YEAH ... IT'S ALL ABOUT ABU GHRAIB
Sen. Hillary Clinton
Do you realize that at this point the story of the abuse of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison has received more press coverage for a longer period of time than did the story of the capture of Saddam Hussein? And just why is that? Come on, haven't you been listening? It's because the media believes the story of Abu Ghraib hurts George Busy, while the story of the capture of Saddam Hussein helps George Bush.
You heard what Democrat Billionaire George Soros was up to yesterday, didn't you? Soros is the money behind such leftist anti-Bush organizations as MoveOn.org. He was speaking yesterday before the leftist Campaign for America's Future .. .introduced by The Hildabeast. Soros, of course, launched immediately into condemnation of Bush for the Abu Ghraib story.
Now ... get this. This should illustrate the depth of the mindlessness that has been brought on by the obsessive Bush hatred of the left. Soros says that the pictures from Abu Ghraib " .. hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."
Three thousand people died in the attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. If any of the prisoners died from the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, I missed the story. Soros looks at pictures of bodies falling to the streets around the World Trade Towers; at pictures of the wreckage of an American Airlines jet in Pennsylvania, and at pictures of the burning Pentagon, and tells us that these pictures are no worse than the pictures of naked Iraqi men wearing women's panties on their heads.
Soros also repeated the Democratic lie yesterday that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Don't bother Soros with the facts, he has hatred to nurture.
I hope you've been keeping up with James Taranto's Best of the Web column every afternoon. With the help of his readers Taranto has been gathering examples of how hard the media works to hammer the Abu Ghraib story each and every day. A newspaper or wire service will run a story that has no direct connection to the Abu Ghraib situation. Then, in the middle some paragraph an editor or writer will insert a gratuitous reference to Abu Ghraib .. just to keep the story out there. Here are some examples from just this week.
From an Associated Press dispatch about the Supreme Court case involving enemy combatant Jose Padilla: "Similarly, the images of prisoner abuse at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are not part of another important case this term testing the legal rights of detainees at another U.S.-operated prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
From a New York Times review of "The Great Game" by Frederick Hitz, a book about the CIA: "In 1982, shortly before he volunteered information to the Soviets, some bitter wag at the C.I.A. put up a poster describing the 'Six Phases of a U.S. Government Sponsored Covert Action.' They were listed as enthusiasm, disillusionment, panic, search for the guilty, punishment of the innocent, and praise and honor for the nonparticipants. That may well describe the response to revelations about Abu Ghraib prison and undisclosed activities carried out by the C.I.A. and Special Forces in furtherance of 'the war on terror.' " The Reuterian scare quotes around war on terror are an added fillip.
From a Reuters dispatch about President Bush's visit with "one of his harshest critics," a certain John Paul II: "In the pope's remarks last Thursday, the pontiff did not mention Iraq but it was the first time he has spoken specifically about torture since photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison emerged last month."
From a New York Times story on John Kerry's slogan, "Let America be America again": "The phrase has surfaced at a time of outrage over the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, aides noted, and on Thursday in Seattle, Mr. Kerry used it again to articulate his differences from Mr. Bush on foreign policy."
And from an Associated Press article on nonlethal weapons--those that aim only to immobilize the enemy: "But in an era of secret interrogations of al-Qaida suspects and revelations of U.S. abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, Executive Director Doug Johnson of the Minneapolis-based Center for Torture Victims is skeptical." Sunday's Times features an article on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's commencement speech at West Point. It reports that the address "made no mention of the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq." That didn't stop the Times from mentioning it..
The Monday Times profiles the late First Lt. Therrel Shane Childers of Powell, Wyo., who died in combat in Iraq last year. "Lieutenant Childers died too soon to see the strife in Iraq today, or the photographs of prisoners being humiliated at the hands of American guards in the Abu Ghraib prison," the Times points out. Sooner or later we're going to see a story in The New York Times about some episode of criminality that takes place in Manhattan. The Times editors will insert something like this: "The pictures of the crime scene were not unlike pictures of smiling U.S. reservists next to the body of an Iraqi at the Abu Ghraib prison."
Just wait.
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Sen. Hillary Clinton
Do you realize that at this point the story of the abuse of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison has received more press coverage for a longer period of time than did the story of the capture of Saddam Hussein? And just why is that? Come on, haven't you been listening? It's because the media believes the story of Abu Ghraib hurts George Busy, while the story of the capture of Saddam Hussein helps George Bush.
You heard what Democrat Billionaire George Soros was up to yesterday, didn't you? Soros is the money behind such leftist anti-Bush organizations as MoveOn.org. He was speaking yesterday before the leftist Campaign for America's Future .. .introduced by The Hildabeast. Soros, of course, launched immediately into condemnation of Bush for the Abu Ghraib story.
Now ... get this. This should illustrate the depth of the mindlessness that has been brought on by the obsessive Bush hatred of the left. Soros says that the pictures from Abu Ghraib " .. hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."
Three thousand people died in the attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. If any of the prisoners died from the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, I missed the story. Soros looks at pictures of bodies falling to the streets around the World Trade Towers; at pictures of the wreckage of an American Airlines jet in Pennsylvania, and at pictures of the burning Pentagon, and tells us that these pictures are no worse than the pictures of naked Iraqi men wearing women's panties on their heads.
Soros also repeated the Democratic lie yesterday that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Don't bother Soros with the facts, he has hatred to nurture.
I hope you've been keeping up with James Taranto's Best of the Web column every afternoon. With the help of his readers Taranto has been gathering examples of how hard the media works to hammer the Abu Ghraib story each and every day. A newspaper or wire service will run a story that has no direct connection to the Abu Ghraib situation. Then, in the middle some paragraph an editor or writer will insert a gratuitous reference to Abu Ghraib .. just to keep the story out there. Here are some examples from just this week.
From an Associated Press dispatch about the Supreme Court case involving enemy combatant Jose Padilla: "Similarly, the images of prisoner abuse at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are not part of another important case this term testing the legal rights of detainees at another U.S.-operated prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
From a New York Times review of "The Great Game" by Frederick Hitz, a book about the CIA: "In 1982, shortly before he volunteered information to the Soviets, some bitter wag at the C.I.A. put up a poster describing the 'Six Phases of a U.S. Government Sponsored Covert Action.' They were listed as enthusiasm, disillusionment, panic, search for the guilty, punishment of the innocent, and praise and honor for the nonparticipants. That may well describe the response to revelations about Abu Ghraib prison and undisclosed activities carried out by the C.I.A. and Special Forces in furtherance of 'the war on terror.' " The Reuterian scare quotes around war on terror are an added fillip.
From a Reuters dispatch about President Bush's visit with "one of his harshest critics," a certain John Paul II: "In the pope's remarks last Thursday, the pontiff did not mention Iraq but it was the first time he has spoken specifically about torture since photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison emerged last month."
From a New York Times story on John Kerry's slogan, "Let America be America again": "The phrase has surfaced at a time of outrage over the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, aides noted, and on Thursday in Seattle, Mr. Kerry used it again to articulate his differences from Mr. Bush on foreign policy."
And from an Associated Press article on nonlethal weapons--those that aim only to immobilize the enemy: "But in an era of secret interrogations of al-Qaida suspects and revelations of U.S. abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, Executive Director Doug Johnson of the Minneapolis-based Center for Torture Victims is skeptical." Sunday's Times features an article on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's commencement speech at West Point. It reports that the address "made no mention of the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq." That didn't stop the Times from mentioning it..
The Monday Times profiles the late First Lt. Therrel Shane Childers of Powell, Wyo., who died in combat in Iraq last year. "Lieutenant Childers died too soon to see the strife in Iraq today, or the photographs of prisoners being humiliated at the hands of American guards in the Abu Ghraib prison," the Times points out. Sooner or later we're going to see a story in The New York Times about some episode of criminality that takes place in Manhattan. The Times editors will insert something like this: "The pictures of the crime scene were not unlike pictures of smiling U.S. reservists next to the body of an Iraqi at the Abu Ghraib prison."
Just wait.
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