MonsterMark
Dedicated LVC Member
Sorry you feel that way. My apologies. It was not intentional. I can delete it if you would like?barry2952 said:
MSNBC Reporter Demands Resignation of White House Spokesman Scott McClellan
- Thread starter 97silverlsc
- Start date
MonsterMark
Dedicated LVC Member
Hummm. I was apologizing for offending you in post Number 17 where I was being funny for intentionally misspelling your name as you did mine on your prior post and then taking your post and twisting the words you had wrote. I believe the part you found offensive was your feeling I had intentionally quoted something that you had said verbatim whereas that was not the case, at least intentionally. Hence the apology to make peace.barry2952 said:
JohnnyBz00LS
Dedicated LVC Member
U.S. deflects killings blame by demonizing Newsweek
children, :tmi: back on topic..........
Posted on Fri, May. 20, 2005
U.S. deflects killings blame by demonizing Newsweek
By Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood
If there is a political playbook for right-wing conservatives these days, it no doubt begins, “Step No. 1: Whenever possible, blame the news media.”
What to do if the U.S. invasions/occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have sparked resistance in those countries because people generally don’t like being occupied by a foreign power that has interests in exploiting their resources and/or geopolitical value? Blame journalists.
That’s exactly what the Bush administration and its rhetorical attack dogs are doing with the “scandal” over Newsweek’s story on the desecration of the Quran at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo. In a short item in its May 9 issue, Newsweek reported that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that U.S. guards had flushed a copy of the Quran down a toilet to try to provoke prisoners. This week, the magazine retracted, saying not that editors knew for sure that such an incident didn’t happen but that, “Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay.”
Meanwhile, after the original story ran, Afghan and U.S. forces fired on demonstrators in Afghanistan, killing at least 14 and injuring many others.
The conventional wisdom emerged quickly: Newsweek got it wrong, and Newsweek is to blame for the deaths. The first conclusion is premature; the second is wrong.
First, it’s not clear whether U.S. guards in Guantanamo or other prisons have placed copies of the Quran on a toilet or thrown pages (or a whole Quran) into a toilet. Detainees have made such claims, which have been reported by attorneys representing some of the men in custody and denied by U.S. officials. Newsweek’s retraction is ambiguous, suggesting they believe the incident may have happened but no longer can demonstrate that it was cited in the specific U.S. government documents, as originally reported.
Given the abuse and torture – from sexual humiliation to beatings to criminal homicide – that has gone on in various U.S. military prison facilities, it’s not hard to believe that the Quran stories could be true. Given that last month U.S. officials pressured the United Nations to eliminate the job of its top human-rights investigator in Afghanistan after that official criticized violations by U.S. forces in the country, it’s not hard to be skeptical about U.S. motives.
And given that even the human-rights commission of the generally compliant Afghan government is blocked by U.S. forces from visiting the prisons, it’s not hard to believe that the U.S. officials may have something to hide.
Until we have more information, definitive conclusions are impossible. But if you go on a popular right-wing Web site, you’ll find the verdict that administration supporters are trying to make the final word: “Newsweek lied, people died.”
Yes, people died during demonstrations, and political leaders in the Muslim world have cited the Quran stories to spark anti-U.S. feeling. But reporters outside the United States have pointed out that these demonstrations have not been spontaneous but were well-organized, often by groups of students. The frustration with U.S. policy that fuels these demonstrations isn’t limited to the Quran incident, and to reduce the unrest to one magazine story is misleading. Indeed, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference last week that the senior commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Carl Eichenberry, reported that the violence “was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.”
So, why the focus on the Newsweek story? It’s part of the tried-and-true strategy of demonize, disguise and divert. Demonize the news media to disguise the real causes of the resistance to occupation and divert attention from failed U.S. policies.
The irony is that the U.S. corporate news media deserve harsh criticism for coverage of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – not for possibly getting one fact wrong, but for failing to consistently challenge the illegality of both wars and the various distortions and lies that the Bush administration has used to mobilize support for those illegal wars. We should hold the news media accountable when they fail. But we should defend journalists when they are used by political partisans who are eager to obscure their own failures.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Jensen is on the board and Pat Youngblood is coordinator of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin, Texas. They can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and pat@thirdcoastactivist.org . They wrote this for the political newsletter Counterpunch.
children, :tmi: back on topic..........
Posted on Fri, May. 20, 2005
U.S. deflects killings blame by demonizing Newsweek
By Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood
If there is a political playbook for right-wing conservatives these days, it no doubt begins, “Step No. 1: Whenever possible, blame the news media.”
What to do if the U.S. invasions/occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have sparked resistance in those countries because people generally don’t like being occupied by a foreign power that has interests in exploiting their resources and/or geopolitical value? Blame journalists.
That’s exactly what the Bush administration and its rhetorical attack dogs are doing with the “scandal” over Newsweek’s story on the desecration of the Quran at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo. In a short item in its May 9 issue, Newsweek reported that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that U.S. guards had flushed a copy of the Quran down a toilet to try to provoke prisoners. This week, the magazine retracted, saying not that editors knew for sure that such an incident didn’t happen but that, “Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay.”
Meanwhile, after the original story ran, Afghan and U.S. forces fired on demonstrators in Afghanistan, killing at least 14 and injuring many others.
The conventional wisdom emerged quickly: Newsweek got it wrong, and Newsweek is to blame for the deaths. The first conclusion is premature; the second is wrong.
First, it’s not clear whether U.S. guards in Guantanamo or other prisons have placed copies of the Quran on a toilet or thrown pages (or a whole Quran) into a toilet. Detainees have made such claims, which have been reported by attorneys representing some of the men in custody and denied by U.S. officials. Newsweek’s retraction is ambiguous, suggesting they believe the incident may have happened but no longer can demonstrate that it was cited in the specific U.S. government documents, as originally reported.
Given the abuse and torture – from sexual humiliation to beatings to criminal homicide – that has gone on in various U.S. military prison facilities, it’s not hard to believe that the Quran stories could be true. Given that last month U.S. officials pressured the United Nations to eliminate the job of its top human-rights investigator in Afghanistan after that official criticized violations by U.S. forces in the country, it’s not hard to be skeptical about U.S. motives.
And given that even the human-rights commission of the generally compliant Afghan government is blocked by U.S. forces from visiting the prisons, it’s not hard to believe that the U.S. officials may have something to hide.
Until we have more information, definitive conclusions are impossible. But if you go on a popular right-wing Web site, you’ll find the verdict that administration supporters are trying to make the final word: “Newsweek lied, people died.”
Yes, people died during demonstrations, and political leaders in the Muslim world have cited the Quran stories to spark anti-U.S. feeling. But reporters outside the United States have pointed out that these demonstrations have not been spontaneous but were well-organized, often by groups of students. The frustration with U.S. policy that fuels these demonstrations isn’t limited to the Quran incident, and to reduce the unrest to one magazine story is misleading. Indeed, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference last week that the senior commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Carl Eichenberry, reported that the violence “was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.”
So, why the focus on the Newsweek story? It’s part of the tried-and-true strategy of demonize, disguise and divert. Demonize the news media to disguise the real causes of the resistance to occupation and divert attention from failed U.S. policies.
The irony is that the U.S. corporate news media deserve harsh criticism for coverage of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – not for possibly getting one fact wrong, but for failing to consistently challenge the illegality of both wars and the various distortions and lies that the Bush administration has used to mobilize support for those illegal wars. We should hold the news media accountable when they fail. But we should defend journalists when they are used by political partisans who are eager to obscure their own failures.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Jensen is on the board and Pat Youngblood is coordinator of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin, Texas. They can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and pat@thirdcoastactivist.org . They wrote this for the political newsletter Counterpunch.
JohnnyBz00LS
Dedicated LVC Member
MonsterMark said:
If I were you, I'd be glad we don't read so much about "all the good we do abroad"......... right across the same page as all the f-ups that are going on right here at home. It would just piss off the general US public more than they already are.
MonsterMark
Dedicated LVC Member
I'll take that chance. Let's do it. Left side of page, the screw ups...Right side, all the good stuff. Only problem is the left side pages will be blank after page 2 and right side will be a volume like War and Peace.JohnnyBz00LS said:
But if you seriously think we do more harm than good, I'm willing to bet there is some vacant beach-front property in the middle of the Indian Ocean that has your name on it.
97silverlsc
Dedicated LVC Member
Back on subject:
The International Committee of the Red Cross documented what it called credible information about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Korans at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and pointed it out to the Pentagon in confidential reports during 2002 and early 2003, an ICRC spokesman said Wednesday.
Representatives of the ICRC, who have played a key role in investigating abuse allegations at the facility in Cuba and other U.S. military prisons, never witnessed such incidents firsthand during on-site visits, said Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman in Washington.
But ICRC delegates, who have been granted access to the secretive camp since January 2002, gathered and corroborated enough similar, independent reports from detainees to raise the issue multiple times with Guantanamo commanders and with Pentagon officials, Schorno said in an interview Wednesday.
Following the ICRC's reports, the Defense Department command in Guantanamo issued almost three pages of detailed, written guidelines for treatment of Korans. Schorno said ICRC representatives did not receive any other complaints or document similar incidents following the issuance of the guidelines on Jan. 19, 2003.
The issue of how Korans are handled by American personnel guarding Muslim detainees moved into the spotlight after protests in Muslim nations, including deadly riots in Afghanistan, that followed a now-retracted report in Newsweek magazine. That story said U.S. investigators had confirmed that interrogators had flushed a Koran down a toilet.
The Koran is Islam's holiest book, and mistreating it is seen as an offense against God.
Following the firestorm over the report and the riots, the ICRC declined Wednesday to discuss what kind of alleged incidents were involved, how many there were or how often it reported them to American officials prior to the release of the 2003 Koran guidelines.
"We don't want to comment specifically on specific instances of desecration, only on the general level of how the Koran was disrespected," Schorno said.
Schorno did say, however, that there were "multiple" instances involved and that the ICRC made confidential reports about such incidents "multiple" times to Guantanamo and Pentagon officials.
In addition to the retracted Newsweek story, senior Bush administration officials have repeatedly downplayed other reports regarding alleged abuses of the Koran at Guantanamo, largely dismissing them because they came from current or former detainees.
Pentagon confirms reports
Asked about the ICRC's confidential reports Wednesday night, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed their existence but sought to downplay the seriousness of their content. He said they were forwarded "on rare occasions" and called them "detainee allegations which they [the ICRC] could not corroborate."
But that is not how Schorno, the ICRC spokesman, portrayed the reports.
"All information we received were corroborated allegations," he said, adding, "We certainly corroborated mentions of the events by detainees themselves."
`Not just one person'
Schorno also said: "Obviously, it is not just one person telling us something happened and we just fire up. We take it very seriously, and very carefully, and document everything in our confidential reports."
It was not clear whether the ICRC's corroboration went beyond statements made independently by detainees.
The organization has said that it insists on speaking "in total privacy to each and every detainee held" when its delegates and translators visit military detention facilities.
Still, Whitman said there was nothing in the ICRC reports that approximated the information published in the story retracted by Newsweek.
"The representations that were made to the United States military at Guantanamo by the ICRC are consistent with the types of things we have found in various [U.S. military] log entries about handling Korans, such as the accidental dropping of a Koran," he said.
the military's sensitivity about Muslim religious issues, but they did not note that the ICRC had confidentially reported specific concerns before the guidelines were issued.
The procedures outlined in the memorandum, which is entitled "Inspecting/Handling Detainee Korans Standard Operating Procedure," are exacting. Among other things, they mandate that chaplains or Muslim interpreters should inspect all Korans, and that military police should not touch the holy books.
The guidelines also specify that Korans should not be "placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas," according to a copy.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan suggested Tuesday that the guidelines should be broadly reported in the wake of the retracted Newsweek story.
"The military put in place policies and procedures to make sure that the Koran was handled, or is handled, with the utmost care and respect," he said.
U.S. credited for response
The ICRC gave U.S. officials credit for taking corrective action at Guantanamo by issuing the guidelines, with Schorno saying Wednesday, "We brought it up to the attention of the authorities, and it was followed through."
He also said, "The memo doesn't mention the ICRC, but we know that our comments are taken seriously."
Still, Schorno did not say the guidelines were issued specifically in response to the ICRC's reports. Schorno's remarks Wednesday represented a departure from the ICRC's customary policy of confidentiality with the governments it deals with in an effort to maintain their trust and the organization's neutrality.
A senior State Department official, speaking only on the condition that he not be named, said Wednesday the issuance of the guidelines followed the ICRC's reports and that they were "a credit to the fact that we investigate and correct practices and problems."
Whitman, the Pentagon spokesman, said he was not aware of "any specific precipitating event that caused the command to codify those in a written policy."
Whitman also said, "The ICRC works very closely with us to help us identify concerns with respect to detainees on a variety of issues, to include religious issues. But I can't make any direct correlation there" between ICRC concerns on the Koran and the issuance of the 2003 guidelines.
The International Committee of the Red Cross documented what it called credible information about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Korans at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and pointed it out to the Pentagon in confidential reports during 2002 and early 2003, an ICRC spokesman said Wednesday.
Representatives of the ICRC, who have played a key role in investigating abuse allegations at the facility in Cuba and other U.S. military prisons, never witnessed such incidents firsthand during on-site visits, said Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman in Washington.
But ICRC delegates, who have been granted access to the secretive camp since January 2002, gathered and corroborated enough similar, independent reports from detainees to raise the issue multiple times with Guantanamo commanders and with Pentagon officials, Schorno said in an interview Wednesday.
Following the ICRC's reports, the Defense Department command in Guantanamo issued almost three pages of detailed, written guidelines for treatment of Korans. Schorno said ICRC representatives did not receive any other complaints or document similar incidents following the issuance of the guidelines on Jan. 19, 2003.
The issue of how Korans are handled by American personnel guarding Muslim detainees moved into the spotlight after protests in Muslim nations, including deadly riots in Afghanistan, that followed a now-retracted report in Newsweek magazine. That story said U.S. investigators had confirmed that interrogators had flushed a Koran down a toilet.
The Koran is Islam's holiest book, and mistreating it is seen as an offense against God.
Following the firestorm over the report and the riots, the ICRC declined Wednesday to discuss what kind of alleged incidents were involved, how many there were or how often it reported them to American officials prior to the release of the 2003 Koran guidelines.
"We don't want to comment specifically on specific instances of desecration, only on the general level of how the Koran was disrespected," Schorno said.
Schorno did say, however, that there were "multiple" instances involved and that the ICRC made confidential reports about such incidents "multiple" times to Guantanamo and Pentagon officials.
In addition to the retracted Newsweek story, senior Bush administration officials have repeatedly downplayed other reports regarding alleged abuses of the Koran at Guantanamo, largely dismissing them because they came from current or former detainees.
Pentagon confirms reports
Asked about the ICRC's confidential reports Wednesday night, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed their existence but sought to downplay the seriousness of their content. He said they were forwarded "on rare occasions" and called them "detainee allegations which they [the ICRC] could not corroborate."
But that is not how Schorno, the ICRC spokesman, portrayed the reports.
"All information we received were corroborated allegations," he said, adding, "We certainly corroborated mentions of the events by detainees themselves."
`Not just one person'
Schorno also said: "Obviously, it is not just one person telling us something happened and we just fire up. We take it very seriously, and very carefully, and document everything in our confidential reports."
It was not clear whether the ICRC's corroboration went beyond statements made independently by detainees.
The organization has said that it insists on speaking "in total privacy to each and every detainee held" when its delegates and translators visit military detention facilities.
Still, Whitman said there was nothing in the ICRC reports that approximated the information published in the story retracted by Newsweek.
"The representations that were made to the United States military at Guantanamo by the ICRC are consistent with the types of things we have found in various [U.S. military] log entries about handling Korans, such as the accidental dropping of a Koran," he said.
the military's sensitivity about Muslim religious issues, but they did not note that the ICRC had confidentially reported specific concerns before the guidelines were issued.
The procedures outlined in the memorandum, which is entitled "Inspecting/Handling Detainee Korans Standard Operating Procedure," are exacting. Among other things, they mandate that chaplains or Muslim interpreters should inspect all Korans, and that military police should not touch the holy books.
The guidelines also specify that Korans should not be "placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas," according to a copy.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan suggested Tuesday that the guidelines should be broadly reported in the wake of the retracted Newsweek story.
"The military put in place policies and procedures to make sure that the Koran was handled, or is handled, with the utmost care and respect," he said.
U.S. credited for response
The ICRC gave U.S. officials credit for taking corrective action at Guantanamo by issuing the guidelines, with Schorno saying Wednesday, "We brought it up to the attention of the authorities, and it was followed through."
He also said, "The memo doesn't mention the ICRC, but we know that our comments are taken seriously."
Still, Schorno did not say the guidelines were issued specifically in response to the ICRC's reports. Schorno's remarks Wednesday represented a departure from the ICRC's customary policy of confidentiality with the governments it deals with in an effort to maintain their trust and the organization's neutrality.
A senior State Department official, speaking only on the condition that he not be named, said Wednesday the issuance of the guidelines followed the ICRC's reports and that they were "a credit to the fact that we investigate and correct practices and problems."
Whitman, the Pentagon spokesman, said he was not aware of "any specific precipitating event that caused the command to codify those in a written policy."
Whitman also said, "The ICRC works very closely with us to help us identify concerns with respect to detainees on a variety of issues, to include religious issues. But I can't make any direct correlation there" between ICRC concerns on the Koran and the issuance of the 2003 guidelines.
Punisher
Active LVC Member
Heh, these threads seems like they repeat themselves everytime. No one wants to admit there side might have been wrong. Its kinda sad how blindly ppl are willing to follow there side....
MonsterMark
Dedicated LVC Member
My side is never wrong. We might bend the rightness time to time, but certainly never wrong.:FPunisher said:
The international news says that the retraction is not credible. I'm not saying one way or the other. I don't know who to believe.
Is it not possible that the retraction was stated due to internal or external pressures to quell the disturbance?
Is it not possible that the retraction was stated due to internal or external pressures to quell the disturbance?
It's a sad day when all domestic news organizations are questioned in one fell swoop. I know you guys are sick of hearing it, but this spiral started long ago with the heavily left-leaning news we were fed for so long. The advent of Fox news brought it more into light with their brand of conservative broadcasting. Hopefully both sides will work toward more non-biased reporting and work towards honest news stories without agendas. That being said, the international news organizations seem to have an agenda as well, and it isn't to make the US look good, facts or not.barry2952 said: