A Friendly Wednesday Reality Check

1. The Associated Press is peopled by real journalists.

2. Journalists are required, by the ethical canons of their profession, to protect the identities of sources who request confidentiality. This can be done in numerous ways, up to and including using false names ("Deep Throat," anyone?) to refer to their sources in print media. It is, in fact, almost as common as the "senior administration officials" choosing not to have their names published whilst leaking information to the press.

3. Real journalists are not required to turn over the names of their confidential sources to the raving wingnuts of Red State, Powerline, Little Green Fascists, or any other blogger, collective or otherwise, to splash all over the internet as they desire. This is not "stonewalling." This is called "protecting one's sources." Real journalists have, in fact, been known to go to jail for refusing to turn such information over at far more official requests than the spittle-flecked demands of bloviating lunatics searching for evidence of the vast left-wing media conspiracy determined to "lose" Iraq.

4. If you cannot believe that the clusterfuck currently underway in Iraq is, in fact, a clusterfuck because some "leftist 'news' organization spreading enemy propaganda" told you that it's a clusterfuck, you need to step away from your computer, go to the local recruiter's office, and sign up for a hitch to see if for yourself. Because, really, when every major news organization in the world that doesn't include "Fox" in its name agrees that a situation is a clusterfuck? Then it's a clusterfuck. And it's not "propaganda" to report that, only reality.