How can you tell he is al Qaeda? He's in Iraq and he's dead.

Back in the deep dark days of the Vietnam War "news" reports based on military handouts would tout the number of Viet Cong killed in the latest military operation. After several years, some reporters actually did some reporting and asked the military personnel submitting body counts up the chain of command how they knew the dead bodies were Viet Cong.

The reply? "They are dead, aren't they? What are they going to do? Argue?" When asked how they determined that some were civilians and some were Viet Cong, the reply was "Kill them all and let God sort out the bad guys." Here appears to be a story of this type. 17 killed, reported as al Qaeda by the military. But were they really just a local defense force killed by U.S. aviation as they were themselves attacking a local insurgent stronghold? Sure looks like the "Kill them all and let God sort them" program.

This week Glenn Greenwald makes the point that now the reporters just take the military press handouts in Iraq and print them as truth. I guess they have to. Wouldn't want to lose the propaganda war now, would we? I mean, look what happens when real reporters get loose and start telling that devastating "Truth."

Last week Glenn pointed out that recently every dead Iraqi has become a dead member of al Qaeda. Somehow the minor detail that there are over 20 different militias attacking Americans, both Shiite and Sunni seems to have been lost in the translation. I guess the U.S. government has decided that it is too difficult to specify that one attack on Americans was conducted by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (Shiite), another by some Sunni local militia, and a third by foreign fighters who have been attracted to Iraq because that's the place to go if you want to kill Americans.

So the Army is doing us all a favor by "simplifying" the news so that even the dumbest or most radical of Americans (*cough* Bush or Cheney *cough*) can tell who is "us" and who is "them." The news media is just going along with the program.

Wouldn't want to be accused of rocking the boat by real reporting, now would they? Just keep it simple for the stupid ignorant public.

What's the old saying? If you can't trust your own government, who can you trust? As the Bush administration has proven, the answer is that you can trust no one. Especially not this Bush administration or the military they have sent to fight the useless war in Iraq. Nor can we trust the media to give us honest news.

But it isn't just our own government and media lying to us. The enemy is doing a better job of propaganda than the Americans. Here is from John Hughes writing June 20, 2007 at the Christian Science Monitor:

Now some US military officers, too, charge that a clever enemy media campaign is gaining traction and that the US is losing the war in information about battlefield operations.

A Marine officer whose credibility I trust cites an operation of success in the Fallujah region earlier this month that was reported as a disaster by US and British media companies. His unit had established a new precinct headquarters for Iraqi police, Army troops, and US Marines to patrol and protect a dedicated area. It was well received by the local populace and almost 200 Iraqis volunteered for police recruitment. Insurgents sought to disrupt it but were routed.

Meanwhile, in a separate firefight at a makeshift suicide vehicle factory, three separate suicide bombers were killed, two suicide trucks were discovered and blown up, and foreign and other fighters were killed or captured. On the defending side, one civilian and one policeman were wounded, with no US or other casualties. "The enemy was killed in his tracks; his best weapon was discovered before it could cause any harm," says the officer, "but Western media reported no enemy killed in these operations, 28 civilians killed, and 50 civilians wounded. We are getting demolished," the Marine officer says, "by nefarious enemy media outlets … 'reporters' or 'sources' for Arab and other news agencies either on insurgent payrolls or who have known sympathies with insurgent operations, and by collective Western media that are often being manipulated by enemy elements. What incredible economy of effort the enemy is afforded when US media is their megaphone. Why spend precious resources on developing your own propaganda machine when you can make your opponent's own news outlets scream your message louder than you could ever have hoped to do independently?"

Clearly the insurgents have taken to heart the message that their war is a war of words as well as arms.

So what is happening? The U.S. military can't get the news media to report anything except spoon-fed propaganda hand-outs, while the insurgents appear to be effectively getting the media to report their handouts while suppressing the real news that might support American efforts. In the meantime, those of us who depend on the media to provide some level of reliable and useful information can't find much of it in the major media sources.

Sure the media is getting manipulated on all sides. That is a problem the media has to solve. They aren't doing much of it, except for McClatchy News.

It really is frustrating.