More on the dishonest reporting front

I believe so strongly in freedom of speech, but I also believe in "he who pays the piper calls the tune." That's why NPR's consistently anti-War agenda, which is being funded by all of the taxpayers (not just those on the Left), drives me absolutely nuts. If NPR wants to have unfettered speech, it should stop taking my money. Why am I fulminating about this today? Because I got just a few minutes of NPR this morning, and it was enough to get me ranting. It was this story, entitled "'Strategy for Victory' : Checking the Facts," that had me going. Here's the part that got my goat:

Steve Inskeep:[T]he White House strategy calls for Iraqis to replace Americans in more and more critical combat situations, and the Strategy document says that this has already happened, that Iraqis fought very well at a battle in a place called Tel Afar. Did they, Peter? Peter Kenyon: Well, they did perform better than Iraqi forces in previous operations, but it's quite a bit more complicated than that. It's not just a sectarian issue, for instance. There's an ethnic component in Tel Afar that the President didn't get into. It's true it's about 70% Sunni Muslim on the sectarian side, but both the Sunnis and Shiites there are mainly Turkoman. They have their own loyalties and divisions. In addition, many of the Iraqi fighters who went into Tel Afar came from the Kurdish Pesh Murga militia. If the President had said, "Look we sent Kurds backed by Americans in to to attack Turkoman Sunnis who were previously allied with Saddam," that might not sound so positive or reassuring. But in general, yes, that unit did perform better.

Objection, your Honor, nonresponsive. The question was "Did the Iraqi troops perform better than before?" The answer, buried in all that prevarication was "[T]hey did perform better than Iraqi forces in previous operations.... [I]n general, yes, that unit did perform better." All the other stuff about ethnic divisions is utterly irrelevant to the question, and is simply intended to cast doubt on the President's apparently accurate assertion that, in fact, Iraqi troops comported themselves well in a specific battle. Without further information -- and Kenyon gives no actual information about why the ethnic divisions mattered in Tel Afar -- it's just verbal diarrhea. That is, pointing out the fact that there were different ethnic groups involved there (which is to point out the obvious in Iraq) is merely meant to create noise obscuring what is, to NPR, the unpalatable truth -- that President Bush's assertion about Iraqi soldiers developing in strength is accurate. It's this kind of Quisling conduct that is so phenomenally dishonest. If you don't like the war, say so, but fight on honest grounds (as my anti-War blogfriends do), not with sneaky, non-responsive, irrelevant back-end attacks.