WOOHOOO! MORE FAKE NEWS!!! YOU LOVE IT, I KNOW YOU DO!!

...But this time, it's REALLY fun.

See, in the past, I've made a bit of a stink about so-called VNRs - "video news releases," which same are video segments bought, paid for, and usually filmed by big companies, or the government - and then aired by news stations as though they were legitimate news stories, often without attribution of any kind.

This isn't those.

Oh no.

It's MUCH better.

See, for the past several YEARS now, the West has been inundated by a flood of propaganda from the news media about how much the war in Iraq sucks.

Not that this counts under evidentiary rules, but every friend I have, which is quite a few, who has come back from Iraq, has said the same thing: "They're full of shit."

And now we know why.

The fauxtography and "rocket ride" scams in Lebanon weren't enough.

Nooooo.

The Associated Press has just been caught falsifying whole news reports specifically to make the U. S. look bad. Not "some," dozens and dozens. And this is only the ones we know for sure about.

Now, the lefty cookie-cutter reply is "So? That doesn't make things over there any better."

But it does mean there's doubt.

The comments on the blog I found this on originally are interesting; somehow, the fact that the AP got caught falsifying news stories was deemed irrelevant by the lefty posters, who immediately started their fingers-in-ears chanting of "Bush lied! Bush lied!"

Let's clear this up. No he didn't. The world community, and its various intelligence apparata, as well as the Clinton administration, all reported that Saddam had WMDs.

Our Congressmen - practically all the Republicans, and at least half the Democrats - voted to go to war based on this resolution, which features 23 separate points justifying the war.

So far, NONE of them have been proven wrong.

There's been a whole lot of yelling, and much is made of unsubstantiated STATEMENTS that various points were wrong, but no actual evidence whatsoever.

There has, however, been a flood of evidence that they weren't. Let's see. We FOUND chemical weapons over there. FIVE HUNDRED of them. There've been eyewitness reports that the bulk of the stockpiles were simply moved. We know for a FACT that huge stocks of military hardware were simply buried - because we've been digging them up. We don't know where most of it is, either; they'll be combing that crap out of the sands for generations. EVEN THE NEW YORK TIMES admitted Saddam had a nuclear weapons program.

The evidence that there were terrorist links is equally compelling. If there wasn't any kind of connection, then why is there a leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq to issue statements?

Saddam's own rhetoric stated his intent to destroy Israel, and attack the West.

Yet somehow, the chanting of "Bush lied!" keeps on, and on, and on.

Let me just drive a stake through its fucking heart right now. If your notion is that Bush lied, and your source is an industry that openly falsifies even the most routine domestic coverage, you simply have no evidence whatsoever.

Are we clear on this? There is such a thing as FACT. There is such a thing as FICTION. The FACT is that the war resolution was fully justified as voted upon. The FACT is that a huge coalition of international forces aided and participated in the invasion. The FICTION is that we went in alone - leaving France and Germany out does not equate to "alone," sorry. The FICTION is that Bush lied about anything. The FICTION is that the AP and Reuters produce a product that can be used to substantiate, well, anything.

In reality, the situation in Iraq is shitty. This is not because we went in for no reason; it's because we went in with insufficient forces, and have since day one allowed our troops to be controlled by opinion poll, rather than military reality.

In reality, the coalition of nations that went to Iraq this time around was one of the biggest alliances of nations ever forged. 41 countries contributed troops and support to the invasion of Iraq. Woooo, we were sure fucking lonely.

In reality, the biggest detractors of the efforts in Iraq have been its biggest payees: Chirac, Annan, and all those who stole from the "oil-for-food" program.

In reality, we - none of us, lefty, righty, wingnut, moonbat, centrist, libertarian, NONE OF US - actually have any idea what's going on over there, aside from those with their boots on the ground, by which I mean actual ground troops. A general in the States is what we used to call a REMF - rear-echelon motherfucker. A RETIRED general, who has not served during this conflict, is ten times worse. And yet, this is the type of commentator the media is presenting to us: not troops, not the Iraqis, but retired officers who have never even served in the theater of operations.

WE HAVE NO IDEA what's going on in Iraq. What we do know is that our news organizations are deliberately falsifying their coverage to make the situation appear MORE, rather than LESS, dire. We do know that every report carried by Reuters or the AP is suspect; we do know that those opposed to the war have consistently falsified their data, or just outright made shit up, to "justify" their views, and then chanted in circles about it as loudly as possible, as though saying something over and over means it's true.

It doesn't. And we ought to stop letting them get away with it.