SPUTNIK offers, "Leader of the Islamic State (ISIL [. . .]) terrorist organization Abu Bakr Baghdadi was injured in an airstrike in western Iraq, local media reported on Sunday, citing sources in security agencies." THE TIMES OF ISRAEL runs with it too.
So he's dead.
Right?
Back in October, outlets like THE DAILY MAIL were reporting he was poisoned:
ISIS ringleader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is reportedly seriously ill after having his food poisoned by an assassin.
Meals
prepared for the ISIS leader and three other commanders of the
terrorist organisation were allegedly poisoned in the Be'aaj district,
southwest of Nineveh.
Or what about when he was critically injured by airstrikes?
Does every war have this kind of propaganda?
Saturday, I was helping a friend, a film director, with research for WWII and my focus was 1943 to 1946. I went through the daily archives of ten US papers for that three year period.
Now there was nonsense like above . . . when Joseph Goebbels was quoted.
Otherwise?
No.
There were all sorts of stories published back then -- and, during WWII, while a war was raging, there was celebrity front page news. Ida Lupino was the headline (actress and director). The actor
Helmut Dantine had shown up at her home the morning after her New Year's party and attacked stay over guests. Ida herself slept through it all but she was the headline and the front page news hook.
Even the 1945 shooting of actress Susan Peters didn't make the front pages outside of California (hunting accident) but Ida Lupino was front page all the way to Florida.
Otherwise, it was stories about the operation to remove the open safety pin from the throat of an infant, the Russian cowboys (don't ask), the Russian military adorning vehicles with photos of Stalin while American GIs went with pin ups, Congress whining that they couldn't live on $10,000 a year, FDR's estate going into probate, housing shortages, Canada rationing meat . . .
But amid all of that and so much more (Bob Hope's yearbook said he was destined to play Hamlet, Deanna Durbin was declared least likely to succeed . . .), if you read fake claims passed off as reality, it came from Nazi Germany's Goebbels.
(Interesting fact, the two Nazi spies captured on the eastern seaboard of the US -- one a former American servicemember -- were sentenced to death but Truman changed it to life -- but neither served life. Both would be paroled.)
Today, fake's all we get.
Over and over.
Even occupied France, back then, you had better reporting than what we get out of Iraq today from western reporters.
Of course, Baghdadi has been all the rage since Donald Trump was sworn in as US President.
We've had numerous 'concerned' and 'caring' commentators telling us that the pause in immigration Donald Trump sought (on hold due to the 9th Circuit's decision) was a gift to Baghdidi and the Islamic State.
Really?
A gift?
That's going to increase membership for ISIS?
That and not the daily bombings the US government has carried out on Iraq since August of 2014?
Seems to be that the bombings have always been what's incited populations.
Travel bans?
Not so much.
Strange though, these 'caring' and 'concerned' commentators have not yet once proposed that the daily bombings of Iraq cease.
That's the sort of thing a functioning press would address.
But, again, we don't have that today.
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