"Missing the Scandal at Abu Ghraib" (Perversion of journalism at CNN)

[Hissyspit]

Re: Starr's bizarre reporting - a big WTF?
http://www.alternet.org/story/32321/

Missing the Scandal at Abu Ghraib
By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet
Posted on February 16, 2006, Printed on February 16, 2006

CNN's Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr should be given some kind of award for the most outrageously off-target reporting on the newly released photos and videos of U.S. torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

- snip -

"Let's start by reminding everybody that under U.S. military law and practice, the only photographs that can be taken are official photographs for documentation purposes about the status of prisoners when they are in military detention. That's it. Anything else is not acceptable. And of course, that is what the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal is all about."

What? Here I thought the "scandal" was that the U.S. military was systematically abusing prisoners. These new photos, with their documentation of violently inflicted open wounds, obliterate any notion that what occurred at Abu Ghraib was anything short of torture by all accepted definitions of the term. They reveal some horrifying scenes of naked, humiliated, bloodied prisoners, some with apparent gunshot wounds. In a video broadcast on Australia's SBS, naked, hooded prisoners were seen being forced to masturbate in front of the camera.

- snip -

The release of the photographs will spark the violence? No -- U.S. torture of prisoners sparks massive outrage and justifiably so. Moreover, this outrage should not just be confined to the "Arab world" but should be felt everywhere, particularly in the United States. Besides, Pentagon lawyers have already tried this defense in federal court, and a judge ruled that fear of facing the consequences of your actions is not a legitimate defense.

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[Richard Steele]

1. Big WTF indeed...Barbara Starr is an asskissing fool.

[Hissyspit]

2. self-kick

[RazzleDazzle]

3. This is sick/dysfunctional behavior

I wrote about it here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=433196&mesg_id=434463

[Hissyspit]

4. Something has to explain it.

She is either deliberately disingenuous due to whatever motive, or she is delusional.

[Marie26]

5. I vote disingenous

It's a ridiculous spin that no one who saw those photos would buy. The problem is that soldiers were taking unofficial photos? It wasn't that they were taking photos of tortured, beaten prisoners? Please.

[Pacifist Patriot]

6. How unbelievably insulting to humanity. On so many levels.

[JohnnyRingo]

7. The republicans argue that the pix damage American sentiment

worldwide while arguing simultaneously that they don't show any proof of torture or inhumanity.

They just laugh off the pix with a wave of their hand and claim "it's no big deal" then call for the execution of those who uncovered them.

The crime isn't that pictures were taken....it's the depicted act that is a crime.

[Lugnut]

8. I hear her say it

I was scanning through the channels yesterday and stopped at CNN long enough to hear her part of the segment. I'm on outrage overload.

[TahitiNut]

9. Yep. And Warrantless NSA Wiretaps is about leaking classified information.

So sayeth the Burning Bush. :puke:

[Hissyspit]

10. Anyone got the CNN ombudsman email? n/t