Associated Press' Credibility Jumps in Front of Explosive Gaffe to Save Obama

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

BARACK OBAMA

Wow. I cannot recall the Associated Press ever before so blatantly rushing to save a candidate from his own words:

The suggestion whispered by Obama's opponents was that he was maligning the efforts of troops fighting in Afghanistan by stating they are "just" out there killing civilians.
The Republican National Committee simply repeated the comment as one of their "They Said It!" series used to highlight statements by opponents that supposedly put them in a bad light. RNC Chairman Mike Duncan followed up later in a statement demanding that Obama apologize for his "offensive" statement.
"It is hard to imagine that anyone who aspires to be commander in chief would say such a thing about our brave men and women in uniform," Duncan said. "Obama owes our armed forces an apology — today."
THE FACT CHECK:
A check of the facts shows that Western forces have been killing civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents have been killing civilians.
The U.S. and NATO say they don't have civilian casualty figures, but The Associated Press has been keeping count based on figures from Afghan and international officials. Tracking civilian deaths is a difficult task because they often occur in remote and dangerous areas that are difficult to reach and verify.*
As of Aug. 1, the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can't be attributed to one party.

Yeah, that's great. Too bad that's not what Obama said. What he said was, "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there."

If Obama had said something about which side has inflicted more civilian casualties, the AP's "fact check" would be relevant. But his statement was about putting more ground troops into Afghanistan so that U.S. policy will be more than "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians." We've established that statement is horsepuckey. You would figure all the pictures of ground troops, paratroopers, and artillery would be a sign that we're not just using air power.

Hot Air says, "That’s not an article, it’s a campaign press release."

UPDATE: * "Difficult to reach and verify." Indeed, you might even think that the AP would want to be a bit more modest and a bit more circumspect about the numbers it throws around for civilian casualties.

08/14 06:35 PM Share