from the First Casualty of War department

Dexter Filkins in the NY Times

Military officials retracted a report today that two American soldiers had been slashed in their throats in an attack Sunday in the northern city of Mosul.

and...

The military official said that contrary to some reports, the men had not been beaten by rocks or mutilated in any way.

and more disturbingly...

Another mystery was the initial reports about the men having their throats cut. The official could offer no explanation for that.

It's hard to know what to make of this.  One of these scenarios describes the facts, so either the retraction is spin or the initial reports were hyperbole.  The  only non-sinister explanation I can come up with is that a hysterical kid told some GIs that their friends had been slaughtered in his neighborhood, leading to translation errors which made it to a CentCom press release before it became apparent what had happened.

I hope that's what happened, because regardless of which story is correct, none of the other explanations for the disparity are encouraging.  It's bad enough having to ask myself what these guys died for without having to ask myself whether their deaths are being used for somebody's propaganda purposes.  Unfortunately, both the insurgents and CentCom seem capable of doing just that.