Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Zarqawi Truthiness

* AP:
" A medic spent about 20 minutes trying to save Abu Musab al-Zarqawi even as blood ran from the terrorist's mouth after the airstrike that mortally wounded him, the U.S. military said Monday... U.S. officials previously had said al-Zarqawi mumbled and tried to roll off a stretcher before dying at the bombed house outside Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad...
U.S. forces arrived about 28 minutes after the 6:12 p.m. airstrike Wednesday and a coalition medic began treating al-Zarqawi, who was having difficulty breathing. The terror leader died at 7:04 p.m...
The military has promised to release a more detailed timeline of events in the next few days.
A senior Iraqi official said Sunday that U.S. troops may have arrived at the safehouse as much as an hour after the attack -- far longer than the 28 minutes Caldwell said it took them to get there.
Iraqi National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told CNN the Iraqi police reached the house first. He said coalition forces arrived after ''an hour or so.''
jeebus. not even the AP believes them now.

* meanwhile, the AP is simultaneously reporting:
"Lt. Col. Thomas Fisher of the 1st Battalion, 68th Armored Cavalry said his men showed up at the site about five minutes after the blast and cordoned it off."
* and there was this in the NYT june 10:
"In Hibhib, Lt. Col. Thomas Fisher, in charge of a group of American soldiers patrolling the overall area, said he was ordered late Wednesday to get his men as quickly as possible to the site, what was described as a "time sensitive target." His earliest soldiers got there 90 minutes after the airstrike; an American commando team had already come and gone."
in the world of Truthiness, you get to choose which version of the story you like - so take your pick
a) 5 mins
b) 28 mins
c) an hour
d) 90 mins
e) all of the above
(NB: there is no right answer - just choose whichever you prefer)

2 comments:

Don said...

I'm looking at option 'e':

1 hour: total time debating whether or not he'd exhausted his boogiemanhood

28 min: the total time from decision to whack him to the second bomb detonating, including transmission of order, and upload of target data and diversion of F-16s

90 min: total time spent on phones by 'anonymous sources' spinning the story to the media shills du jour

and...

5 minutes: the absolute maximum time that could possibly have been spent getting the stories straight to result in this morass of immediately conflicting accounts

lukery said...

don: "the absolute maximum time that could possibly have been spent getting the stories straight"
lol

they really fucked it up didnt they!

was it yogi berra who said that the thing about telling the truth is that you dont have to remember very much?