Moon of Alabama — PBS NewsHour Uses Russian Airstrike Footage While Claiming U.S. Airstrike Successes

I have found no video of U.S. hits on Islamic State oil tanker assemblies.

The U.S. PBS NewsHour did not find any either.

In their TV report yesterday about Islamic State financing and the claimed U.S. hits on oil trucks they used the videos Russia provided without revealing the source. You can see the Russian videos played within an interview with a U.S. military spokesperson at 2:22 min.

The U.S. military spokesperson speaks on camera about U.S. airforce hits against the Islamic State. The video cuts to footage taken by Russian airplanes hitting oil tanks and then trucks. The voice-over while showing the Russian video with the Russians blowing up trucks says: "For the first time the U.S. is attacking oil delivery trucks." The video then cuts back to the U.S. military spokesperson.

At no point is the Russian campaign mentioned or the source of the footage revealed.

Any average viewer of the PBS report will assume that the black and white explosions of oil trucks and tanks are from of U.S. airstrikes filmed by U.S. air force planes. 

Press freedom.

Propaganda and reality also collide in the larger U.S. policy on Syria. President Obama claims that the "overwhelming majority of people in Syria" want the Syrian President Assad to leave. But independent British polling in Syria found (pdf) that a strong plurality of Syrians prefers him as president over any of the available alternatives.

And while new research reveals extensive cooperation between NATO member and U.S. ally Turkey and the Islamic State the U.S. is asking for more cooperation with Turkey to shuffle more weapons into the Syria conflict and thereby, inevitably, also to the Islamic State. Some other U.S. allies are likewise deeply involved in financing and equipping the Islamic State.

But Kuwait just arrested a gang that was smuggling weapons from the new U.S. client state Ukraine to the Islamic State. Iraqi military and Shia militia find huge bundles of cash (vid) which were to be smuggled to the Islamic State. How does it come that the otherwise all-seeing (including your emails) U.S. secret services are unable to uncover Islamic State financing and smuggling when smaller states with much less resources can do so?

Does all this sound like the U.S. is really campaigning against the Islamic State? Or is this whole campaign just as fraudulent as the PBS video and Obama's proclamations? Why is the U.S. so deeply lost on the ‘Dark Side’ in Syria?

Moon of Alabama

PBS NewsHour Uses Russian Airstrike Footage While Claiming U.S. Airstrike Successes


"Our guys" in Syria.

Fort Russ
Sociopath Media Report - Proxy heads of the same CIA Dragon

Ollie Richardson

"Our gal" in Myanmar

NEO
Myanmar’s New Dictator: Aung San Suu Kyi

Tony Cartlucci

Don't believe everything you see and hear on social media.

Don’t get me wrong -- when major news like this breaks, social media is a formidable tool to find information, witness accounts, contacts and images. Social media today plays an indispensable role in the work of journalists, especially at AFP. Working on the ground and searching for sources remains indispensable and fundamental in our work. But it’s also necessary to be aware of the difficulty in finding the truth in the gigantic amount of information that is spewed onto social networks in a major story like this.

AFP
The truths, the half truths and the lies
Gregoire Lemarchand, head of social media at AFP in Paris

ht Lambert Strether at Naked Captialism