Media Madness

Media Madness
by Jennifer King, Managing Editor

May 12, 2004

"The Heretical Housewife"

Managing Editor Jennifer King The release of the photos of Iraqi prisoners being “tortured” by American service personnel has set off the predicted media feeding frenzy, to which no end is in sight. This incident has provided the “smoking gun” that was all the media and their friends on the Left needed to “prove” how duplicitous and dishonest America is. In Australia, writer Andrew Bolt reported on outrageous remarks made by various media types. The head of ABC’s 7.30 report, Kerry O’Brien, said, “This is exactly the type of brutality you would say the coalition liberated Iraq from.” ABC presenter George Negus reported that “Iraqis were seeing pictures of things they would see coming out of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.” An Australian newspaper stated that, “Americans are still as capable of torturing as anybody else.”

In the American media, salivating pundits have delighted in this opportunity to cast espersions upon the United States as a whole and her military forces in particular. Columnist Anthony Lewis sniffs that, “The U.S. is now seen as a country that proclaims high ideals and then says that they should apply to all others but not to itself.” Lewis made this absurd claim in the International Herald Tribune, a continent-wide newspaper published by the New York Times. Not to be outdone, the old Grey Lady herself published an editorial stating that the U.S. is maintaining its own “gulag”. These ludicrous assertions unfairly demean the vast majority of American troops. They provide comfort and solace to the enemy, and demoralize our fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it any wonder that most patriotic Americans view the Fourth Estate as a home-based Fifth Column?

The Left’s selective outrage has seldom been so blatantly hypocritical. Where was their shocked horror and dismay when Saddam’s mass graves were uncovered? When the corpses discovered there were unearthed with their lifeless limbs still bound behind them and bullet holes in their skulls? Where was the revulsion when a pregnant Israeli woman and her four young daughters were systematically murdered by Palestinian gunmen - the two year old baby still in her car seat. Was the monstrous evil demonstrated by this hideous act denounced by the Left? One newspaper simply reported that “violence in the Middle East” had “heated up.”

Were the forces of the Left distressed and shocked when people jumped from the burning Towers on September 11th? Were they horrified and outraged when Iraqi militants mutilated and desecrated the bodies of civilian contractors in Fallujah? Did they condemn the rape and torture of Jessica Lynch by Iraqi Baathists? The Left routinely excuses the murderous excesses of tyrannical despots the world over, but it takes U.S. troops photographing some Iraqi prisoners in compromising positions to unleash their real fury.

These Iraqi prisoners were not innocent bystanders pulled in from the street - they were enemy combatants suspected of participating in or having knowledge of pending attacks on United States soldiers. The photographed prisoners were being incarcerated in an area reserved for the most dangerous combatants. The Taguba report also details several prison uprisings, when suspected terrorists were given weapons by some of the Iraqi guards recruited by the U.S.

In short, Abu Ghraib was a pressure cooker, with trouble discerning enemy from friend, and allegedly poor direction from the chain of command.

The treatment of the Iraqi prisoners was lamentable and wrong, but it is worth noting that the United States military had already started proceedings to discipline the participants by the time the photographs hit the airwaves. The overwrought overreactions by the media and limelight hogging politicians is thus pure puffery.

The Left wants nothing less than the total destruction of George W. Bush and his Presidency. In their zeal to revisit the glory days of Watergate, they do themselves and their countrymen a grave disservice.

Lest they forget, we have had war brought to us by those who are bent on the very destruction of Western Civilization. Rapidly growing Muslim populations in Europe have openly declared their desire to see the “Flag of Islam hanging outside 10 Downing St.” Fiery mullahs incite zeal and bigotry in their congregations every Friday. Hate crimes perpetrated by gangs of Muslim men against white Europeans and Jews continue to proliferate. Generations of poorly educated children are indoctrinated daily with vile propaganda that puts the Hitler Jungen to shame. The Islamic radicals have ensnared us in an 8th Century religious war. And we are still waiting for the Islamic moderates to demur.

The free Democracies are at a disadvantage, one which our enemies freely and cleverly exploit. We insist that our countrymen behave in accordance with our stated goals of tolerance, liberty and inclusion. When a few do not, the world holds us in disdain. Thus, the real gulags in North Korea and elsewhere are ignored. Let a few U.S. soldiers misbehave, however, and the media whirlwind descends. The utter and shameless hypocrisy of our enemies and Fifth Columnists alike is thus instructive. ***

Photo of Jennifer King courtesy of staff files