HoodaThunk?

Ever since old Baghdad Bob started spouting off his transparent lies in an attempt to downplay the crushing defeat US & Coalition forces were dealing the Iraqi military we have all become accustomed to statements by our enemies to the effect that they’re beating us like a drum. The recent release of an Internet video from Al Qaeda in Iraq’s Al-Zawahiri contains this kind of spewage. Have a look:

Al Qaeda’s No. 2 said the terror network’s branch in Iraq had “broken the back” of the U.S. military with hundreds of homicide bombings, in a video posted Saturday that was the latest in a string of new messages by al Qaeda’s leaders.

…

He said that U.S. and British forces in Iraq had bogged down in Iraq and “have achieved nothing but loss, disaster and misfortune.”

Al Qaeda in Iraq “alone has carried out 800 martyrdom operations (homicide attacks) in 3 years, besides the sacrifices of the other mujahedeen, and this is what has broken the back of American in Iraq,” al-Zawahiri said.

It should go without saying that Al Qaeda is never going to openly say that they’re doing anything but achieving glorious victory. What should be noted is the deference that opinion gets from the MSM. This AP story carries the message of this video with exactly 1 sentence of rebuttal from US forces and that’s from an unnamed source. They carry the quotes I provided above and a few others in the linked story but they let stand univestigated or answered the allegation that the US and British military’s backs are broken. Those of us who understand the MSM is doing an incredibly poor job in actually covering the war on terror as it’s happening know better. The people who don’t blog or read blogs only know what the MSM tells them.

And, today, the MSM is telling them that a highly-placed terrorist leader is claiming to have broken the backs of our military without a single named quote from a member of our military rebutting that statement. What are people to think about that? Would it have killed the AP to talk to someone in CentCom and to have given the basic state of our military forces in Iraq? Sure, I know our military is strong, well positioned, and in high spirits. I know that because I talk with soldiers deployed there and I read their blogs. But people like my mother and several of my more extended family don’t. The MSM is clearly falling down here when they can’t even muster the jouralistic decency to report the whole story, rather than just serve as a mouthpiece for the enemy.