Al Qaeda Bombs Found at Iraq Girls School, Media Couldn't Care Less

May 4th, 2007 10:05 AM

Are the media intentionally downplaying or ignoring reports that indicate a growing al Qaeda involvement in Iraq?

Late Thursday evening, CNN.com reported (h/t LGF, emphasis added):

American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged "death trap," the U.S. military said Thursday.”

This was a compilation of a report that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer did earlier in the day on “The Situation Room.”

However, Stars and Stripes actually reported Tuesday that military officials shared this information on Monday (emphasis added):

U.S. soldiers in Baghdad have found and defused “numerous” improvised explosives planted in a school for girls that was set to reopen later this month, military officials said Monday. 

So, four days have passed, and with the exception of one CNN report and one short UPI article Thursday, no other American media outlet has covered this story. Is it possible that this final sentence in the Stars and Stripes article is the reason:

U.S. officials attributed the planted explosives to members of al-Qaida in Iraq.

In fact, the UPI report conveniently omitted this little detail.

For its part, CNN did include it at its website, and handled it thusly on “The Situation Room”:

MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM CALDWELL, MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE, IRAQ: And, Wolf, as we've gone through and removed these artillery shells from the school, we -- as I said, they were in the ceilings, which would have caused, you know, the explosion down and caused the other floors to cave in. They were found in the floors. They were at the doors to the classrooms, where the children -- the girls -- would have been in. I mean it was truly just an incredibly ugly, dirty kind of vicious killing that would have gone on here by al Qaeda.

WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Oh, you suspect al Qaeda was responsible for this plot?

CALDWELL: Well, we do. We do, because of the nature in which this thing had been put together, the sophistication in which it would have been pulled and laid out.

Any ideas why the media would ignore this?