Pentagon expels reporter from Iraq (he revealed the location of a Marine unit during CNN interview)

BOSTON - A freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor and London's Daily Telegraph has been ordered out of Iraq (news - web sites) after the Pentagon (news - web sites) said he revealed the location of a Marine unit during a television interview.

Philip Smucker was not embedded but joined the First Marine Division on Sunday along with a Monitor photographer.

Smucker reported the unit's location Wednesday during an interview on CNN, according to the Pentagon.

"My understanding of the facts at this point from the commander on the ground is that this reporter was reporting, in real time, positions, locations and activities of units engaged in combat," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in a statement to the Monitor. "The commander felt it was necessary and appropriate to remove (Smucker) from his immediate battle space in order not to compromise his mission or endanger personnel of his unit."

Monitor Editor Paul Van Slambrouck wrote on the newspaper's Web site Thursday that Smucker did not reveal any information not already available.

"We have read the transcript of the CNN interview and it does not appear to us that he disclosed anything that wasn't already widely available in maps and in U.S. and British radio, newspaper, and television reports in that same news cycle," Van Slambrouck wrote.

Smucker, 41, an American based in Cairo, will be reassigned within the region, the Monitor said. The photographer who had been traveling with him remained in Iraq and the paper said it still had two reporters there.

Those who have documented the Muslim jihad that Clinton backed in Kosovo against the Serbs remember this liar and jihad sympathizer:

The Media's War Against the Serbs by Stella L. Jatras 1/15/01

Case in point. On 6 August 1998, the Washington Times featured "stringer" Philip Smucker's exclusive front page headline read: "Kosovar bodies bulldozed to dump; Serbs deny massacre, but evidence [not "alleged," or "thought-to-be], but "evidence impossible to avoid of mass graves containing the bodies of 567." He also claimed that at least half of the bodies were those of women and children although, to that point, the alleged bodies had not been exhumed. To further embellish his story, Smucker went on to say, "Stark evidence in the form of freshly turned earth and the overwhelming stench of death has exposed the presence of scores of bodies that were bulldozed into a garbage dump after a Serbian attack against ethnic Albanian rebels who tried to seize this town." Even a photograph accompanied Smucker's article with the caption, "A news photographer shoots a picture of fresh graves – some identified with ethnic Albanian names – in the Kosovar town of Orahovac," (Kosova is the Albanian name given to Kosovo).

However, on the very same day, the Guardian [UK] of 6 August 1998, reported, "European Union (EU) observers found no evidence of mass graves reported in the town of Orahovac, the teams' Austrian leader, Walter Ebenberger, said." In contrast to the front page coverage given to Mr. Smucker's intended shock-attention report on Serb atrocities, the following day the Washington Times carried a small, barely noticeable item hidden on page A15 (World Scene, 7 August 1998), which stated, "NATO Chief [Secretary-General Javier Solana] dismissed mass graves in Kosovo."

In all honesty, does it not bother the editors at the Washington Times that "stringer" Smucker's report of 6 August was a vicious lie? There were no mass graves containing the bodies of 567 ethnic Albanian victims; but there it was, on the front page. I stand in awe of the fact that truth in journalism is what they want it to be, what sells, and that articles by Mr. Smucker required, in the Times' judgment, no documentation, no verification, no responsibility, and apparently were accepted without question. Smucker's was the kind of reporting that played right into Clinton's New World Order scheme and at the same time, helped to prepare the minds of Americans to accept whatever punishment we dished out against the Serbian people, including NATO's 78 days of bombing in an unmerciful, unjust and immoral air war led by the United States. It was this kind of vile reporting that caused so many people to say, "After all, they [the Serbs] deserve it!"

Salute to the Jatars'

Y'all should read Stella's full article.

I have a message for Van Slambrouck; it's not his flipp'n call.

As to the Dutz reporter Philip Smucker, getting tossed I hope he got escorted to the airplane by 2 of the biggest and meanest Marine SPs in country and that they unceremoniously tossed his keester onto the plane out of country.

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