Spearheaded a “movement we’ve never seen before.”
NPR gushed over ISIS terror leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, describing him as a “real leader” who spearheaded a “movement we’ve never seen before.”
During a roundtable discussion about Baghdadi’s death, NPR reporter Greg Myre all but praised the man responsible for beheading three Americans and enslaving and killing an American woman.
“He led a movement that we’ve never seen before,” Myre said. “ISIS had tens of thousands of members, fighters, coming in from all over the world.”
“They controlled massive amounts of territory — in Eastern Syria and Western and Northern Iraq,” Myre said, adding ISIS had “millions of people under their control.”
“They administered cities, they collected taxes,” Myre said.
“They had this incredible online recruit presence in terms of spreading propaganda; recruiting followers,” Myre said. “This is a guy that sort of emerged on the scene.”
“And led this group that had done something we’d never seen before,” Myre said.
He went on to assert that Baghdadi was a “real leader” and that ISIS would find it hard to replace him.
NPR was not the only news outlet to be strangely effusive towards Baghdadi after his death.
The Washington Post drew widespread condemnation and ridicule by referring to the terror leader as an “austere religious scholar.”
Others attempted to downplay Baghdadi’s importance, with Newsweek citing an unnamed “intelligence official” who claimed that Baghdadi “had become largely symbolic.”