The Media on Lost and Found in Fallujah

One of the hot stories today is the alleged finding of a chemical/biological weapons lab in Fallujah by Iraqui National Guard soldiers, besides the vast store of more conventional weapons. Another is the finding of 20 torture houses in the same city. Most versions of this second story attribute the finding to U.S. troops, but a more accurate version in many cases is that they are led to them. The first such house in Fallujah was found by the Iraqui National Guard, the latest by U.S. soldiers led there by an Iraqui claiming to be an escaped prisoner from the torture house.

It is just so much easier to assume that heroic Western soldiers are uncovering these atrocities and write the story in this shorthand fashion. After all, it is what the public wants to hear. Never mind the fact that to do so is intellectual laziness, or that a newspaper simply ripping the latest newswire story straight to the press without thinking about how it presents the fact is editorial incompetence. Professional journalists should, surely, be just a wee bit cynical. I do not doubt for a minute that torture houses existed in Fallujah - but 20 of them, one with empty bottles of whisky broken outside with the obvious implied insult to supposedly devout muslim insurgents' religious devotion? Am I the only one who finds it strange that there are 10,000 American troops in Fallujah and only 2,000 Iraqui National Guard, but the latter keep finding all the truly horrifically interesting stuff? Am I the only one to question the honesty of an Iraqui administration that can blythly announce there are "no civilian casualties in Fallujah" and think maybe some of those horrors might have been set up just in time to lead the Marines to them? I don't know this for sure, of course. What I do know is that a goodly proportion of the mainstream press don't seem to be interested in thinking like investigative journalists any more.