Being Impartial About Terrorism

Parts of Ellen Knickmeyer's  U.S. Claims Success in Iraq Despite Onslaught on A1 sound like a  screenplay depicting the tenacious underdog desert rats--just not ours. The concept of "ours" having gone out of fashion.

So our reporter allows the Post to be used as a distribution system for enemy propaganda. That's partly unavoidable if you're going to report about the success--is success the word?--of actions that include the murder of civilians.  But the scrutiny Knickmeyer applies to a terrorist she interviews is more appropriate for the Director of Communications at the National Association of Ball Bearing Manufacturers:

The fact that American forces still attack entire cities and towns in the west is a sign of how much territory remains out of U.S. and Iraqi government control, said Abu Hatem Dulaimi, a member of the Zarqawi-allied Ansar al-Sunna Army.

"I can say that the legend of the undefeated U.S. Army is gone, owing to our rockets and mines, which are separating them from it day after day," Dulaimi said in a telephone interview. "If they bet that time will be the way to end the resistance, they are wrong, because we are stronger since a year ago or maybe more."

Twenty-five members of Ansar al-Sunna killed themselves and others in suicide attacks last month, he said, and 53 volunteers for suicide attacks have arrived since.

Knickmeyer challenges plenty of ideas proposed by the U.S. military, but moves on after relaying Dulaimi's talking points.

And what is it with this "black banner" motif?

Over 17 days this month, guerrillas across Iraq killed at least 116 Iraqi forces and 346 Iraqi civilians in drive-by shootings, bombings and other violence, according to Iraqi officials.

And in the west, Zarqawi's foreign and Iraqi fighters this month raised the black banners of al Qaeda in Iraq in the border city of Qaim, one of many areas in the region where Iraqi government forces have feared to take up positions or moved out. Al Qaeda fighters recently carried out public executions of men suspected of supporting U.S. forces or the Iraqi government.

Ah, the romance of the black banner. Can we cue the music? Perhaps John Williams is available.

The story opens with disdainful talk about body counts, though Knickmeyer's account doesn't show much awareness of the fact that the Bush Administration and the military have avoided using that measure precisely because of how it will be regarded by mainstream media. That is to say, irrelevant. And while reporters and the military both have reason to doubt whether everyone fingered in Tall Afar was a terrorist, I'd expect most doubts to be erased when bullets are heading in an unfriendly direction:

Lynch, the military spokesman, cited killings and detentions of 1,534 insurgents in the region. The fact that the number of insurgents killed or captured in the northern city of Tall Afar was roughly equal to advance estimates of their strength, he said, was proof that insurgents weren't simply escaping to fight another day -- and that U.S. forces were doing more than razing infrastructure. "Zarqawi is on the ropes," Lynch told reporters.

It was not clear, however, how many of those detained or killed in the offensives were insurgents.

Barring the execution of unarmed suspects--which I suspect Knickmeyer might have reported--it is hard to understand skepticism about whether people presumably shooting at Iraqi and U.S. military are, what's the word, insurging.

About 100 words modestly describing U.S. and Iraqi progress are allowed to offset the other 1,500. Our guides to defeat are Anthony Cordesman, Abu Hatem Dualaimi, and Ellen Knickmeyer.