This will be the first diary entry in a series which explores how Yahoo! spins the headlines on a daily and hourly basis.
Your first headline is below the flip.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050511/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
Yahoo! Headline:
Marines Push Towards Iraq's Syrian Border
You can just hear the headline writer wrapping himself in the flag, portraying American troops heroically marching towards the border, doing some good towards defending freedom.
Unfortunately, the headline is a pure smokescreen what should be the headline:
Insurgents kidnapped the provincial governor as a bargaining chip.
At least three Marines were reported killed and 20 wounded during the first three days of the offensive -- the biggest U.S. operation since Fallujah was taken from extremists six months ago.
After intense fighting with militants entrenched on the south bank of the Euphrates River early in the operation, Marines saw only light resistance Tuesday and advanced through sparsely populated settlements along a 12-mile stretch to the border with Syria, according to a Chicago Tribune reporter embedded with the assault, James Janega.
Adel Izzedine left on foot with his wife and three children, walking six miles through farm fields to reach a village where the family caught a taxi and drove 43 miles to Rawa, east of the fighting.
"There are gunmen in the city, but there are also a lot of innocent civilians," said Izzedine, who was looking for a mosque or a school in which to spend the night. "We are living the same misery that Fallujah lived some time ago."
Gunmen kidnapped Anbar's governor Tuesday morning and told his family he would be released only when U.S. forces withdrew from Qaim, the town 200 miles west of Baghdad where the offensive began late Saturday. Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was seized as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi, his brother, Hammad, told The Associated Press.
At one point, the paper said, a Marine walked into a house and a fighter hiding in the basement fired through a floor grate, killing him. Another Marine suffered shrapnel wounds when an insurgent threw a grenade through the window of a house where he was retrieving a wounded comrade, the Times said.
Insurgents attacked a Marine convoy late Monday near a U.S. base in Qaim with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and two suicide car bombs, a Marine spokesman, Capt. Jeffrey Pool, said. One explosion damaged a Humvee, and a suicide car bomber was destroyed by a Marine tank. No Marines were killed and 10 insurgents surrendered in the incident, Pool said.
At least two car bombs exploded Tuesday in downtown Baghdad, targeting U.S. and Iraqi troops. At least nine Iraqis were killed and 19 wounded, the Interior Ministry said. One of the bombs wounded three American soldiers, a U.S. military spokeswoman, Capt. Kelly Lewis, said.
Does this sound like "Freedom is on the march?" Hardly. How about this alternate headline to those morons at the AP?
"Iraqi Governor and Family Kidnapped After Military Action; Iraqi Violence Rages On Amid Fears of Another Fallujah"