Hot Air » Blog Archive » Which is more ephemeral: a Sadr truce or a Reuters article?

Which is more ephemeral: a Sadr truce or a Reuters article?

posted at 9:08 am on February 23, 2008 by see-dubya
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What’s Mookie up to? The AP story says he’s definitely extending his ceasefire with the U.S. troops. As much as I would like to see Sadr pushing up daisies, I think a peaceful Iraq is good for everybody even if this is just another hudna.

But Reuters was telling a different story.

Yesterday, Reuters posted a story entitled “Sadr Expected to End Truce”, implying it was likely that Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al Sadr would end his Mahdi Army’s six-month ceasefire in Iraq. I can’t offer the URL of that story because once their cynical prediction was proved immediately wrong (today, Sadr announced that he’d be extending the ceasefire another six months) the link started bringing me to a new Reuters story entitled (surprise, surprise) “Iraqi Cleric Sadr Extends Militia Ceasefire.” Soon after that, the original headline disappeared from internet searches altogether.

We were always at peace with Eastasia!

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I know you were being funny with the Eastasia line, but seriously, this scares the crap outta me. The ability to make the news go away because it’s no longer actually printed terrifies me. The future has arrived. What to do about it?

JiangxiDad on February 23, 2008 at 9:15 AM

Wow, that is amazingly wrong and unethical. These news outlets are REALLY pushing the boundaries of what ‘freedom of the press’ actually means. It must take amazing nerve to post such false and inflammatory stories like that. Why do they still have jobs? Why can’t they be sued for creating a hazardous situation for our military? Treason anyone?

ThackerAgency on February 23, 2008 at 9:21 AM

What to do about it?

What SeeDubya just did.

:-)

BillINDC on February 23, 2008 at 9:31 AM

Those unaccountable multinational corporations that everyone feared so much have come into being… in the form of far left propaganda organs. Who’da thunk it?

amkun on February 23, 2008 at 9:31 AM

Nah, its only rumor pretending to be news. When the rumor turns out to be false, just publish the news as though the rumor never existed. Then publish another rumor.

Leftists have no memory.

rockhauler on February 23, 2008 at 9:45 AM

Rest assured that Oceania is looking into the problem.

Maybe we can talk the Minister of Mandatory-Volunteerism into assigning some of us as Cache police.

Limerick on February 23, 2008 at 9:50 AM

Hey SeeDubya, you asked me the other day about what college I went to. It took me a while to respond, but I did.

Tzetzes on February 23, 2008 at 9:52 AM

And HERE is the very problem with the new world of information. NONE of it seems permanent.

Things only exist as long as someone is paying the server bill and don’t feel like erasing something.

Do you love Hot Air? Thin it has some great and important things on it? See what happens to all that “important” stuff when the hosting fees aren’t paid.

POOF. Gone.

We are in danger of actually LOSING history here people! No books, no paper, NO permanence.

Warner Todd Huston on February 23, 2008 at 9:55 AM

“Oh nuts, all of my clothes are filthy and covered with dung. I guess I’ll have to wear this stained bed sheet as a cape while I attend the press conference and appear as someone who should be taken seriously. I hope Alfarlap my trusted, turbaned translator for the hard of hearing will be available to stand behind me and massage by buttocks when he isn’t making hand gestures of my all powerful sex appeal.”

Hening on February 23, 2008 at 10:11 AM

I can understand the original point of the post: Reuters, it appears, either believed or assumed or hoped (?) that Al-Sadr would end the cease-fire. But how in the hell did people jump from THAT to everyone jumping onto the 1984 bandwagon? “Go-go Gadget Hyper-Alarmism!”

Reuters got egg on its face, and was forced to change the news article. Isn’t that enough?

Shuemais on February 23, 2008 at 10:25 AM

Shuemais on February 23, 2008 at 10:25 AM

The quips come from See-Dubya’s Eastasia remarks..that’s all.

The fact that they got ‘egg’ on their face is fine and dandy. The lack of a trail of breadcumbs to the fact is disturbing.

Limerick on February 23, 2008 at 10:39 AM

Gosh why would reuters want ali sadr to start trouble> We still need to vaporize that murderer.

dogsoldier on February 23, 2008 at 10:52 AM

With Reuters, it is important to mention that Reuters has called Israel “Occupied Palestine”. Reuters really is that bad.

Larraby on February 23, 2008 at 10:57 AM

Goebbels is smiling.

jukin on February 23, 2008 at 11:10 AM

And that is exactly the problem with online news. Washington Post, for example, regularly purges their archives of stuff they don’t want people finding 20 years from now.

When a paper publishes something in the hard print paper, they have to stand behind it because they can’t reach into people’s homes, take the paper back, change it, and then give the paper back to them. They can do that with a website. That means they can afford to make things up, be sloppy, or go back months later and make articles appear to say something they never said when they were originally published.

How many articles from a year or two ago have they gone back into the archives and changed? You can do that with electronic archives. You can’t do that with microfilm archives.

Hmmm, wonder what Dana Priest has been up to these days.

crosspatch on February 23, 2008 at 11:22 AM

Can’t trust ‘em. Sadr too!

Ordinary1 on February 23, 2008 at 11:25 AM

Reuters- all the news that’s fit to [_____________].

a) delete
b) fake
c) ignore
d) concoct
e) all of the above.

profitsbeard on February 23, 2008 at 12:20 PM

When Obama is President, Obama will fix this. Obama will make everything better in every conceivable way, because that is the power that Obama has.

OK, seriously, I thought, perhaps erroneously, that this was how wire services, as opposed to newspapers, operated: keep correct news in the currently-available feed. Update the out of date, eliminate the false. Is that not how they work? Given their role as a news feed to other outlets, shouldn’t it be how they work?

Splunge on February 23, 2008 at 1:53 PM

Whip the cur through the streets. Then circumcise him with a chainsaw.

mcgilvra on February 23, 2008 at 6:38 PM

Gosh. This guy’s nice. He said “truce” !!! Let’s all get out our beat drums, light up a campfire, get someone to play guitar and hold hands and sing kum bi ya.

… and while we’re doing this the theme song from Jaws plays.

BowHuntingTexas on February 23, 2008 at 9:36 PM

Moqtada’s not fooling anyone. He secretly wishes to front a thrash band. These phukers are simply head bangers gone wild. Hit em with the water cannon and they settle down fast.

Love how Merry ole England and the USA flipped Iraq and then flipped the sunnis and now the shiite masses are back where they belong. Marginalized. OBTW England moved out because it was time to move out. They did their part and did it well.

Finally in case you haven’t noticed the plan is to modernize and create a proud fundamentally strong yet secular muslim. First step was to give these folks a disproportionately large voice in the media. Thats why every other AP and Reuters story is written by someone with an arabic sounding surname.

pc on February 23, 2008 at 11:34 PM

These clowns you see on the TV screens are being marginalized and characterized as extremist buffoons. They were a story at first. Now they are being treated as freaks. We are doing a pretty good job in all this culture war stuff but are still too open to an easy homeland attack.

pc on February 23, 2008 at 11:36 PM

Now if we can just keep Malkin’s posters away from the launch codes we may survive. They are ready to launch everytime a fruitcake muzzie burns a flag.

pc on February 23, 2008 at 11:42 PM