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The desecration of the al-Askariyah mosque in Samarra, a sacred Shiite Moslem shrine whose golden dome was bombed last year, was the Story of the Day. However it topped a very light news agenda. Only ABC led with the destruction of the Iraqi mosque's minarets. CBS and NBC led with items that were not deemed newsworthy enough to be covered by any other network: NBC chose its in-house political opinion poll; CBS the closing of the gun control loophole that was exposed by the murder-suicide this spring at Virginia Tech.

After the dome, the next step in the terrorist demolition of the shrine was "two century-old minarets," noted NBC's Jim Maceda. They leave "a lone clock tower as the defining feature of the sacred Shiite mosque," according to ABC's John Hendren (subscription required). Hendren's unidentified sources with the US military told him that the towers were "toppled by explosives placed inside the mosque, suggesting a serious security lapse." CBS' Lara Logan was emphatic: "Those security forces failed spectacularly" while NBC's Maceda reported that "police collusion with insurgents is being investigated."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fingered al-Qaeda as the culprit and ordered a curfew in Baghdad to forestall a repeat of the revenge violence that followed the destruction of the dome 16 months ago. ABC anchor Charles Gibson interviewed Gen David Petraeus, who called the destruction of the minarets "a serious blow" and described his "terrible sinking feeling" when he heard about it. Petraeus stopped short of definitively blaming al-Qaeda although he noted that the operation "fits the hallmarks." CBS' Logan was not so cautious. She interpreted the desecration as "al-Qaeda showing it can still seize the initiative and undermine US promises to provide security." Reflecting on Petraeus' comments, ABC's Martha Raddatz (at the tail of the Petraeus videostream) called him "one of the most optimistic people I have ever met" yet even he "looked very uncomfortable" as he had "a hard time painting a positive picture." For an overview, CBS had David Martin survey the Pentagon's latest report on the progress of the so-called surge of troop strength. The overall level of violence "remains unchanged" in Iraq: sectarian killings and marketplace bombings have declined while sabotage of bridges and attacks using enhanced explosive devices "smuggled in from Iran" are on the increase.

A day after the State Department issued its annual report on global trends in slave labor, indentured servitude and forced prostitution, NBC's Andrea Mitchell investigated the Persian Gulf construction contractor First Kuwaiti. She interviewed a former employee, Rory Mayberry, who alleged that First Kuwaiti enticed a planeload of Filipino workers with promises of employment in Dubai and then coerced them as "forced labor" to work on a different, more dangerous project. No prizes for guessing the name of First Kuwaiti's client: the State Department. The project was the $600m, 21-building "fortified complex as big as Vatican City" that is to become the new US Embassy in Baghdad.

Andrew Tyndall 6/14/07 9:31:13 pm

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