Misleading headline of the day: “Gates warns of calamity in Iraq”
Either reporter Kristin Roberts or the headline writer at Reuters seem to be giving the impression that Iraq is a calamity, when in fact Gates said that bringing troops home prematurely would be the calamity:
Gates warns of calamity in Iraq
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Robert Gates, sworn in as U.S. defense secretary on Monday, said he understood the desire to bring troops home from Iraq but that failure would be a “calamity” that haunts and threatens America for decades. “All of us want to find a way to bring America’s sons and daughters home again. But, as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East,” Gates said at the Pentagon. “Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to come,” he said.
Calamity. Fauxtography. Whatever. It’s all so boring.
UPDATE
Reuters just changed the headline, “New Pentagon chief warns against failure in Iraq”
UPDATE II
The AP’s take (note ‘will’ instead of ‘would’): Gates: Failure in Iraq will haunt U.S. We wish Dante were around today to update the Divine Comedy. In which circle of hell would the MSM wind up, do you think?
UPDATE III
There’s a new AP story now entitled, “Bush plans to put more troops in Iraq,” but nowhere in the body of the story does Bush ever say or even hint at such a thing. Moreover, the story includes this corker:
Top generals have expressed concern that even temporarily shipping thousands of more troops would be largely ineffective in the absence of bold new political and economic steps, and that it would leave the already stretched Army and Marines Corps even thinner once the surge ended. They also worry that it feeds a perception that the strife and chaos in Iraq is mainly a military problem; in their view it is largely political, fed by economic distress.
Huh? Our generals are now saying that the Shiites and Sunnis are killing each other because of “economic distress”? How do reporters get away with writing such drivel? How do editors keep their jobs letting material like this get issued under the AP brand name?