Dan Rather led his CBS Evening News broadcast on Monday night with a dubious claim by an Italian communist journalist that “she was deliberately targeted” by U.S. troops in Iraq as she rode in a car to Baghdad airport. While he noted the U.S. denied the charge, Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid commented that Rather neglected to ask the obvious questions that expose the charge as ridiculous: If she had been targeted by U.S. troops for death, why didn’t they finish her off? Why did U.S. troops take her to a U.S. military hospital to get treatment for her injuries?
Kincaid charged that Rather, who is leaving the broadcast after Wednesday night, is exploiting news from Iraq to the detriment of our fighting forces, who showed remarkable restraint in the incident. “Even when the car failed to stop and presented a direct threat to their safety and security, U.S. forces still refrained from shooting directly at the people in it,” said Kincaid. Yet Rather went on to feature calls from Italy for “punishment of U.S. troops involved” in the incident. Rather followed that with a story about a U.S. soldier currently facing “war crimes charges” in Iraq.
Rather forgot to mention that the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, represents a communist paper and filed stories from Iraq designed to make U.S. troops look bad, such as a false account of the U.S. using napalm on Fallujah. She was an anti-war activist before she went to Iraq and while in captivity recorded a terrorist video opposing the Italian troop presence there. Nevertheless, the Italian government reportedly paid millions of dollars to terrorists to free her. “She shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first place,” said Kincaid. “She’s now free to badmouth the U.S. while the money that freed her will underwrite anti-American terrorists and result in more American deaths. That’s the story Dan Rather should have told.”
Accuracy In Media (AIM) is a non-profit, grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that have received slanted coverage.
To schedule an interview with AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid, contact Anne Tyrrell at (703)739-5920 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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