Stunning AP Admission: Insurgents Manipulate Civilian Body Count For Propaganda!

As a UN spokesman summed it up, "it is a very problematic information environment".

Unfortunately, the AP article only discusses the politicization and unreliability of civilian body counts in the Afghan theater. Iraq, as we all know (and no one knows better than Bob), is an open book, where scores of unbiased reporters are free to stroll around making detailed inquiries into every act of violence. Their sources are unimpeachable.

AP reporter Jason Straziuso's honest admission about the difficulties of reporting accurately from Afghanistan is a a vindication of blogospheric suspicion of the reliability of AP-Iraq's numbers. At the same time, it's a harsh rebuke to the AP's Iraq bureau, who huff and bluster about their thorough and objective Iraq reporting, much of which relies on unnamed sources--people who claim to know things in Baghdad, and who want to tell them to the press for reasons that are less than transparent.

If AP-Baghdad has some reason why they think their information is not subject to the same distortions that AP-Kabul's is, I'd love to hear it.

Afghan elders yesterday claimed that 108 civilians were killed in a bombing campaign in western Afghanistan, while villagers in the northeast said 25 Afghans died in air strikes, including some killed while burying dead relatives.

U.S. and NATO leaders, however, said they had no information to substantiate the claims, and a U.S. official said Taliban fighters are forcing villagers to say civilians died in fighting — whether or not it is true.

Even the government officials who reported the deaths yesterday could not confirm the claims, which came from dangerous and remote regions inaccessible to journalists and other independent observers.

...

The claims and denials of civilian casualties are part of an increasing campaign of information warfare the Taliban and Western militaries have engaged in alongside conventional fighting.

My thanks to Mr. Straziuso for his honest and useful reporting about the contested nature of battlefield news. I'm glad to see what he's written, and I'm even more glad to see that someone in AP understands how much the different sides are trying to influence him. I'm going to remember that name as someone who told me straight about how things are in Afghanistan, instead of trying to impress me with how he had the real inside scoop based on second-hand rumors and hearsay.

Unfortunately, I don't know whether Straziuso's ethics will be appreciated by the AP. In fact, I kind of doubt they will.