If there is a faux photography scandal now, Al Jazeera regularly recycled photos of dead women and children to use for its news stories. On the website, the same images would be used to describe attacks that happened much later, with virulent anti-American captions. Al Jazeera regularly quoted individuals on the street who espoused conspiracy theories with no proof, and always a very strong hatred/opposition to American forces. There were Quran desecration accusations, rape accusations, indescriminate killing of civilian accusations, all from “civilains” so Al Jazeera never had to follow up on the claims made on their airwaves, and on their website. From 2003-04, I counted 65 straight anti-American quotes from people on the street in Al Jazeera articles on Iraq online. I wanted to see how long the streak would last, but I had to travel abroad.

Al Jazeera was labeled as the insurgent channel because when “holy warriors” kidnapped civilians, attacked government officials, or killed Iraqi or coalition soldiers, their subsequent videos usually made it to Al Jazeera. And despite the objections of a few senior Al Jazeera officials, most were aired without editing. I think the responsibilty Al Jazeera holds for the devestation beset upon Iraqi civilians began to dawn on the satellite channel in 2005. There was a decided move not to air as many kidnapping and martyrdom videos. If they were aired, they would be cut slightly and Al Jazeera officials would claim they were edited to only show segments with news value.

The sad fact is that as bad as sectarian violence is inside Iraq now, if the violence was just contained to elements inside Iraq there might have been a chance for an eventual peaceful resolution. With Iran and Syria actively supporting the insurgency, and elements inside Saudi Arabia and Al Jazeera actively promoting jihad to the Middle East and North Africa, a Democratic Iraq may not be possible.

That’s an assinine argument against profiling (racial or otherwise). So far, not one homicide bomber has been an 80 year old white woman. I dare to speculate that recruiting in this demographic would be quite difficult for the Islamic extremists. It’s not “dumb” to look at historical data and use that information to adjust our security accordingly. There’s nothing “racial” about it. It’s just common sense.

[tangent: Aside from the somewhat racist undertones, it’s a dumb idea to racially profile at airport security. It means that the terrorists will recruit people who look like they fit in with ‘normal’ white Americans. The only way to be truly safe is to screen and suspect everyone.]