In Other Violence (UPDATE)

Here's the AP report on casualties in Iraq. Fox News went with a headline of "U.S. Military Says 14 Soldiers Killed in Iraq ". There is no mention of the context for this violence--that an enormous offensive in Diyala province has our troops on the front lines. No, we are told that there are mortar attacks in the Green Zone, but an ongoing pitched battle in Ramadi escapes their notice.

The LA Times may have gotten the name wrong, but at least they tried to report on Operation Arrowhead Ripper. But in the AP world, bombs go off, people die. It's like a small town newspaper's police blotter, or a weather report.

Back when I was following the Jamil Hussein thing, I noticed that many of the AP reports just finished off with bullet points under the phrase, "In other violence:" Three men found shot in Ramadi, a drive-by at a bakery in al-Dawra. Much of it accepted uncritically from questionable sources, but we won't go into that right now.

Fourteen American troops in one day is a terrible price. If any of them died in the Diyala fighting, shouldn't the AP make that clear? I suppose I should be glad that they're not filling the page with meditiations about the futility of the war and the evil of American troops. But there's news going on, and we're not hearing about it.

As I wrote this I clicked over to Confederate Yankee to find the link to that LA Times "Arrowhead Thunder" story, and I was dismayed to find him running almost exactly the same complaint that I am--a news report about casualties in Iraq that doesn't mention this offensive at all. Darn, thought I had a scoop here.

Oh wait, I still kind of do. Because CY is writing about a CNN report, not an AP report, that omits the same information. Our media is blacking this fight out.

If it weren't for Michael Yon, we might not even know about the Baqouba assault, and certainly not the FORTY DEAD AL-QAEDA and 100 enemy captives taken in the fighting. CY has the links.

UPDATE: AP has now updated the linked story to cover the Diyala assault, especially focusing on a misguided American bomb and the civilian casualties it caused. Oh well. They do mention the dead insurgents.