The News We (CNN) Kept To Ourselves [must read]

ATLANTA — Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.

We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).

Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.

I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.

Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would "suffer the severest possible consequences." CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

"Think about the irony of CNN's slogan: The most trusted news organization on the planet." ~ goldstategop

Who’s Responsible For More Deaths, Enron or CNN? April 11, 2003 - http://www.rushlimbaugh.com

Email to Rush:
From: HOWARD
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 11:13:25 EDT
To: rush@eibnet.com
Subject: The News We (CNN) Kept to Ourselves

This man is disgusting. He lifts rationalizing to new heights. To tell the truth or not to tell the truth, that is the question. Is it nobler in the mind to tell the truth and save some lives, or to refrain, thus costing more lives over time. Oh, and silly me. I thought it was a journalists duty to report the truth. But not when it interferes with the bottom line apparently. After all CNN might have lost some its position in Iraqi, thus losing its position in the ratings… Oh, wait. It did anyway.

Of what use is it for a “news” organization to maintain a presence in a country if it won't report the news it finds there? Oh, wait. It lets them get scoops, ratings, and, thereby, money. How foolish of me to entertain the thought that their job might be to report the news.

Yet they won't wear flag lapel pins or use the term “we” to refer to freedom-fighting American troops, because that might cast doubt upon their precious “objectivity.” How absolutely vile. This is the lowest. CNN spent millions on the production of an anti American anti military piece of fiction about nerve gas in Vietnam. But will not tell the truth in Iraq because it fears retribution.

Well dude, the retribution is here. CNN like the Baghdad Broadcasting Corp are going down the tubes. I won't watch them again. ''The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'' Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

This is really the journalistic equivalent of corporate greed. Who is worse: ENRON's Andy Fastow, or CNN's Jordan? I'm sure every crooked corporate titan can justify in their own minds their skullduggery, but they are just grubby businessman. They are not as noble as a 'journalist'.

When it comes down to it, why are we more afraid and concerned about WMD than the leadership of an entire nation? Can't the leadership do worse damage with more far-reaching consequences than a WMD ever could?
The things this man claims to know may have changed the course of history years ago - saving many destroyed families, lives, etc. Sticky situation with an easy solution - stand tall, stand righteous, be strong and do what's right, even if it's not popular or could be done cheaper...

This is very sad. This is indeed, nothing but some pre-emptive CYA by CNN. Too late. If CNN had any integrity, it would have removed it's entire staff in Baghdad when it became aware of such atrocities, fully broadcast the details of those atrocities, and it might have retained a shred of credibility.

It now is confirmed that CNN is not a news organization, it is a pack of pandering leftists who put profits first, and truth last. Funny, isn't that how they always slam those 'evil capitalists' they seem to deplore? Coward! This from an organization that will breathlessly report on anything about the Bush Administration that they perceive (insinuate) to have a hint of scandal: Cheney and the energy plan, Lott's comments, the Bush girls, ties to Enron, yet they cannot tell the truth about a murderous regime.

SAY IT! The only place a reporter can report (or manufacture a lie and report it) without fear is in the US, a country these bums work to tear down with every broadcast. PATHETIC! I'm sure CNN has the same side deal going with the Palestinian authority. This explains so much.

For over a decade CNN has knowingly hidden the truth about Saddam for years. People have been tortured and killed because CNN hid the truth in order to keep an office open in Iraq. But why? They weren’t reporting the truth! Read this news executive’s excuses. His hypocrisy is disgusting.

Why not pull their reporters out of Iraq and tell the truth about Saddam a year ago? They knew then that the truth would have supported George Bush’s policy on Iraq. Knowing what they did about the monster in Baghdad, why did CNN continue their ‘neutral’ editorial stand on going to war against what they knew was a regime of terror? Greed or cowardice?

For the sake of their business (which was knowingly reporting half truths and lies) they have been silent handmaidens to Saddam Hussein. They remained silent when the truth would have saved innocent lives. CNN is an accomplice to Saddam’s murders.

So he warned the King of Jordan.... why not the 2 brother-in-laws? They're dead. This really was disgusting. Out of his own mouth he condemns himself and it's written on paper! I guess confession is good for the soul, but how can he live with himself, knowing what he knew and staying silent. He should have been sitting next to Sec. Powell at the UN...adding his information to World!

And these are the guys who'd like the world to think the USA went to Iraq for the oil? Interesting how "businesses" if they support socialism and Democrats (think Hughes, Apple etc) get a free ride in the media (even when they ARE the media) but businesses who might not support Dems are excoriated (think Haliburton, MicroSoft).

Eason Jordan states that Uday Hussein told him that he was going to assassinate King Hussein of Jordan and his two brothers-in-law who had defected. Jordan says he "felt a moral obligation" to tell King Hussein about the threat. That's all fine and good, but didn't he have the same "moral obligation" to warn Uday's brothers-in-law??? If not personally, at least through US intelligence channels?

Well, he didn't. The brothers-in-law were lured back to Iraq under promises of their well-being - and then executed. CNN has blood on its hands, and I bet this is only the tip of the iceberg. When you know evil exists and you allow it to continue, you are just as responsible as those committing the evil. CNN does the exact SAME THING in Cuba, ever since it arrived there after securing permission to "broadcast" (CNN term for exporting propaganda). The network has a permanent female career correspondent there who, to date, has never uttered a negative word about the government. These people are media high-grade cyanide.

One has to wonder how many lives might have been saved if the press had told the truth about the torture in Iraq. What really angers me is how so many of these news outlets pretended there was no or little basis to the torture stories. Now, all of a sudden, they tell the truth. Perhaps if they had closed their bureaus and gone public with the atrocities hundreds if not thousands might have been saved. A pox on all their houses.

So who is responsible for the deaths of more people? ENRON, Global Crossing, Exxon, the timber industry, Newt Gingrich, and all the other whipping boys of the left ADDED TOGETHER, or CNN? Pull the plug on CNN... they are DONE!

Listen to Rush...

(…read Howard's e-mail that nails it)

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_041103/content/eib_email_transcript.guest.html

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