The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest

Vol: 32 Issue: 21 - Friday, May 21, 2004

Good News, Bad News
by Jack Kinsella

"What was happening in the same cells of Abu Ghraib under the Baath defies
human logic. The awful photos of today would be only appetizers," say
Saddam's survivors. "We have pictures, we have documents, but that won't
please your elites."

Saddam's  survivors invited the world to visit the mass graves, to see
piles of corpses, but to to avail. Shiite dead, especially those murdered
by Saddam Hussein, are of no real interest to the media. The only Shiites
that get any attention are those opposing America.

Saddam's victim's pictures barely got a first airing on US networks, and
even they were heavily santized.  Southern Sudanese point out that one
million blacks were decimated.

They have pictures of naked African men, women and children taken into
slavery.  There are gruesome pictures of what the Russians do to Chechen
prisoners.  Not to mention the pictures of Americans being tortured and
murdered by Islamic terrorists.

But those pictures aren't making the front pages of every newspaper on the
planet.  The kinds of pictures that might strengthen America resolve are
routinely censored by the mainstream media.  Documentaries made about the
New York catastrophe on September 11 are terrifying, but sanitized.

Few Americans actually saw people leaping 100 stories to their deaths to
avoid the flames.  Fewer still saw the actual carnage of the aftermath.
It was all sanitized.  Danny Pearl's murder was recorded on videotape by
his murderers.

Pearl was killed by the same murderers responsible for the three thousand
murders on September 11th. The video was described, but not shown on
mainstream television.

It was sanitized before airing, so as not to offend American
sensibilities.  The same can be said of the most recent abomination when
Nick Berg's head was sawed off on camera by America's Islamic enemy.

But American newspapers and network news organizations can't stop running
the photos of the abuse at abu Ghraib.  None of THEM have been sanitized
to protect American sensibilities.

Graphic photos of the torture and murder of Americans by Islamists are
merely described.  But photos of naked, hooded men being abused by a
handful of American misfits assail the senses from every conceivable
information source.

al-Jazeera decided against showing al-Qaeda terrorist Mohammed al Zarqawi
beheading a screaming Nick Berg with a butcher knife, and was applauded by
Western news organizations for 'exercising journalistic restraint'.  In
truth, al-Jazeera edited the video because airing it in its entirety would
weaken al-Qaeda's public image in the Arab world.

It would also have the same effect in America.  If Americans were
assaulted by images of its enemy -- and the atrocities committed against
America by them, the antiwarriors would lose a lot of their steam.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, when embedded reporters reported live from
the battlefield,  public support for the war skyrocketed.  During the
conflict itself, most of what Americans heard from the battlefield was the
truth.

The lies were Made in America.  It was fascinating to contrast what the
reporters in the field were saying to what the newsroom editors were
telling us.

Watching the anchors back home spin their own field reports of victory
after victory into gloomy predictions of defeat during the same broadcast
was an education.

The Bush administration has apologized en masse for the abu Ghraib
scandal.  The President of the United States addressed the Arab world
specifically, to issue his personal apology.  But to read Western
newspapers,  his apology was meaningless.

"Bush Tries to Quell Arab Anger, Supports Rumsfeld" says Reuters. "Bush
Moves To Offset Arab Anger" screams Canada's London Free Press.  "Bush
Continues Effort To Assuage Arab Anger" says MSNBC. The Washington Post
laments that  "Rumsfeld Apology Fails to Quell Arab Anger" while the BBC
exhorts "Arab Anger At 'Savage' Iraq Abuse".

It is a fascinating contrast.  When the administration is perceived as
coming down too hard on Muslims, the media raises a furor about the
administration's use of 'racial profiling' or the 'Bush Gestapo'.

The media reminds us helpfully that not all Muslims are terrorists and
that Islam is one of the world's three great religions,  that it has a
long tradition of peace (a complete lie) and that it is really a religion
of peace and love.  Most Muslims are peace-loving, ordinary folks like you
and me.

But when something like abu-Ghraib comes along, suddenly, all Muslims are
alike.  They are ALL angry at the US and now they ALL want some
well-deserved revenge. There are no Islamic voices of moderation that the
mainstream media machine, with all its resources, are able to track down
and quote.

Instead, the normally peace-loving adherents to one of the world's three
great religions suddenly ALL think with one jihadist mind and they ALL
think that America is the Great Satan and George Bush the antichrist.

The fact is, there are Arabs who have lived under the heel of murderous
dictators their entire lives.  The abuse at abu Ghraib is nothing compared
to what many of them have endured at the hands of their own governments.

Not once did the leader of their own countries ever acknowledge what went
on behind prison doors, let alone address his people with a personal
apology.  But the president of the most powerful nation the world has ever
known not only admitted the truth, but apologized to the Arab world for
it.

There ARE Muslim Arabs that have begun to mull such glaring
inconsistencies over, but they don't get any attention from the Western
media, either.
 
 

Assessment:

The abu Ghraib scandal handed a lethal political weapon to the jihadists,
and, with the Left's help, they're making the most of it.  They want more
than the punishment of the guards or improving conditions.  They see abu
Ghraib as the means to force the coalition out of Iraq, and Bush out of
the Oval office.

In this al-Qaeda "home run," the architects of the Abu Ghraib crusade
against "U.S. immorality" have enlisted the European elites. The
anti-American establishment from Paris to Berlin is screaming for the head
of George Bush.  Manhattan's U.N. is covered with sackcloth and ashes.

At home, the  mainstream media is pressing to remove Donald Rumsfeld as
Secretary of Defense.  That would leave the military leaderless in time of
war.  And give the partisans the upper hand during Rumsfeld's replacement
nominee's confirmation process. His replacement could be held up by
partisan bickering indefinitely, further damaging the war effort (and
Bush's approval ratings).

The Saudi Daily Arab News is demanding Rumsfeld's resignation.  CNN
helpfully located European and Arab politicians from Germany, Jordan,
Kuwait, Egypt and even quoted al Jazeera's call for Rumsfeld's
resignation.

"Of 60,000 respondents to a poll on the Web site of leading Arabic
satellite channel Al Jazeera, some 87 percent said the United States would
be unable to improve its image among Arabs and Muslims," CNN explained.

"I used to agree with the American campaign in Iraq, now I'm very
reluctant, I don't know if they are fulfilling the purpose they are meant
to fulfil anymore," said Suliman Buhaimed of the American University of
Kuwait.

A number of European newspapers said the scandal signalled the failure of
Bush's Iraq policy.

"If Rumsfeld takes responsibility for what happened in Iraqi prisons, as
he declared yesterday in the Senate, his only possibility...is to resign,"
leading Spanish daily El Pais said.

French left-wing daily Liberation said: "The torture was not the work of a
handful of corrupt criminals ... They were really the disciplined cogs of
a system ignorant of the Geneva Convention (on treatment of prisoners)."

Ok. Let's take a look at this logically.  The  ones who want to see
Rumsfeld stay on the job are those who are actually fighting the war on
terror. Those who want him removed are the French, Spanish, the UN, oh --
and Arab leaders and al Qaeda.

Support for the current administration among the military is in the
stratosphere.  Despite the antiwarrior drumbeat back home, the military
continues to meet both its recruitment and reenlistment goals.

On the other hand, the enemy wants to see Donald Rumsfeld step down and US
military policy thrown into disarray.  There is nothing al-Qaeda would
like to see more than the defeat of George W. Bush and a new Commander in
Chief conducting the war on terror.  The same can be said of the Europeans
and most of the leadership of the UN.

They would welcome the news of Rumsfeld's resignation with only slightly
less delight than they would the news of George Bush's defeat.

It would be good news for Osama bin Laden, but bad news for Pervez
Musharraf.

It would be good news for Syria's Bashar Assad, bad news for Israel.

It would be good news for France and Germany, but bad news for the UK.

It would be good news for the Democrats and the mainstream media, but bad
news for America's potential alliance with a new, democratic Iraq. Are
these dots that hard to connect?

"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." (Matthew  10:36)