CNN airs video of jihadi sniper shooting American soldier

E.M. Zanotti on the Bush/Stephanopoulos Tet tete a tete:

The Tet offensive was not any type of military victory for the North, but a propaganda victory bestowed upon them by the press. And that is exactly what al Qaeda wants desperately to achieve. There is no military victory al Qaeda can hope for, only a defeat of American will. Their sole aim in driving up the body count is to wear us down to the point that we’ll just give up. It’s the only way they can win.

The President has been saying this for a while now. And al Qaeda has been saying this for a while now too - heck and they’ve even thanked journalists for helping to enhance the jihad. Yet the press never seems to recall this.

Don’t they? Front page of CNN, right now:

[Read on. H/T: Michelle]

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CNN - Plays Into the Hands of the Enemy (Knowingly)
Posted By Blackfive

This post is Rated R for language.  I decided that this is one of the few cases since 2003 where it is entirely appropriate.

CNN has a video of snipers shooting at and killing American forces.  Here is how they frame it:

Almost 2,800 Americans have been killed so far in Iraq and one of the most dangerous insurgent opponents is the sniper. CNN has obtained graphic video from the Islamic Army of Iraq, one of the most active insurgent organizations in Iraq, showing its sniper teams targeting U.S. troops. The Islamist Army says it wants talks with the United States and some Islamist Internet postings call for a P.R. campaign aimed at influencing the American public. The video is disturbing to watch but CNN believes the story, shocking as it is, needs to be told.

Yeah, I'm sure CNN agonized over the decision to post the video of terrorists killing American troops. 

Bottom-line: CNN knowingly plays into the hands of the enemy. 

How do the troops feel?  My In-Box is flooded with angry emails.  Here's an email that I received from a Staff Sergeant (OIF III) that pretty much sums up my feelings about this situation:

CNN in the Crosshairs
Posted By Uncle Jimbo

If you don't know why I'm pissed, read this from Matt. That noise you just heard was me loosening up my swearing muscles. It has been about three hours since I found out that CNN became a terrorist press agency, and it took that long to chill enough to type. I keep clenching all my muscles and imagining my hand, Ted Turner's scrawny neck, a wall, and a torrent of verbal abuse flowing from my cakehole to his entire existence, punctuated by occasional slams of him into said wall.

WTF is their problem?  I don't give two flying f**ks how global those bastards are, their headquarters is in Atlanta. If they want to act as press agents for our enemies I suggest they relocate to somewhere in Al Anbar Province. There can be no justification for showing terrorists killing Americans, none. The only way terrorism can be effective is if it's message gets out, and showing their successes on freakin' CNN is about the best they could ever hope for.

Congratulations assholes you just made heroes out of murderous scum who spend more of their time blowing up innocent Iraqi children than ever actually fighting US troops. The CNN description talks about how dangerous it is for the brave snipers of the Islamic Army of Iraq, Allahu Akhbar! But that's BS, this isn't sniping, this is murder in an urban setting. These swine hide in civilian clothes among the civilian populace and jack off a couple of rounds before hiding the gun in some lady's laundry and sneaking out the back door.

CNN has made a conscious choice and they chose the wrong side. ...

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Terrorist Public Relations: This is CNN

The most prominent story on CNN.com's home page this morning is the airing of clips from a insurgent group's propaganda video, and the accompanying news story focusing on the use of insurgent snipers targeting American soldiers. CNN obtained the video from the Islamic Army of Iraq through intermediaries. A similar video from the same group has been circulating since November of 2005 (sidenote: I have not recently seen the 2005 video, and cannot verify if any of the scenes from the 2005 release were used in today's CNN story, and so this might be something worth checking).

The video report and the accompanying story are not particularly newsworthy in and of themselves; insurgent sniper attacks and IEDs have been their primary means of combat since the early days of the war, and sniper attacks have been well-documented.

In any event, the article and video provided by CNN—brace yourselves—doesn't provide anything approaching a honest telling of why insurgent snipers are a "newsworthy" item. 

Tet's Real Lesson
James Taranto

We have long argued that America's mainstream media--because of what they see as the "lessons of Vietnam"--are actively working to promote American defeat in Iraq. (We gave this theme a lengthy treatment in a talk last November at the Hudson Institute, which later became an essay in the February issue of The American Spectator.) From CNN comes one of the most striking bits of evidence yet that this is the case. This promo for a "CNN exclusive" appears today on the homepage of CNN.com (we've captured it here for posterity as well):

Almost 2,800 Americans have been killed so far in Iraq and one of the most dangerous insurgent opponents is the sniper. CNN has obtained graphic video from the Islamic Army of Iraq, one of the most active insurgent organizations in Iraq, showing its sniper teams targeting U.S. troops. The Islamist Army says it wants talks with the United States and some Islamist Internet postings call for a P.R. campaign aimed at influencing the American public. The video is disturbing to watch but CNN believes the story, shocking as it is, needs to be told.

By airing this video, CNN is participating in what it acknowledges is "a P.R. campaign aimed at influencing the American public" in ways favorable to America's enemies. And the network does not even seem to realize what a shocking admission this is.

With the midterm elections less than three weeks away, the media are filled with Tet talk. Here's Simon Hooper, in a commentary that also appears today on CNN.com:

For veteran statesmen such as [James] Baker, the parallels with another era-defining American war must also be striking. In the late 1960s the U.S. military found itself fighting an unwinnable conflict, enduring mounting casualties against a growing chorus of dissent at home--in Vietnam.

On Wednesday [President] Bush himself acknowledged parallels between the current situation in Iraq and the 1968 Tet Offensive--widely considered to be the point when American public opinion turned against the war.

As we noted yesterday, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times also drew the analogy in a column whose description of Tet is worth repeating:

Although the Vietcong and Hanoi were badly mauled during Tet, they delivered, through the media, such a psychological blow to U.S. hopes of "winning" in Vietnam that Tet is widely credited with eroding support for President Johnson and driving him to withdraw as a candidate for re-election.

Tet, that is, was a military victory for the U.S. that turned into a propaganda victory for the communists because American journalists presented a false picture of what had happened.

The media today are eager to repeat their "success" in Vietnam--and it was a success inasmuch as the media were hugely influential over the course of events. But from a journalistic standpoint it was a gross failure. The real lesson of Vietnam is that journalists got the story wrong. We are not at all convinced that the American people are about to get fooled again. ...