Iraq - BBC Blind From Baghdad

That's one reason their reporting in Iraq is so biased and full of errors.

Take the headline of this recent article. Iraq rebels 'flushed out by US' Now they're "rebels" and not insurgents or even militants. This dispite the fact that the vast majority are foreign fighters.

Then the errors start.

But there were no reports that they had entered Qaim, a town close to the border known for its insurgent activity.

I guess Fox News gets better reports then.

The U.S. offensive began May 7 in Qaim, a town 200 miles northwest of Baghdad on the southern bank of the Euphrates River. [...]

When U.S. forces entered the village on May 8,...

And continue.

The BBC's Jim Muir, in Baghdad, says the operation appears to have exacerbated tribal tensions in the area.

Why the nerve of those pesky Americans, exacerbating tribal tensions while "killing more than 125 terrorists, wounding many others and detaining 39 "of intelligence value" and captureing equipment that would have killed many more innocent people.

Numerous weapons caches containing machine guns, mortar rounds and rockets were discovered. Six car bombs and material for making other improvised explosive devises were also found, the statement said.

Notice the BBC blame the operation for rising tribal tensions. How would Muir know, he's in Baghdad. But Fox News has imbedded reporters with the Marines and they note:

Residents acknowledged fighting in Qaim and surrounding villages began before the U.S. offensive, characterizing it as tribal clashes.

Then the BBC just toss this tid bit out implying it was the fault of the Marines.

"I left al-Qaim with nothing. My five-year-old son was killed in the clashes," Hassan al-Kubaissi, 34, told the news agency.

But the BBC just told you the Marines never entered Qaim. So by their account the US could not have killed his son. His son could have been killed by the terrorists, a rival tribe or in a cross fire from terrorists shooting at each other.

Rival groups of terrorists also were fighting among themselves around Qaim, trading mortar, rocket and machine gun fire almost nightly, Pool said.

So, how did the locals feel about the operation?

"Throughout the course of the operation, Marines strove to ensure the well-being of the local Iraqi citizens," the statement said. "According to commanders in the area, the Marines were greeted with greater hospitality from local villagers than is normally encountered."

The truth does not matter to the BBC and they will say anything if it makes the US look bad. Morons.

UPDATE

Chrenkoff has more including this:

"The city of Qaim lies destroyed," intones BBC's Fergal Parkinson over the close-up footage of a bombed-out house, an otherwise brave statement considering that Operation Matador lasted a mere few days, involved only 1,000 American troops backed by helicopters, and Qaim wasn't even the main target of operations. In any case, Qaim is not a little village that can be easily flattened in a skirmish, but a town of 50,000.

As does Bill Roggio who informs us:

The Hindustan Times backs up the assertion that there was a conflict between al Qaeda and the local tribes:

According to witnesses and the US military, the offensive triggered intense clashes in the town of Al-Qaim between fighters loyal to Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq and the most wanted militant in the country, and a rival Sunni tribe in the border city.

It must be remembered the local leaders in Qaim requested US intervention.

But you wouldn't know any of that if you listened to the BBC.
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