A particularly dour report on the situation in Iraq aired on this evening's NBC Nightly News (Sunday, February 26, 2006) (link with video). This is nothing new, but the last 20 seconds of the report featured remarks from a man named Nir Rosen, whom NBC innocently identified as an "Iraq analyst." Not surprisingly, Rosen is far from an impartial observer.
The Weekly Standard investigated Rosen's agenda months ago. In a "Scrapbook" article a few months back, the Standard noted that Rosen authored a September 2005 piece for UPI called, "Outside View: The Small, Daily Abu Ghraibs." The thrust of the article (emphasis mine),
"In Iraq, America is attacked because it is a brutal occupier, humiliating Iraqis, destroying villages, arresting, beating and killing countless innocent men, women and children.
"This is the main cause of the resistance."
Real balanced, eh? Rosen also penned a December 2005 article for Atlantic Monthly called, "If America Left Iraq: The case for cutting and running." The Standard wanted to know who this Nir Rosen guy is:
"Rosen's journalism is noteworthy, the editors of the Atlantic inform us, because he 'speaks Arabic' and 'has spent 16 months in Iraq,' mostly 'among ordinary Iraqis.' That, and he probably has more sources in the insurgency than any other American reporter."
The Standard cited the passage in which Rosen calls America a "brutal occupier" that kills "countless innocent men, women and children." It also cited that Rosen had written,
"America, the most powerful nation on earth, supports the Israelis and vilifies the Palestinians--and it is not just the U.S. government.
"[Last month,] a few thousand Jewish fanatics who illegally settled on occupied land in Gaza and went on the occasional pogrom, attacking Palestinians upon whose land they had settled, were given more attention and sympathy by the American media in a week or two than it has given in five years to the Palestinians whose homes have been destroyed, who are not permitted to live as humans, and who inhabit a giant prison."
The Standard concluded,
"No wonder Rosen has such great access to the Baathists and jihadists who make up the Iraqi insurgency. He's on their side."
Balanced reporting? Not on NBC News tonight.
(More by Nir Rosen. Gee, I see he's written for Salon, the New York Times Magazine, and Harper's ...)
