In PJ Media today I discuss how the mainstream media parrots the Democratic Party line on the Islamic State, just as it did last year when it falsely claimed that it was losing.
The Washington Post published some terrific news last Saturday:
The Islamic State’s recent defeats on the battlefield signal that its once-vaunted militia army has been hobbled by worsening money problems, desertions and a dwindling pool of fighters, analysts and monitoring groups say.
Before you break out the champagne, however, consider the fact that we have heard this before. And not only have we heard it before, but the Washington Post article then engages in revisionist media history:
Only a year ago, the Islamic State was seen as a juggernaut — rich, organized and fielding thousands of motivated fighters — that overran rival forces in Iraq and Syria with astonishing speed and brutality.
Actually, that’s not what the mainstream was telling us at all “only a year ago.”
In January 2015, The Atlantic announced:
ISIS Is Losing Its Greatest Weapon: Momentum: Evidence suggests that the Islamic State’s power has been declining for months.
A CNN headline asked in November 2014:
Has ISIS peaked? Terror Group Suffers Setbacks in Iraq.
CNN followed that a few weeks later with:
For ISIS, Tough Times as it Seeks to Regroup.
The New York Times announced on February 4, 2015:
ISIS Is Losing in Iraq.
On April 15, 2015, Vox issued its own report:
ISIS is Losing.
That was all about a year ago. But in this current Washington Post report, we hear that they’re losing now, and that a year ago they were “a juggernaut.”
The mainstream media was wrong then; they’re telling us the same thing now and pretending last year’s coverage never happened. Makes this new report hard to accept at face value.
Their new report also says:
U.S. military officials estimate that the group has lost as much as 40 percent of the territory it held in Iraq and as much as 20 percent in Syria. Kurdish and Arab forces, including Iraq’s increasingly competent military, have advanced against the group with the help of airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition.
Here again, this would be most welcome and encouraging news, were it not for the fact that the Pentagon was caught last April falsifying its maps of Islamic State territory to make the Obama airstrikes appear more successful than they really had been.
So what is really going on here? Why is the Washington Post and so much of the mainstream media so anxious to pronounce the Islamic State dead, when in fact no one has managed to dislodge the Islamic State from its main power centers in Iraq and Syria, and it is gaining ground in Libya?
The answer is not hard to fathom. The Washington Post and its cohorts today are essentially the Propaganda Ministry of the Democratic Party and of Barack Obama in particular. During his State of the Union address in January, Obama said:
For more than a year, America has led a coalition of more than 60 countries to cut off ISIL’s financing, disrupt their plots, stop the flow of terrorist fighters, and stamp out their vicious ideology. With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we’re taking out their leadership, their oil, their training camps, their weapons. We’re training, arming, and supporting forces who are steadily reclaiming territory in Iraq and Syria.
When the Post follows up on these declarations of success with a report about how the Islamic State is losing ground, it makes the president look good, and makes it more likely that more Democrats will be elected in his wake.
That’s what this is really all about. To get real news, you cannot turn to sources such as the Post and the New York Times and CNN any more. They all just reflect the liberal establishment line….
Read the rest here.

ICH says
WOW very very interesting
this is the reason Trump is so popular
We cant trust the politicians or the so called news
susan says
The last time we were told that ISIS is losing or contained (courtesy of Obama), Paris was attacked nine hours later. Two weeks later, the San Bernardino shootings by MUSLIMS supporting ISIS. This is no coincidence.
Walter Sieruk says
First.If and that really is “If” that demonic and deadly jihad entity ISIS is actually losing ground then it’s not because the WASHINGTON POST had declared so. Neither is it because of the weak politicians of the left with their useless foreign policies. It might be that if ISIS is really starting to lose ground it’s because the God of the Bible would detest that brutal and murdering jihad entity, ISIS, and also because of the brave and courageous actions and efforts of the Kurdish fighters and other gallant people who go against ab battle the vicious and callous characters who compose ISIS. Second, its well worth repeating that most people know that the head and chief of ISIS is the man named Al -Baghdadi. Nevertheless, few people seen to know that Al Baghdadi just a figure head and puppet ruler of ISIS. The real actual head and chief of ISIS is someone else. That “someone else” who is the actual head and chief of ISIS has been exposed by the Christian author, Charles Dyer, in his book THE ISIS CRISIS Which informs the reader on page 116 that “The ultimate commander of ISIS remains unseen by most of his followers, but he is not unknown. This is Satan himself. …Satan moves across the earth ‘like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour’ [First Peter 5:8.]” Therefore, the brutal malicious and murdering jihadist fiends who compose ISIS are ,in reality, just deluded and dangerous fools who are being then used as stooges and tools by and for Satan to inflect awful and terrible harm on humankind. Third, all this hideous wickedness and deluded insanity of the fiendish jihadists of ISIS is a reminder of the teachings of the Bible. Which reads “The hearts of men are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterwards they join the dead.” Ecclesiastes 9:3. [N.I.V.}
Walter Sieruk says
If the WASHINGTON POST is really printing the truth about ISIS starting to lose round, then that good news. As doubtful and that “news ” may be . Lets hope it’s true. Nevertheless, the facts of reality about the hideously demonic jihad entity ISIS and the cruel vicious fiendish jihad thugs who compose it is well worth reiterating. Which is that the ruthless brutal ,malicious and murdering jihadist savages who are members of it are ,so very , bloodthirsty, ruinous and murderous that they are similar to, in character, the heinous villains described in the Bible. Which reads “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” Romans 3:15-17. [N.I.V.]
mortimer says
WHICH WRITER OR EDITOR at The Washington Post has actually read an Islamic source text: the Sira, the hadiths, the Koran, the canonical commentaries, the Sharia law manual? How about Islamic history?
No one? Then, in what manner does not doing the basic study of Islamic source material make anybody at The Washington Post an EXPERT on Islam?
How does NOT reading the source material qualify The Washington Post to write about Islam?
John Johness says
It is more of a forlorn hope. So many people are hoping that the nasty people will go away and all the nice smiling people will win. it is “cute puppy” thinking. No matter what proof is brought up, many people first deny it and then shy away from it.
IS is not just a geographically bounded state. If they are wiped out in Syria or iraq, it is of no long term consequence as along as they have a their madrasas and mosques in every country. The Caliphate is basic to Sunni Islam and whoever is the strongest and most enduring will become the Caliphate.
The quickest way to stop this absurdity is for the Saudis to declare themselves the Caliphate. They already have Mecca an Medina.
Angemon says
I want to say “can you guess the 2017 headlines?” but it’s not that simple – there will be propaganda during election time and, if a Republican does get elected, I don’t expect “ISIS is losing ground” headlines to abound.
Lawrence says
I’m amazed you publish at PJMedia, since you are one of very few real scholars to publish there, especially since the passing of Barry Rubin. PJMedia is a giddy site, that’s not far removed from National Enquirer level of discourse and understanding re political culture.
I mean that news site is run by former know-nothing liberal writer Roger Simon, now know-nothing conservative writer Roger Simon, who last I checked was all giddy over Donald Trump, because not a Democrat or something.
I guess it’s not a bad thing publishing there, I mean it raises the bar, but unfortunately the fluff at that site remains.