Posted on 04/11/2003 3:54:47 PM PDT by TLBSHOW
CNN Knew Of Saddam's Evil, Did Not Report
The most earth-shattering, unbelievable, astounding, shocking bit of news I have seen in quite some time is contained in an op-ed piece, a column in the New York Times by Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN. I just had to read this to you, in it's entirety – and you can hear that in the audio link below. The word has no doubt spread like wildfire about this piece, and if you have not read it, you should.
Eason Jordan has unburdened himself with some guilt that he has been carrying around for over a decade, knowledge of atrocities committed against average Iraqis by the Saddam Hussein regime. We're talking about murders, rapes, and tortures. He feels now it's safe to reveal what he knows, given the regime is no more, and can inflict no more harm on people. He writes of unspeakable acts committed by Saddam's regime, which he knew about and did not report, because it would have endangered CNN's people and other sources in Iraq.
Folks, even if he needed to protect his people in Iraq, and there is a degree to which a company's desire to do this is understandable, that does not explain the way CNN covered all of this. You had the president of the United States and his administration, almost daily for the past year, not only talking about weapons of mass destruction, but also talking about the atrocities and the evils committed against the population of this country. It seems to me that Mr. Jordan could have taken his lead anchors, such as Judy Woodruff, Aaron Brown and others aside and maybe without revealing specifics, say, "Look, be very careful here in doubting what is said about atrocities." I don't know that he didn't do this, but it would be hard to conclude that he did based on CNN's coverage. If you read what he wrote today and then you compare it to CNN's coverage, there's no connection!
The Left Closed Its Eyes To Genocide
But it's not just Eason Jordan. He should feel terrible, but so should all the other members of the media and members of Congress who knew full well these kinds of atrocities were going on in Iraq, and somehow managed to deny it or be unaffected by it. There was a great debate in this country about this war of liberation. The liberal Democrats opposed this war. Congressional Democrats opposed it. Most in the media opposed it. The fact is we've known about the inhumanity of this regime for years, and now it turns out so did Eason Jordan on a firsthand, personal basis.
If Eason Jordan knew this stuff, other news executives and reporters knew it, too. It's hard to believe Mr. Jordan kept all this to himself. No matter how much evidence of atrocities and inhumanity were presented to the mainstream media and to the liberals of this country, they were not moved. They were not moved, and Mr. Jordan's piece in the New York Times means that he wasn't, either. They knew what was going on in those prisons and torture rooms. They knew of the experiments. They knew of the rapes. However it doesn't appear they were moved by this depravity. Such was their seething hatred for George W. Bush, perhaps in combination with love for Bill Clinton and the nostalgia of that.
The truth is the truth. These people opposed the use of military force so that the suffering of others might end. They've cast their lot with the U.N. bureaucracy and the obstructionism of the French and the Germans and this whole appeasement plan, in hopes of derailing this war of liberation and scoring political points against the president they hate. That's the bottom line. They were doing whatever they could to stop this war. I'm sorry to have to include CNN in this, but the whole left-wing media was doing everything it could to thwart this war, and look at what they knew was going on all the while.
This is a guy and organization that should get their credentials pulled. He's telling us that he didn't report facts because he feared the damage that would result. Perfect mafia extortion logic. Yet, we are supposed to accept journalistic ethics and objectivity as real things.
The first time I hear of our President putting someone through a shredder feet first ('so they'll be conscious'), I'll consider him a Hitler. Until then...
The thing is, currently "Hitler" is one of the most evil names in our vocabulary. Comparisons are used willy-nilly, mostly for effect, but the truth of the matter is, when the dust settles in Iraq, we might find that in terms of the sheer horror of what the Hussein regime has done, he might surpass Hitler. Perhaps in body counts, too--but we might never know the full extent of that.
Jordon admitted that he and CNN knew that any Iraqi they hired was automatically at risk. But CNN still hired them and then they covered up their deaths.
Did CNN inform these Iraqis of the danger that their employment by CNN would put them in?
I'd really like to know the answer to that question
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