacks on U.S. facilities, including the embassy, with ongoing anti-Iran protesters that have been occurring throughout Iraq since at least October.

“The media has done its best to conflate the attacks with anti-Iran protests that have been happening across Iraq for the last three months, but of course those actual protesters are pro-Iraqi sovereignty demonstrators fed up with the corruption and the broad perception that the Iraqi government is controlled by Iran,” she wrote.

“Confirming exactly that accusation, the Iraqi government has repeatedly attacked the anti-Iran protesters, killing hundreds and wounding thousands, while giving a free pass and ready access to the Iran-backed fighters who stormed our embassy.”

The Iranian-backed Iraqi government is corrupt, and the Iraqi people want it out. And all this ties back to former President Barack Hussein Obama, believe it or not.

“The media’s goal is to characterize the protests as a wholesale rejection of Trump’s policies in the region, hence the wall-to-wall disinformation about mourning and protesting,” Davidson explained.

“What’s actually at stake is Obama’s legacy. The Iran Deal was a bargain in which Iran would be handed control over the Middle East in exchange for some temporary limitations on nuclear activities.”

But Trump withdrew from the deal, thus nuking Obama’s legacy and Iran’s planned control of the region. And lo and behold, neither the American media nor the Iranian-backed terrorists in the Middle East appear to be too happy about that.

Speaking of which, as the Kata’ib Hezbollah terrorists stormed the embassy on Tuesday, they reportedly sprayed graffiti on the wall and windows in red.

The graffiti read as follows: “Closed in the name of the resistance.”

Hmmm … and what “resistance” would that be?

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Vivek Saxena
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