Exaggerate, distort, lie, rinse & repeat

I wanted to post this yesterday but I never made it back. Ralph Peters files a gem from ground zero in Iraq:

Yes, there were bombings yesterday. The terrorists won't give up on their dream of sectional strife, and know they can count on allies in the media as long as they keep the images of carnage coming. They'll keep on bombing. But Baghdad isn't London during the Blitz, and certainly not New York on 9/11.

It's more like a city suffering a minor, but deadly epidemic. As in an epidemic, no one knows who will be stricken. Rich or poor, soldier or civilian, Iraqi or foreigner. But life goes on. No one's fleeing the Black Death — or the plague of terror.

And the people here have been impressed that their government reacted effectively to last week's strife, that their soldiers and police brought order to the streets. The transition is working.

Most Iraqis want better government, better lives — and democracy. It is contagious, after all. Come on over. Talk to them. Watch them risk their lives every day to work with us or with their government to build their own future.

Oh, the attacks will continue. They're even predictable, if not always preventable. Driving through Baghdad's Kerada Peninsula District, my humvee passed long gas lines as people waited to fill their tanks in the wake of the curfew. I commented to the officer giving me a lift that the dense lines of cars and packed gas stations offered great targets to the terrorists. An hour later, one was hit with a car bomb.

The bombing made headlines (and a news photographer just happened to be on the scene). Here in Baghdad, it just made the average Iraqis hate the terrorists even more.

You are being lied to. By elements in the media determined that Iraq must fail. Just give 'em the Bronx cheer.

Last line says it all. It coincides nicely with this from Powerline, also from Tuesday:

Elements of the MSM are committed at several levels to telling a story of failure in Iraq. This makes them reluctant to report news that contradicts this narrative, and loath to treat such news as evidence that we might not fail. Thus, through the intellectual dishonesty of many of its members, the MSM continues to squander the natural advantage it holds over new media by virtue of its ability to put "boots on the ground" in Iraq.

Then we have the Katrina nonsense from yesterday: Is it possible that all of these reporters have somehow missed all of the post-Katrina discussions about the important differences between levee overtopping (widely predicted before Katrina hit, including by CNN), and breaching of the levees, which apparently resulted from design or construction defects? It seems almost inconceivable that all of those involved in misreporting the video can claim ignorance.
The Democrats sent out an email this afternoon that contains a flat misrepresentation:
The tapes directly contradict Bush's now infamous claim after Katrina, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

That statement is false, and the Democrats must know it.

Lest we forget, these people are in the business of communicating, yet they miss fundamental distinctions between terms with specific meaning.

**SIGH**

You can't make this up...