CNN Refrained From Reporting Atrocities

[jamie]

By EASON JORDAN (Eason Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.)

New York Times

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/c/cnn-iraq.htm

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.

In my opinion, even without chem or bio or nuke weapons, the atrocities in

Iraq is justification to remove Saddam from power. It was reason enough

with Milosovich and no-one complained.

[Steff]

Sounds to me like they had a hard choice, report on the stories and people would get killed, don't report and people get killed. So what was the argument?

[apothanein kerdos]

Steff, you're missing the point. The point is, Sadam had to be removed.

[Steff]

Yeah but not by us. The Iraqi people should have removed him, if a people are not willing to fight for their freedom then another country doing it for them isn't going to change the attitudes.

I agree Saddam was an evil brutal man, but the Iraqis hadn't gotten to the point where they were willing to rise up against him. The really sad point is that we helped put him in power.

As always a policy of non intervention is best until our help is requested.

[Ovedya]

Yeah but not by us. The Iraqi people should have removed him, if a people are not willing to fight for their freedom then another country doing it for them isn't going to change the attitudes.

I agree Saddam was an evil brutal man, but the Iraqis hadn't gotten to the point where they were willing to rise up against him. The really sad point is that we helped put him in power.

As always a policy of non intervention is best until our help is requested.

Then that's all the more reason. Our help was requested - over and over (and over, and over) again.

Given the shear number of attrocities to that the Husseins committed against their own people how long do you seriouly think it would have taken for them to rise up? The people of Iraq lived each day in fear of their own lives and well being. In evidence of that fact, even after the regime was eliminated the Iraqi people hardly celebrated, for fear that Saddam would come back. Yes, some people rise up to take charge of their own futures. But then some people need a little "boost" as well. What we did in Iraq was right, and it was in keeping with the pricipals upon which this nation was founded.

Evil prevails when good men do nothing.

[traveller]

Sometimes people are beaten down to badly to help themselves back up. Sometimes they need intervention.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

(Matt. 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34)

25 And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

26 He said to him, "What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?"

27 So he answered and said, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,'* and 'your neighbor as yourself.'"*

28 And He said to him, "You have answered rightly; do this and you will live."

29 But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

30 Then Jesus answered and said: "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. 33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 On the next day, *when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.' 36 So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?"

37 And he said, "He who showed mercy on him."

Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

To me, this is the same as helping those that are beaten down in other countries, that cannot help themselves.