Today In WTF? Rumsfeld Edition

Sept 30th, 2011
by F. Grey Parker

Click for larger view. Image via

During the last ten years of Permawar, the reporters of Al-Jazeera have been attacked by our country in more than one location. Just prior to the capture of Kabul, Afghanistan in 2001, their affiliate was destroyed by American munitions. As Muftah Al Suwaidan, then London bureau chief, noted at the the time:

"Al-Jazeera's office is in the heart of Kabul. The building is the only one to have been hit so it looks like it was deliberate."

Then came the 8th of April in 2003 in Iraq. NPR reported dryly:

"Three journalists were killed in military operations in Baghdad Tuesday, including an incident in which a U.S. tank fired at a hotel housing hundreds of international reporters."

There have been allegations that these were very much intentional operations and that former President George W. Bush was all for them. There has even been reportage that Bush was so gung-ho about targeting Al Jazeera's journalists, he openly discussed bombing their headquarters in Doha, Qatar, with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair is alleged to have talked W out of it.

Think about it. This would have been akin to bombing Rockefeller Center to stop the free dissemination of information the W regime didn't want transmitted.

Image via wikileaks

The thing is, the targeted killing of journalists during the W. years was not altogether uncommon.

The sheer number of the dead and the scope of the coordinated killings is unlike anything our country has ever been guilty of before.

Of course, that can be said of us on many fronts since the abandonment of Just War Theory by our government.

The now infamous "collateral murder" video, which helped to make wikileaks a household name was not the most brazen act of violence against the non-combatant press corps... it is simply the only one for which we have seen the military's video record.

These facts make this morning's news a heck of an eye opener. Via HuffPo:

"Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has given an interview to Al Jazeera, ending his feud with a channel he once described as "vicious".

Questioned by Sir David Frost, Bush’s former right-hand man, who many see as the architect of the second Gulf War, struck a conciliatory tone in the interview.

"Its audience has grown and it can be an important means of communication in the world," he said of the channel.

"I am delighted you are doing what you are doing."

What Rumsfeld is trying to accomplish is anyone's guess. Distance from the last regime? Denial of complicity in outright war crimes? Who knows.

It is more than perplexing. It is disgusting. And here I thought the Dick Cheney "torture is good" tour promoting his "book" was beyond the pale.

The So-Called Liberal Media

Dec 29th, 2010

Here is a tale of two videos. Well, one video really. It is shown in two different ways and to very, very different ends. It is but a single example of our major news organization's complicity in keeping the public uniformed. It is also typical. The first media embed is from CBS News coverage of a few seconds from the helicopter gunship recording that put Wikileaks on the map. Watch please...



Did you see the obvious war crime caught on tape? Neither did most people who watched good old "liberal" CBS for information on the release of the video.

Now, please watch the second video...



The CBS coverage is questionable in the extreme. The highly respected Namir Noor Eldeen is not mentioned by name. There is no mention that the American soldiers mis-identified a 10" camera lens as an RPG-7, an item roughly 3 feet longer when unloaded. There is no mention that the soldiers involved lied and stipulated that it was a "battle" with insurgents. There is no mention that there were children on the scene when the helicopter gunships engaged a second time in an attempt to kill the wounded (a war crime under Common Article 3 of The Geneva Conventions) and those who attempted to provide them assistance (a war crime under Common Articles 9, 12 and 15 of The Geneva Conventions).

The money quote from the network's 90 second story:
"Now it appears from the tape that at least some of those hit on the ground were unarmed, but a journalist who was in the general area that same days says it is important for all of us to remember it was a hectic, violent and uneasy day."

Excuse me? The second wave of unprovoked fire wounded rescuers and two children almost killing them. It is as clear a record of a war crime that we have seen here at home from our Iraq misadventure. Yet, CBS chose to carry the water for our military in it's attempts to cover up the incident and diminish public anger.

The network should be ashamed. To be fair, guys like Murrow and Cronkite wouldn't be caught dead working for them now. And that's the way it is.