 |
         
|
Yesterday (text link) we complained about the absence of any reporting to tie suspected al-Qaeda militants in the Iraqi city of Baqubah to Osama bin Laden's chain of command. Here comes CBS' Sheila MacVicar to connect the dots. She reported that bin Laden's top deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri "urged foreign fighters to take their campaign of terror beyond Iraq's borders" with targets in Europe and the Persian Gulf. Militants in Iraq are "battle-hardened survivors of the world's toughest urban guerrilla fighting," noted MacVicar. "If Afghanistan was a school, Iraq is a university," proclaims one Website. The current route for foreign radicals is a direct flight from Europe to Irbil in Kurdistan. MacVicar's spook sources told her that for those who stay alive long enough to acquire that on-the-job training, Algeria is the "gateway to Europe" on their return.
On NBC, Lisa Myers turned to the Pakistan-Germany terrorist pipeline. She reminded us that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the attacks of September 11th, 2001, was based in Hamburg. And in his Exclusive on Monday about the Taliban's assignment of suicide bomb squads to German targets, ABC's Brian Ross pointed out that Germany is a leader among the NATO forces in Afghanistan. In the wake of the arrest of three German Islamists in Pakistan, Myers quoted "dire warnings" from German security officials. Yet unidentified western spook sources told her the warning was not triggered by a specific plot, only "troubling indicators." There is "no plan to issue travel warnings to Americans headed to Germany this summer."
ABC's report from Afghanistan chose heartwarming over ominous. Filed by Damian Grammaticus of the BBC, ABC's newsgathering partner, it showed the emergency cesarean operation on an eight-months pregnant women who had been shot in the belly as part of a family feud. The bullet had lacerated the fetus, leaving a four-inch gash in its back. ABC's Stephanopoulos presented the effort by US medics in a military field hospital as part of the "constant struggle for hearts and minds in Afghanistan" but there was no need to exaggerate the consequence of the emergency surgery. It was riveting anough. And anyway, the mother's wound had little to do with war: her relative "was probably trying to kill her baby," Grammaticus mused. Mother and son survived.
You must be logged in to this website to leave a comment. Please click here to log in so you can participate in the discussion.
