Iraq War: Made Up By the Media?

Iraq War: “Made Up By the Media?”

Okay, so I was about to do a post on the Iraq war, citing a Washington
Post article, when I saw this on ThinkProgress.
Putting the two together is all that's needed. Notice the long headline? Sound
bites just don't get it done, I guess, though I would have gone with “Baghdad
Morgue Death Count in Dispute.” You can almost see the politics while reading
about it.

But Fox “News” truly is wrapping itself in knots. This
caption comes after the “All-Out
Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?” The wingnuts have clearly
cracked.

The Iraqi civil war is “made up by the media?”

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari said Tuesday
that the death toll provided to The Washington Post by morgue workers — more
than 1,300 dead since last Wednesday — was “inaccurate and exaggerated.”
Jafari said the toll was 379. Gen. Ali Shamarri of the Interior Ministry's statistics
department put the toll at 1,077. U.S. and Iraqi officials offered figures on
Tuesday both higher and lower than Jafari's count. The U.S. military said it
had confirmed 220 deaths. Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Iraq,
said that the country's joint Iraqi-U.S. operations center reported receiving
accounts of 365 civilian deaths and that officials at the center believed the
count could reach about 550.
Pressure
Seen on Probes at Baghdad Morgue
- Former U.N. Envoy Says 'Both Sides' Exerting
Influence;
Death Count in Dispute