Shoot the Messenger!

     All the top rightwing blogs, whose names definitely don't deserve mention, are all over the AP incident reported below.  AP is their new Dan Rather.  Things to note

• The photographer was an Iraqi.  Lots of dumbkopfs are asking "Why was he there?" and the answer is because America is too expensive on Iraqi AP stringer pay.
  • As a corollary, the Iraqi in question has been living in a war zone for the last year and two thirds, is it entirely surprising that, to get a photo, he might not run for cover?
• Other nimcompoops are asking "How could this possibly have been anything but pre-arranged?  The answer is that there are lot of photographers in Iraq, and, sadly, roughly 98,000 +/- 37,000 _extra_ dead Iraqis.  That one assasination is captured can hardly seem a radical notion.
• If you were in charge of AP, and this picture came into your hands, would you run it?  I hope you would do some inquiry as to its source.

     What I see, among our less enlightened brethren on the "right," is simply a really awful need to explain away all the bad news coming from Iraq.  Rather than blame their leaders, or their war planners, or the nature of the premeditated Iraq War, they choose to blame the messenger.