Al Qaeda cooks and eats Elvis by the light of a UFO
Our URQ friends are pretty critical of mainstream media. Not a day goes by that you don’t read some contemptuous dismissal of the reviled “MSM” for running a story that, let’s say, focuses on Canadian casualties in Afghanistan or President Bush’s latest catastrophe, instead of, you know, cheerful stuff like bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. After all, they assert, it’s a proven fact that MSM is horribly biased, chooses their stories to promote that bias, and relies on all kinds of weak evidence and lame sources to come up with stuff intended to, you know, sap our will and all that.
With that in mind, it’s instructive to review exactly what these bloggers think a credible story might be.
Oh, hey, here’s one. I notice this in the Sunday Trackback exercise, and followed it back to its source. Here’s the good part.
“At a meeting today in Baqubah one Iraqi official I spoke with framed the al Qaeda infiltration and influence in the province. Although he spoke freely before a group of Iraqi and American commanders, including Staff Major General Abdul Kareem al Robai who commands Iraqi forces in Diyala, and LTC Fred Johnson, the deputy commander of 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, the Iraqi official asked that I withhold his identity from publication….
Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.†…The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?†Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family..”
Let’s start by looking at the sourcing of this story.
It is a story being told at “a meeting” by an unnamed “official”. The unnamed official does not claim to have witnessed the event, and provides no source. It’s something that happened “on a couple of occasions” to unspecified people. No corroboration, no second source, and of course, no evidence. Just an assertion, at least fourth hand, of what sounds exactly like one of Jan Brunvand’s Urban Legends (always told about “the friend of a friend of mine…never actually witnessed), or one of the vintage atrocity tales that we circulate about our enemies to dehumanize them.
Now, I’m sure Al Qaeda people are not very nice. Pretty rotten folks, in fact. But it’s a bit hard to figure out why they’d cook and eat kids as part of a recruitment drive. That’s a grave offense against every version of Islamic law that I’m familiar with. Plus you’d think (maybe this is just me) that the community would find that kind of behaviour a little…well, alienating.
Aw, heck, cheap sarcasm aside, this one is too stupid for anyone except Canadian Sentinel to swallow.
Or… is it? Are there really, REALLY folks out there dumb enough to buy this transparent piece of horror propaganda?
Well, apparently, quite a few, actually.
(Disclaimer: The Bunker does not support Al Qaeda OR cannibalism. Thank you.)
Whooee! First time I heard a variation on that theme was 1969. Back then, it was drugged-out hippie babysitters who baked the baby just in time fer when the parents came home.
My future ex-mother-in-law related it as a true tale that happened to a friend of a friend. My future ex-mother-in-law was an intelligent, well-informed, university graduate. I ain’t sure when/if she ever found out this was an urban myth.
JB
i think your missing the point, they were not to actually eat them it was to scare them into submission, while i can see your point about the lack of the source identity as the source is unnamed, i still have little doubt as to the validity of the story.
there are plenty of instances of substantiated random horrific acts commited by these people there is no reason to believe they would not stoop to this.
there is simply not a good reason for the creation of an urban myth as theses people commit sufficent acts of brutality almost daily to keep one in material.
Sorry, horseysnort. There is one unsourced fourth-hand claim, no evidence, and a narrative pattern typical of urban-myth/atrocity legend.
You may accept this as fact as you wish, which underscores my point - that supporters of the war tend to suspend their critical standards about reportage and journalism when the story supports their personal views and beliefs.
im not particulary a supporter of the war. at least as its being waged presently but thats another topic, as for journalistic standards there is no longer any such thing virtually anywhere as most of the media has a decidedly left slant these days. its all agenda driven these days, its rare to see any unbiased reporting anywhere.
but as for your opinion of the story, you may be right and you may be wrong .
it wont matter much because in a few days as al Qaeda is bound to do something that can be proven
“as for journalistic standards there is no longer any such thing virtually anywhere as most of the media has a decidedly left slant these days.”
We disagree, I fear.
Horseysnort has a real problem with the “Factinista” as Colbert put it.
You see, Horseysnort, many of us on the “left” feel that the MS has a decidely right-wing bias. Seeing as how your saying right-wingers think the MSM is too left, well, hell, maybe they’re actually doing their job right.
As to your willingness to believe this story because “there are plenty of instances of substantiated random horrific acts commited by these people,” you know you’d be up in arms if I said I heard from my aunt’s friend’s former roomate’s dog that Rush Limbaugh eats babies for my lack of journalistic integrity. My friend, you believe it cause you WANT to believe, not cause you give a damn about journalistic integrity.
I think JonZor has it right. I spend about half of any given read through the Globe and Mail or CBC newscast shaking my head at the subtle right wing bias, and the rest nodding because “they got it right” (which, of course, means the reporter is reflecting MY biased view of reality). What that tells me is that they’re probably pretty balanced. That doesn’t mean that every story is “neutral”…as long as editors and journalists have to choose verbs or omit facts, there will be selection, and therefore bias. But it does mean that the “trying to be neutral but reflecting an URQ bias” and the “trying to be neutral but reflecting an ULQ bias” are tending to balance each other when the media outlet is viewed as a whole, over time.
There are also plenty of horrific acts committed by US and British forces in Iraq horseysnort, does this mean we should believe every story about atrocities that gets published on any blog in the world?
I think there is an “Upper” bias in the MSM, which Balb alluded to. Whether its government control or corporate control, there’s a definite centralization of power in the MSM, meaning there’s fewer honest, different opinions flying around, just more people rehashing the same shit, cause that’s what they get fed from their bosses.
And this is what “we”, on both sides of the Great Divide, should be afraid of.
Whooee! Back when them leftists at Radio-Canada (the parlay-voo wing of them radical lefty anarchists at CBC) was exposin’ the rotten Liberall adscammin’ crooks, was anybuddy complainin’ the lefty press was pickin’ on the pore ol’ Liberals?
If it weren’t fer the dang red commie press, we’d be hearin’ about these here half-baked baby stories on the front page every day. It ain’t like substantiated stories of horrific deeds don’t sell papers. The Murdochs and Aspers oughta fire all them reds an’ get somebody puttin’ baked alQaeda on the front page with Bigfoot an’ Nessie an’ OgoPogo an’ all them other things the lefty’s been hidin’.
JB
i still have little doubt as to the validity of the story… there are plenty of instances of substantiated random horrific acts commited by these people, there is no reason to believe they would not stoop to this.
Oooh! Exciting! Actually an ad hominem logical fallacy, as opposed to an insult being called an ad hominem!
Small things make me happy.
This is just the latest version of the Blood Libel, which was used against Jews in the Middle Ages. “They eat babies” is the oldest slander in the book. It should be ignored. It has never turned out to be true about anyone it has been said about.