If you're one of the few remaining citizens in the country who still thinks the US has a free press, take a look at the covers of the international editions of Newsweek (or should I say Newsweak?). Europe, Asia and Latin America feature the exact same cover story on America "Losing Afghanistan" and the "Rise of Jihadistan." Special thanks to What Really Happened for first pointing out Newsweak's cover discrepancy. Excerpt: The harsh truth is that five years after the U.S. invasion on Oct. 7, 2001 …[much of ] Afghanistan appears to be failing again. Most worrisome, a new failed-state sanctuary is emerging across thousands of square miles along the Afghan-Pakistan border: "Jihadistan," it could be called. It's an autonomous quasi state of religious radicals… [that] extends well across the Pakistan border where, despite close cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistani militaries, jihadist militants … have begun calling themselves "Pakistani Taliban." No longer worried about interference from Islamabad, they openly recruit young men to fight in Afghanistan… This assessment supports the recent US intelligence report that terrorists "are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion," something Rumsfeld seems inexplicably confused about: "Are more terrorists being created in the world? We don't know," said Rumsfeld, adding that there are no good ways to measure. "The world doesn't know. There aren't good ways to measure how many terrorists are being trained at camps around the world." Why is Newsweak gently shielding Americans from this news, and instead giving us a puff piece on a celebrity photographer? By any objective measure, is Annie Leibovitz's "Life in Pictures" a more significant story than what is happening in Afghanistan? Apparently, it is all about keeping up appearances in the run-up to the November elections.
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/nystrom/2006/1002.html