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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is Not Dead!

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is Not Dead!

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Earlier today someone managed to alter an Islamic State news release turning it into an announcement that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi had been killed in an air strike. This is not the first time that al Baghdadi has been alleged to have been killed, and like the previous instances it is also incorrect. He is still alive. According to the Independent the story was picked up by Iraqi media, then spread from there to Turkish, Russian, Indian, and ultimately western news media. It is important to note/keep in mind that the Iraqi news media will report gossip as factual events, which doesn’t make them all that different from American news media now that I think about it…

Reader Interactions

60Comments

  1. 1.

    Alain the site fixer

    Well so much for one piece of good news for the day!

    Service notice: in the next few minutes I will be updating the site and that will likely be a few minutes of file transfers.it’s all working well on the test sever so no surprises expected. Although I have planned, so I can undo should it be necessary.

  3. 3.

    Zinsky

    It doesn’t matter a whit whether an ISIS leader is killed as this will not, in itself, cause the group to collapse. We need to stop killing Muslims and they might reciprocate and stop killing us. That, and taking away the incentive for young people to join ISIS.

  5. 5.

    Mike in NC

    Iraqi news media will report gossip as factual events, which doesn’t make them all that different from American news media now that I think about it…

    Roger that!

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    So….does this mean there’s still hope for Generalissimo Francisco Franco?

    On edit: Drat, sigaba beat me to it…

  8. 8.

    Alain the site fixer

    Well that sucked. Need to work on this more; the files all work, it’s the update and permissions mechanism that are out of whack. Sorry for the bother!

  16. 16.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Gin & Tonic: Yeah I see that. Let me finish up the manual update process; if it makes the site go kaput again, I’ll restore so there may be a few more minutes of confusion. I’ll then adjust social sharing features, etc. The theme has had three updates so there are likely some new quirks to annoy me.

  17. 17.

    Shell

    Apparently Trump is doubling down on his treatment of the press.

    Yup, pissing off the press. Thats a good strategy.

  19. 19.

    Alain the site fixer

    So I’m doing the WordPress update (finally) manually. If it goes bad, I will need to restore the backup which may take a bit. This is a necessary update.

  24. 24.

    Cluttered Mind

    @Shell: It raises an interesting question though. The press has never had to cover an election before where both candidates hated reporters. Makes one wonder how the coverage is going to work, where the slant will come in, etc. Hillary Clinton has (justifiably) hated reporters for years, and now we have an opponent running against her who is even worse. Should be worth a bucket of popcorn at least.

  33. 33.

    schrodinger's cat

    This makes me hungry. Back story: Bagdadi was a great little hole-in-the-wall place behind Gateway of India, where you get the biggest and the best tandoori rotis (like naan but thinner and without yeast) in Mumbai. Started by a man who came from Bagdad in the 1920s, still open AFAIK.

    *Edit function is still not working.

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    I watched it on white house.gov.

    Terrific speech, naturally. I’m glad he took on that stupid shibboleth “radical Islam” and, without once mentioning the name Donald Trump*, made it abundantly clear how truly dangerous that kind of rhetoric is.

    *(He did say “the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States,” so there wasn’t a lot of doubt.)

  42. 42.

    Alain the site fixer

    This is a test. Twitter hover image is gone now.[
    So I can edit it but I’m an admin. Let me try from another device/nym.

  45. 45.

    Miss Bianca

    @SiubhanDuinne: OK, did I hear the same set of remarks that the news people did? Because in no way, shape or form could I have interpreted what I heard as a “tirade”. Course, I didn’t see where he addressed the “radical Islam” terminology either, so maybe I just ended up listening to the wrong briefing! Oh, well.

  52. 52.

    Peale

    @Zinsky: Problem is that a major incentive against joining ISIS is that if you join, someone is going to try to kill you. I mean, if you want to join because you believe in their project, there isn’t much that can be done in terms of disincentives, since we certainly aren’t going to be signing on to that project.

  53. 53.

    low-tech cyclist

    Damn. He’s worth 56 points for me in the Death Pool I’m in if he croaks.

  54. 54.

    Archon

    @Zinsky:

    A group organized around the principles of ISIS prepared to commit horrible atrocities in furthering those principles must be destroyed. The problem is I suspect the majority of the people that join ISIS expect to die defending it. To that end we have to kill the people that DON’T want or expect to get killed, which is their leadership.

  59. 59.

    Miss Bianca

    @catclub: And what’s even more remarkable is that so far, all the comments are nailing the author for being part of the punditocracy that enabled Trump’s rise.

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