Torture News Was Ignored. But Why?

[maddezmom]

By Dick Ahles Published on 4/27/2008

The major news organizations have found much to occupy their attention in recent days: the troubled economy, the continued uncertainty over the war in Iraq, the mind numbing fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, the pope's visit and more.

But, in the view of Anthony Lewis, one of the century's great journalists, they missed a big one.

”In these last weeks of turbulent events, the single most significant has not been the financial crisis, not the fall of a governor, not the passing of the fifth anniversary of the war without end in Iraq. It has been the American president's formal blessing of the use of torture,” writes Lewis, the longtime columnist and Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times, in the current New York Review of Books.

In case you missed it and many did, the president's“formal blessing of the use of torture” was reported by ABC News but ignored by most of the national media. The network also reported the blessing followed lengthy show-and-tell sessions on various torture techniques attended by the highest ranking members of the Bush administration.

In an interview with ABC's White House correspondent Martha Raddatz, Bush admitted he not only knew, but also enthusiastically endorsed his highest officials getting together to select ways to torture prisoners. He also approved their choices, including illegal waterboarding, miraculously made legal by his lawyers. The story was picked up by The Associated Press and appeared in many daily newspapers but it was ignored or buried by most of the national media, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, CBS, NBC and CNN. (The Times did get around to doing an editorial last Sunday condemning the meetings, especially the participation of Colin Powell, who, as a career Army officer, should have known better and Condoleeza Rice,“who has managed to escape blame for the catastrophic decisions she made while she was Mr. Bush's national security adviser.”)


more: http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=40046713-77fb-4967-bd11-0f3156cf3879

[fasttense]

1. What a criminal. And he is getting away with all his loot

cause Nancy wont Impeach.

[Briar]

2. Good article

but I don't think it understands the appeal of torture, which is the same appeal as that of capital punishment, the gun lobby and the brutalising regime in prisons. The media do understand it - in their entertainment arms they have been capitalising on it in a big way. You'll find it is a key element in the "heroism" of 24's Jack Bauer and a host of other cult shows. Even Star Trek sank to it, in its later spin-offs. It's that visceral lust for violent domination and sadistic vengeance which lurks deep down in the nastier parts of the human jungle. Conservatives, who derive so much of their appeal from a resonance with these parts, understand it. So do the media. And parties honing a populist appeal understand it too. I bet Pelosi does. This isn't to say we shouldn't fight it - but we have to understand the full dimensions of the beast before we can do so successfully, and what is needed goes well beyond impeachment (however useful as an object lesson that would be).

[Briar]

3. Questioning, the Jack Bauer way

Questioning, the Jack Bauer way


The American TV drama, 24, featuring counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer, inspired lawyers at Guantánamo, who were instructed to come up with new interrogation techniques.

Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, a military lawyer at the detention centre, said Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, "gave people lots of ideas". She told Philippe Sands, author of Torture Team: "We saw <24> on cable ... It was hugely popular."

Sands writes: "She believed the series contributed to an environment in which those at Guantánamo were encouraged to see themselves as being on the frontline - and to go further than they otherwise might."

The US military criticised the award-winning series last year, saying it encouraged soldiers to see torture as a justifiable weapon against terror suspects...

hurt."http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/19/guantanamo.usa1