"Wolf! um...wolf?"

Reading through the news after the successful election in Iraq gave me strange sense of deja vu. Here are two of the major stories out of Iraq after the election:

Allegations of Fraud in Iraqi Election

Iraq's election commission announced Monday that officials were investigating "unusually high" numbers of "yes" votes in about a dozen provinces during Iraq's landmark referendum on a new constitution, raising questions about irregularities in the balloting.

Word of the review came as Sunni Arab leaders repeated accusations of fraud after initial reports from the provinces suggested the constitution had passed. Among the Sunni allegations are that police took ballot boxes from heavily "no" districts, and that some "yes" areas had more votes than registered voters.

...and from the LA Times:

U.S. Killed Civilians in Airstrike, Iraqis Say

American fighter jets and attack helicopters killed about 20 Iraqi civilians and injured 15 other people, including women and children, during an anti-insurgent operation in the western city of Ramadi, local police and a doctor who treated the wounded said Monday.

The city, 60 miles west of Baghdad, has been the site of a major U.S. offensive, and fighting escalated four days ago, residents said. On Saturday, five U.S. soldiers died in Ramadi when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle. U.S. forces said they launched three airstrikes in the area Sunday, killing 70 suspected insurgents.

Let's put this in journalistic context. Here was the report just after the 2004 election in Afghanistan which elected Karzai President:

Hamid Karzai has won Afghanistan's landmark presidential election, a spokesman for its electoral board said Wednesday, after investigators concluded that fraud and technical errors were too minor to overturn his triumph.

A formal announcement declaring Karzai the winner of a five-year term as the country's first directly elected leader was expected later Wednesday.

There were allegations of fraud immediately after the Afghan election and Karzai's opponents boycotted the results. Shortly after, it was found that the abnormalities were minor. Unfortunately, even in moderm countries, elections aren't exactly a zero defects event, regardless of intention.

Next, here were some accusations against the U.S. military in a strike back in 2004 as well:

The US military has denied allegations that its forces in Iraq killed dozens of people celebrating a marriage in the west of the country. Initial reports suggested that a wedding party near the Syrian border was the target of a US air strike.

A US military spokesman confirmed that about 40 people had been killed in the area - but said US forces had targeted a safe house used by foreign fighters.

He said coalition forces had retaliated after coming under attack.

The incident occurred late on Tuesday at the village of Makr al-Deeb, near the border town of Qaim.

The BBC quoted a "source":

They [Americans] hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they levelled the whole village. - Iraqi Witness

As we know now, the border town of Qaim, and the region around it, where flooded with terrorists using the Euphrates to supply the insurgency into the heart of Iraq. As U.S. assets attacked, unnamed "Iraqi witnesses" were quick to find reporters to tell them what they "saw." Other than giving the BBC, NY Times and Democratic Underground some more cannon fodder for their "U.S. = Nazi" meme, the reports were largely unsubstatiated and, after months of fighting in Western Iraq, it is highly likely the the BBC, NY Times and DU were all, as Vladimir Lenin might say, "useful idiots."

Keep these stories in perspective as you read the news coming out of Iraq after the election. I'm not conclusively saying that there isn't fraud in Iraqi elections or that civilians weren't killed in a U.S. bombing raid, however, I would take the accusations more seriously if the U.S. wasn't immediately presumed guilty before all the facts are in.

How many times does the media have to cry wolf before we all start turning our heads?

Posted by 10 fingers 6 strings at October 18, 2005 08:26 AM | TrackBack