"Well, to me, this is an outrage. It doesn't, I don't understand how you can make a judgment about what seems, appears to me, on the surface it -- going soft, not telling people about the depth of the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, when, in fact, now, Eason Jordan says, you know, he thought the American people knew about it, no one was hiding it. But he wanted access for CNN, and I think that's what he made the predominant issue in his mind. The consequence being that, to the way I look at it, he wasn't being forthcoming with CNN's viewers. That CNN's viewers should have known exactly, exactly how tyrannical, how awful, how despotic Saddam Hussein was. And here's the other point, Tony. CNN's continued reporting lent some credibility, made it seem to the American people as if, 'Well, this is an ordered society. CNN, other news networks can go in there, operate freely and with some sort of, you know, First Amendment protections and freedoms.' That was never the case."
Bill Kristol observed: "Well, what it means is that any tyranny threatens to kill someone who works for any news network, and the news network doesn't tell the truth about the tyranny. It's totally unacceptable. If this man was in danger, they should have flown him out of Baghdad, they should have flown his family out of Baghdad. They should have gone to the U.S. government and tried to get the president of the United States to say, 'If you start killing people who are cooperating with American media, that's in effect an act of war against, virtually, against American citizens or American employees.' This is just craven."
Brit Hume pointed out: "It is clear that reporters who wanted to stay in Baghdad had to be very careful what they said. That doesn't apply to people who have left Baghdad, which is what's so striking to me about this." NPR White House reporter Mara Liasson also expressed concern: "I think that raises some crucial questions about how media organizations behave in totalitarian governments."
Apr 13, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
"The idea that Iraq's population would have welcomed American forces entering the country after a terrifying aerial bombardment was always utterly implausible. That this became one of the lynchpins of US policy is evidence of the rubbish fed to the Administration (many of whose members were out of touch with their country as well as keen on promoting their postwar careers by persuading the Americans of how easy an invasion would be.)"--Edward Said, tenured professor at Columbia UniversityApr 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Writes Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, in today's New York Times in an article titled, "The News We Kept to Ourselves":Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard -- awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff. For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.
Jordan goes on to recount some of the horrid stories that he "could not be reported" and then concludes:
I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.
The truth is these stories could have always been reported, but CNN chose not to do so. CNN could have chosen to close down their Iraqi office. They did not. Was this "not an option," because CNN was more concerned with "media access" than the truth? (For the record CNN follows this same policy today in Cuba by failing to objectively report on the torture imposed by the Castro Regime).
If CNN could not report honestly on Iraq, why spend all the time, money, and effort to support the pretense that it was doing so? Such actions merely sanctioned the Hussein Regime in Iraq and mislead millions of people who think they are receiving the facts. By CNN's near decade long of dishonesty by lying by omission they morally propped up the Saddam regime (as they still do Castro's regime), thus allowing it to enslave, torture, and kill even more people then if they had only told the truth. CNN has no moral right to call itself a news agency--they are merely "useful idiots" running an PR agency for the thugs and savages of the world.
Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
As US-led coalition forces liberate Iraq and Old Europe desperately tries to claim a piece of the post-war action through the United Nations, this news today from the legislatures of Germany and the United States.
This morning the US House of Representatives voted to cut taxes (the Senate is expected to follow suit shortly). And today the German parliament voted to raise taxes.Liberation, and the willingness to take risks to invest in the future, isn't just about war and peace.
Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Berkeley, CA--Sean Penn left the Venus restaurant in Berkeley after having lunch on Tuesday to discover that his 1987 Buick Grand National had been stolen. Even more surprising, however, was that the vocal pacifist had left a loaded 9mm Glock semi-automatic handgun and a.38 Smith and Wesson revolver in the car.
Now there's some responsible gun ownership!
While most law-abiding Californians are denied their right to carry a handgun for personal protection, Penn (who served jail time in 1987 on an assault conviction) holds one of only 38 coveted Marin county permits to carry a concealed weapon.
Neither Hollywood nor Berkeley residents appear bothered by the actor's casual possession of "killing sticks."
From Cox and Forkum:
Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Reports MSNBC:The Bush administration has ruled out any role for international courts in trying Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and other Iraqis for war crimes, U.S. officials say, and plan instead to rely on reconstituted Iraqi courts and U.S. military tribunals. Officials at the State and Justice departments now say that two separate tracks will likely be used for war crimes trials, one for violations during the current war and another for past abuses.
... As for calls that the United Nations set up an international tribunal to try Saddam, Iraqi exile groups strongly oppose such an arrangement. "It's about 20 years too late," said Sermid al-Sarraf, the California lawyer. "The U.N...had an opportunity to do that on many occasions previously but did nothing," he said. [April 7, 2003]
Old Europe must not be pleased.
Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
American companies that move their headquarters offshore to avoid paying taxes will be the target of a new television advertisement that questions their patriotism during a time when U.S. soldiers are fighting in Iraq..."The message is about shared sacrifice," said columnist and author Arianna Huffington, one of the founders of The Bermuda Project. "They're really cheating America, and they're cheating every American taxpayer who plays by the rules." [Associated Press, 4/9/03]
Or is it America--and particularly those like Huffington who seek unearned benefits from unwilling victims--that is cheating them? America is not about "shared sacrifice"--it is about the repudiation of sacrifice, and of those who demand sacrifices. In its founding principles, America spits on Arianna Huffington and all she stands for.Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Arab and Muslim leaders say retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner's involvement with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs--including the document he signed and a trip he took to Israel--raises questions about whether he is the right person to oversee Iraq's reconstruction. Garner was one of more than 40 retired U.S. military leaders to sign his name to a letter 2 1/2 years ago amid renewed Mideast violence. The letter strongly supported Israel for exercising "remarkable restraint" and blamed the crisis on Palestinian leaders. A Palestinian tactic to "use civilians as soldiers in a war is a perversion of military ethics," the statement said. Palestinian leaders taught children the mechanics of war while "filling their heads with hate," and Palestinian police and military commanders were "betting their children's lives on the capabilities and restraint" of Israeli defense forces, the statement added....Sarah Eltantawi, spokeswoman for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, called the choice of Garner "very unwise--it will not reinforce among the Iraqis the sentiment that their leadership is representative." [Associated Press, 4/8/03]
Taranto: "Given the Palestinians' open sympathy for the Iraqis' oppressor, we'd be surprised if the Iraqis have any sympathy at all for the Palestinians."
But let's suppose that's what the Iraqis think--if so, then their leadership shouldn't be representative. We are conducting this war to forcibly prevent Iraq from conducting and supporting terrorism. If the Iraqis are really going to insist on supporting terrorism, that will merely prove to us that we haven't killed enough of them. Such an outcome would put me squarely behind everything Leonard Peikoff said the other night: Target as many of them as it takes--including civilians--until they are terrified of twitching a single muscle that even looks like supporting terrorism. There is no such thing as a right to assist the use of force against a free state--and no right means no protection: No principle forbids using as much force as it takes to suppress your action.Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
President Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair are proposing a "vital" role for the United Nations in delivering "humanitarian" assistance to the Iraqis. Big mistake. The United Nations, which opposed the war, should not be invited to participate now that the war is over and thus be granted a legitimacy it does not deserve.The United Nations, let's not forget, is the playpen of Russia, China, France and a host of other countries that actively oppose the United States at every turn. The United Nations opposition to the war against the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein showed it is not a "humanitarian" organization, and the United States should not let it pretend otherwise by letting it deliver food packages--paid for mostly by American money--to hungry Iraqis. Just as we didn't need the United Nations to prosecute this war we don't need it to deliver assistance. Let FedEx do the job.
Apr 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Iranian Amir Taheri looks to be another commentator worth reading on the Middle East. Here's from his London Times article titled "Don't listen to the Arab elites, the Iraqis didn't and they're the ones cheering today":
The Arab masses... as yesterday's scenes of jubilation showed in Baghdad, are happy to see at least one of their oppressors kicked into the dustbin of history. The so-called "Arab street" did not explode in countries outside Iraq, thus disappointing the "Don't-Touch-Saddam" lobby in the West...Much of the Arab media went hysterical about imaginary battles in which resisting Iraqis supposedly inflicted massive losses on "the invaders". They forecast a war that would last "for years", if not "until the end of time"...These days the Arab media are full of articles about how the Arabs feel humiliated by what has happened in Iraq, how they are frustrated, how they hate America for having liberated the people of Iraq from their oppressor, and how they hope that the Europeans, presumably led by Jacques Chirac, will ride to the rescue to preserve a little bit of Saddam's legacy with the help of the United Nations. Thank God, the peoples of Iraq, not deceived by Arab hyperbole, are ignoring such nonsense. [Times (London), 4/10/03]
Hear! Hear!
