Posted on 04/10/2003 9:16:06 PM PDT by Pokey78
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.
Eason Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.
Damage control!
Look for another shoe to drop. Just my guess.
???? But this article is where he admitted knowledge...damage control would be what's going on now (the feel sorry for CNN because, ALLEGEDLY, two of their guys ALMOST got killed today......something I disbelieve.)
CNN-in Iraq, and now we learn the same thing taking place in Cuba (Per MRC) and Pakistan (per C. Krauthammer on FOX)-where else, and how much Blood money is CNN paying these regimes to spread their filthy lies?
Same here, while I've been at home, anyway. My mother is recuperating in a hospital after knee-replacement surgery, and the hospital only gets CNN for its news channel (which is adding to her misery!). I've seen an hour here and there of CNN's coverage over the past week or so... it seems that no matter what time I visit, Wolf Blitzer is always on, and the reporting is full of long faces and gloom and doom... a sharp contrast to Fox News.
MSNBC isn't too bad lately, especially with the addition of Joe Scarborough, Mike Savage and their "tribute wall" to the troops. The anchor who used to be with ESPN (can't think of his name) isn't too bad either, from what I've seen.
Somehow, some way, we've GOT to get CNN out of those airports and hospitals!
Because all sorts of stuff like this will be coming out in the near future, and CNN wanted to put their spin on it first, and look like they're coming clean., imho.
Better to confess your sins, than be charged with a cover-up.
Saddam and Green Eggs by listener Bob I do not like you Saddam-I-Am; I do not like your desert sand … I like you even less than Spam; and never would I shake your hand… I do not like you with a gun; I do not want your petroleum I would not like you on a yak; I do not want you in Iraq I do not want your picture there, with ugly sneer on every square… I’m tired of you and sneak attacks and may your bunker smash you flat… I do not like you Saddam-I-Am, and hope you end up in Iran… Or on the Moon or on the Sun or floating in a jiffy john… I do not like the Scuds you launch; I do not like your big fat paunch… While people starved and Kurds were gassed, you hid your dirty weapons mass… Poised with Mustard and Anthrax along with Serine in your pack… I would not like you on a boat or train, or even exiled in Bahrain… I do not like, nor do I care, that you wear French underwear… I would not like you with a bird, but maybe with some angry Kurds… Or maybe in a crashing plane with lots of smoke and lots of flames… Take a friend Saddam Hussein, let’s add Bill, to feel your pain, … With Arnett and Rodham and Michael Moore, let’s pack this plane forget the war… Let’s get Tom and Diane too, how about Shawn to smoke a doob… Oh what a jet, oh what a thrill, that all your liberal friends could fill… This final scene, this shock and awe, would give us all one big hoorah… The jumbo liner hits we hope; without survivors and so remote… do not like you here or there, but bits and pieces everywhere… To think about you while we’re passing, stick and weenies with fire crackling… I’ll toast your roasting in this meadow, with a sizzling hot marsh mellow… The people of Iraq will say; why did the UN stay away… Our freedom is handed us today, thank God we have the USA… And now you know just where I stand; I do not like you Saddam-I-Am…
I don't know what their rules are, but surely, CNN must have broken some. Perhaps a letter writing campaign just must help them become "more interested," however.
Unless there is evidence of even more complicity between CNN and the Saddam regime.
The Clinton administration were experts at bringing out bad news in such a fashion that it could control the debate. I am just suspicious that this is the same type of thing. I can think of no other reason for CNN to admit to this at this time and in this fashion.
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