Two different views.

Here's how we see it:

Sunday's attack in Balad occurred when a car blew up alongside a bus carrying Iraqi National Guard troops as it was passing a U.S. base. Police Lt. Haidar Karar said 22 guardsmen were killed along with their driver.

It was the deadliest assault on Iraqi security forces since October, when insurgents gunned down about 50 Guardsmen at a fake checkpoint.

Here's how they see it:

Resistance fighters carried out a martyrdom attack between Balad and ad-Dujayl at about 8:30am yesterday that has killed at least 29 Allawi national guardsmen. Two fighters in a vehicle packed with several tons of explosives veered into a bus carrying the Iraqi soldiers, ignited it in flames. Earlier, the US military admitted that 18 puppet guards had been reportedly killed in Balad however eyewitnesses told Mafkarat al-Islam that at least 29 were killed.

They in this case is Jihad Unspun, a pro-militant Islam web site hosted int he US. The site's mission is ostensibly to provide balance by giving both sides of the news. The site is divided into three hard-to-read columns. The left-most is the "mainstream news" which tends to be stories that make america look bad fromt he MSM. The center and right columns are hard-Islamist. Not only do they use weighted terms (suicide-bombing=marterdom operation, Iraqi security forces = "Allawi national guardsmen/puppet guards) but the accounts seem to be written by the Iraqi Information Minister. In one account, US troops dropped their weapons and ran from Fallujah leaving 80 Abrams tanks behind. You would think that an anti-war American press would have picked up on that. The following day's dispatches made no mention of this victory.

Khadija Abdul Qahaar aka Bev Kennedy, the woman who runs this web site, used to do web hosting work for the Pentagon at the same time that she ran a web site cheering the deaths of American military. What happened when the Pentagon found out? She ended up divesting that part of her business. Nothing else.

This is why we are better than they are. Had Khadija been discovered to own a pro-American web site while working for Saddam's Republican Guard we would have found her bones in a mass grave. She would not fare any better in most Moslem countries where censorship is harsh and goverments unforgiving.

I am not calling for any actions against Jihad Unspun. They have a right to be heard no matter how vile their message. I just wish that they acknowledged the dicotomy. The government that they say is evil allows them a voice that they would lose if their side ever won.