It's not like it is all that hard to find things to fault the Associated Press over these days. Frankly, they are getting ridiculous with their hyper-partisan news coverage and the carrying of enemy propaganda as straight news. But Jules Crittenden really finally got fed up and has dismembered their latest "news report" coming out of Tehran. It is a classic and worth the read.
No mention of Iran’s nuclear defiance, U.S. accusations of Iranian material support for Iraq’s insurgents and militias, or of Iranian agents arrested in Iraq. That “diplomat … detained” line refers to an abduction by an unknown party, and its description of that as a “detention” is nothing short of bizarre. Based on past precedent, the kidnapping by gunmen in Iraqi Army uniforms is more likely to have been carried out by an Iranian-backed Shiite death squad or Sunni terrorist group than by the United States.
The dangerous American outrages described in this article happen in a vacuum, unprovoked, at least for the first five paragraphs of this Iranian propaganda exercise. And even then, it’s hard to understand what the source of the “tension” is between the United States and Iran.
Iran’s defiance of the international community over its suspected nuclear weapons program only emerges obliquely in the sixth paragraph, as a “dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.” No mention of the word “weapons.” Anywhere. Certainly nowhere near the words “nuclear” or “insurgency in Iraq.”
The United States’ concerns about Iran’s underwriting of violent sectarian chaos in Iraq also gets a nod in graph six, as Iran’s “role in Iraq.” Not a peep on what that role might be or why anyone would be concerned about it.
Read it all. Jules has the journalism background to really dismantle this execrable article in a very, very devastating way. Will it change a thing the AP is doing? Unfortunately, it probably will not.
