Just Fabulism

Last week, The Telegraph ran a story by claiming that Gen. David Petraeus got into a shouting match with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki and Maliki said that he would demand that Gen. Petraeus be replaced. The author of the piece was Damien McElroy.

Did it actually happen?

Gen. Petraeus says it didn't happen. MNF-I says it didn't happen. Even the Telegraph is starting to back off the hard hitting tone of the original report, and it appears that the facts do not support the story as written.

So, how did The Telegraph run the story? It appears that they didn't bother to ask MNF-I or Gen. Petraeus for comments before running the story.

Bryan at Hot Air notes the following:

If McElroy made this conflict up or intentionally inflated it from standard and understandable differences of opinion to what he’s reporting — Maliki telling President Bush that he can’t work with Petraeus and wants him out — that’s serious misconduct. The evidence so far suggests that Petraeus’ surge strategy is working. McElroy’s reportage seems designed to destroy the Petraeus-Maliki relationship, which is arguably the most important relationship in Iraq right now. When the press makes mistakes, the mistake in question always, always paints the war as lost, the US as incompetent, the violence as even more extreme than the reality, etc. After a few years of this, these mistakes look less like mistakes and more like “mistakes.”

It goes without saying that McElroy's errors could have had the potential to turn public opinion around the war against Gen. Petraeus and further reduce the US capability to stabilize the situation in Iraq. What is McElroy's motivation in all this?