May 29 was a bloody day in Iraq. Bomb blasts killed dozens and woun
ded scores more. In Baghdad, a car bomb killed two CBS News crew members, seriously wounded correspondent Kimberly Dozier, and claimed the lives of a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter.
The three journalists were embedded with a U.S. unit and “doing a Memorial Day story about what life is like for the troops in Baghdad.”
This story, like coverage of the bomb blast that seriously wounded ABC’s Bob Woodruff and his cameraman in January, really, really upset the right-wing noise machine. No, they don’t feel sympathy for the victims; they’re upset because the story interferes with their fictitious war narrative that Iraq is improving; that we’re winning; that Bush-hating, agenda-driven reporters deliberately ignore “good” news. (Oh, yeah, and reporters are cowards, too.)
High-profile casualties focus the public’s attention, momentarily at least, on the grim reality that three years after Saddam’s statue fell Baghdad still is not secure, and on the Bush administration’s monumental failures in planning and carrying out the war in Iraq.
Media Matters details how right-wingers like Ingraham, Hannity, and North discredit and defame reporters in Iraq. And not to be missed is this classic exchange in which Hugh Hewitt (a.k.a. Cowardly Lion) tells an Iraq war correspondent how dangerous it is for him (Hewitt) to broadcast from New York City.
As callous, dishonest, and despicable as these right-wing noise merchants are, they’re lightweights compared with Mike Gallagher, a Dallas-based syndicated radio lunatic. In these brief audio clips from his May 30 program, Gallagher casts aside logic and humanity to hit all the right-wing buttons. (The interference was caused by a passing lightening storm, as if the gods couldn’t believe what they were hearing, either.)
Gallagher: Reporters No Heroes
Reporters may have been useful back in 2003 to hype the Blitzkrieg to Baghdad, but no more. Now they’re in the way, says Gallagher, obsessed with covering the “war,” not all the “good” stories like you see on Fox News. Here’s what a former U.S. official in Baghdad said about “good news”:
We stopped taking reporters to the inaugurations of many reconstruction projects because, as we quickly learned to our dismay, publicity might invite a terrorist attack... . We concluded that good publicity simply wasn't worth the cost in lives and damage, and we stopped advertising them.
As for Dozier, she’s no hero, says Gallagher from the comfort of his studio. At least one (volunteer) soldier on the ground in Iraq disagrees.
On Thursday a young American soldier gave his Purple Heart to Dozier's brother, Michael, to give to Dozier. He told Michael that he wanted Kimberly to have it because, he said, she'd suffered as much as any soldier. That Purple Heart is now beside Kimberly's bed, reports (CBS News correspondent Sheila) MacVicar.
Kimberly Dozier is brave and heroic. Mike Gallagher is scoundrel and a cur.
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