With Barely Contained Admiration

Stephen Hurst's Associated Press story celebrating reporting the deaths of six US soldiers in Iraq yesterday contains not grudging, but barely contained admiration for the Sunni insurgents/terrorists responsible.

BAGHDAD - Sunni insurgents, resilient despite the five-week security crackdown in the capital, killed at least six more U.S. troops over the weekend. A Sunni car bomber hit a largely Shiite district in the capital Sunday, killing at least eight people.

The American military said four U.S. soldiers died and one was wounded when the unit was struck by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad. During the ongoing security sweep in the capital and surrounding regions, the battalion had found eight weapons caches and two roadside bombs and helped rescue a kidnap victim, the military said.

A fifth soldier was killed in an explosion in Diyala, an increasingly volatile province just northeast of the capital. A Marine died in fighting the same day in Anbar province, the vast, largely desert region that sprawls west of Baghdad to the Saudi Arabian, Jordanian and Syrian borders.

All of the U.S. victims were killed on Saturday, the military said in a series of statements that also reported that a seventh soldier died from non-combat injuries but gave no other details.

While U.S. and Iraqi troops have flooded the Baghdad streets and a heavily armored American column was sent north to adjacent Diyala province, attacks on American and Iraqi forces have been robust.

Ahem.  U.S. military personnel should never be referred to as "victims."  This reference exposes the mindset of the AP.  Meanwhile, the success of the "surge" in actually clearing insurgents and their weapons and improving the statistics on American soldiers goes unmentioned.

Police said the bodies of 16 people, most shot in the head and showing signs of torture, were found dumped nationwide, just five of them in Baghdad.

Unsourced, or rather, anonymously sourced.  I wonder if Capt. Jamil Hussein has made another appearance?  Did Mr. Hurst verify this report with second sourcing?  These are the kind of doubts that creep into your head after the "burning Sunni's" story proved false.

3/19/07 1100: Jules Crittenden noticed the same thing about the "resilient insurgency."

But that’s what good propaganda is all about! Then we get to this: 

While U.S. and Iraqi troops have flooded the Baghdad streets and a heavily armored American column was sent north to adjacent Diyala province, attacks on American and Iraqi forces have been robust.

The resilient enemy is also robust! Strangely, no mention of the “dozens” of resilient, robust insurgents who were granted martyrdom in that action in Diyala.

You might also have mentioned that crack about the "U.S. victims."