CENTCOM and the Pentagon continue to report atrocities, the Pentagon briefing typically repeating CENTCOM's and adding a few of its own, then CENTCOM adding those (added by Pentagon) the next day along with new ones of their own. And the cycle repeats.

CENTCOM and the Pentagon continue to take credit for preventing that which never occurred. Recently added to stopping the destruction of oil wells (both north and south) was prevention of blowing a dam near Karbala and another one elsewhere. In all cases this was attributed to the excellence of the plan and the remarkable speed with which troops advanced.

These 'preventions' have to be highly questionable at best. Iraq had WEEKS to set up explosives for later detonation of all oil wells and at any dams of their choosing. Indeed reports pre-war had them doing exactly that. So now we are to believe that they were so incompetent as to be unable to push the plunger to set the explosives off?!?!?!

CENTCOM last night made a brief unscheduled announcement that a soldier had been rescued by a classic joint operation involving Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Navy pilots and Marines. In the regular morning briefing limited footage of military-shot video was shown.

It was indeed a rescue in any sense of the word, and I'm sure everyone is delighted that Pfc. Lynch is in good hands and now has excellent medical care available to her.
But, is the CENTCOM account deliberately calculated to make far more out of it than it was?
Nasiriya had been reported fully taken by March 30, with only minor pockets of resistence needing action. Indeed 3 senior Iraqi military were also reported as captured there by that date.
CENTCOM reported undergoing fire going into the hospital and upon exiting it (none inside of it) and reported too that the hospital had obviously been taken over for military use some time in the recent past.
CENTCOM reported that in addition to the live soldier 2 bodies were recovered from the hospital morgue and that a civilian walked them to a shallow grave holding 9 other bodies. All bodies were also recovered on the rescue mission.
It later came to light that an informer had detailed the existence and location of the rescued soldier.
The footage shown by CENTCOM was remarkable in its UNremarkability.
While I don't think that CENTCOM has lied, I do have a strong suspicion that they are leaving it to our own imaginations to fill in the details and that the mission probably was actually rather mundane in terms of action.

Truth is the first casualty of war.

I'm still waiting to see if CNN 'disciplines" Christiane Amanpour. Yesterday, talking with Bill Hemmer, I'm sure that I heard her say that she had never heard a lie yet from Iraqi government officials. Hemmer's jaw dropped and he exclaimed "Never?!?!" and she replied "Never.". They then cut to a commercial.