This is the way of warfare in the 21st century.

Any time the US military is deployed against an Arab target, Arab stringers for Western news wires instantly deploy Arab propaganda across the media, quoting unnamed “hospital officials” and random Arabs on the street to cast the most negative light possible on whatever happened. The strategy is fairly obvious: to pump out 5, 6, a dozen of these reports as quickly as possible, before the US has a chance to say anything. They know that most newspapers in the US will simply run these pieces without any editing.

By Tarek El-Tablawy for the AP: U.S. Missiles Kill 16 Fallujah Residents. (Oops. The AP has already spiked this one. Headline a little too blatantly biased, maybe? … No, it’s still there at a different address, although it doesn’t show up in a search for Falluja. Hmm.)

By Fadel Badran for al-Reuters: Falluja Blast Kills 22 Iraqis, Witnesses Blame US.

And when the US point of view does finally make it onto the wires, it gets three bland, colorless paragraphs: U.S. Says Targets Zarqawi Safe House in Iraq.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military said an airstrike in the city of Falluja on Saturday targeted a known safe house used by a network of fighters led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a militant accused of links to al Qaeda.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said he did not dispute Iraqi accounts that around 20 people were killed in the strike.

He said there was “significant intelligence” that members of the network were in the house, but there was no evidence Zarqawi himself was there.