Alliance Is Fraying

Today's Washington Post front page carries this story of Iraqi insurents in Fallujah turning on their foreign Arab allies.

Local insurgents in the city of Fallujah are turning against the foreign fighters who have been their allies in the rebellion that has held the U.S. military at bay in parts of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, according to Fallujah residents, insurgent leaders and Iraqi and U.S. officials.

[...]

"If the Arabs will not leave willingly, we will make them leave by force," said Jamal Adnan, a taxi driver who left his house in Fallujah's Shurta neighborhood a month ago after the house next door was bombed by U.S. aircraft targeting foreign insurgents.

[...]

One of the foreign guerrillas killed by local fighters was Abu Abdallah Suri, a Syrian and a prominent member of Zarqawi's group. Suri's body was discovered Sunday. He was shot in the head and chest while being chased by a carload of tribesmen, according to a security guard who said he witnessed the killing.

Is the fracture in the "insurgent" alliance mirrored in the mainstream press? The appearance of this story on the Washington Post front page, where any news from Iraq that is remotely positive might just as well have been forbidden, says yes. Increasingly, the the way the news is reported is itself the news. Little by little, under the intense scrutiny of the blogosphere factions of the mainstream press may actually take up the practice of journalism.