Friday, July 02, 2004
...And I Would Have Got Away With Too, If It Wasn't For You Pesky Bloggers!
From Reuters:
Link.
So what's not in the story? There's no props to the bloggers!
This story was broken by a blogger.
I have a feeling Reuters doesn't even know the provenance of the story. Shoot, they don't even bother naming the victim. (So much for the fundamentals of journalism, eh, Reuters?)
They do, however, make a point of establishing a connection with Abu Ghraib, which is simply specious.
These two events have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.
I remember when the story broke, I got a lot of email from readers asking me to say what a lying bastard Zeyed was. I was sceptical at the time, since I was looking to mainstream news outlets to check out the story, and they weren't able to. But LT Smash and I pretty much took a wait-and-see attitude.
Other milbloggers were quick to bash the story as a lie out of hand.
Oops.
It was an interesting acid test for us.
Splash, out,
Jason
The U.S. Army has charged four soldiers, three of them with manslaughter, over the drowning of an Iraqi prisoner while a new report criticized U.S. military detention policies, officials said on Friday.
Newspaper reports in Colorado, where the soldiers were based, said they were accused of forcing two Iraqis to jump off a bridge in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, on January 3. The men had been picked up for violating a curfew.
One of the Iraqis swam to the river bank but the other drowned, according to the reports.
Link.
So what's not in the story? There's no props to the bloggers!
This story was broken by a blogger.
I have a feeling Reuters doesn't even know the provenance of the story. Shoot, they don't even bother naming the victim. (So much for the fundamentals of journalism, eh, Reuters?)
They do, however, make a point of establishing a connection with Abu Ghraib, which is simply specious.
These two events have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.
I remember when the story broke, I got a lot of email from readers asking me to say what a lying bastard Zeyed was. I was sceptical at the time, since I was looking to mainstream news outlets to check out the story, and they weren't able to. But LT Smash and I pretty much took a wait-and-see attitude.
Other milbloggers were quick to bash the story as a lie out of hand.
Oops.
It was an interesting acid test for us.
Splash, out,
Jason
Comments:
Some have been remarkably up front about it:
http://homepage.mac.com/lexl/iblog/C2121072929/E7853094/index.html
I kept my mouth shut, pretty much, because too many people were frothing and I didn't know anything more. I guess that was the right thing to do at the time.
Chap.
http://www.gmapalumni.org/chapomatic
http://homepage.mac.com/lexl/iblog/C2121072929/E7853094/index.html
I kept my mouth shut, pretty much, because too many people were frothing and I didn't know anything more. I guess that was the right thing to do at the time.
Chap.
http://www.gmapalumni.org/chapomatic
# posted by 
: 12:55 PM
: 12:55 PM
As I commented to Zayed at the time, while I was skeptical about the particulars I could [just] see it as a "practical joke" gone bad - and the description of the soldiers searching "frantically" with flashlights along the banks seemed to bear that out. Seems now that is just about the way it was.
Oh yes, and their officer was punished some time ago for trying to cover up the whole thing.
John Anderson teqjack@wowmail.com
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Oh yes, and their officer was punished some time ago for trying to cover up the whole thing.
John Anderson teqjack@wowmail.com
# posted by : 4:16 PM
: 4:16 PM
