Thursday, June 16, 2005
You Don't Want To Go Here, Jim Hoagland.
Really, you don't. Over at Eschaton, Atrios cites you as saying this:
Sordid details of thugs and kidnappers such as these cannot compete with the romantic images of Iraqi "insurgents" taking desperate measures in desperate times, so don't expect to see Hayssam's story on the evening news here or on al-Jazeera's Arabic broadcasts.Believe me, Jim me lad, you are the last person who should be complaining about what doesn't get shown on US newscasts. Let me show you a story posted recently by Jeanne over at the Body and Soul blog that, though it got some brief TV mentions last year that were sandwiched in between the all-important Scott Peterson and Martha Stewart coverage, will never be described, in all its gory details, on the evening news in the US:
An Afghan detainee in U.S. custody was so brutalized before his death that his thigh tissue was "pulpified," a forensic pathologist testified Tuesday at a preliminary hearing for a military police officer charged in the 2002 assault. "It was similar to injuries of a person run over by a bus," said Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, who performed an autopsy on the detainee, identified only as Dilawar.And as this abstract from the NYT story Jeanne cites tells us, Dilawar was not only innocent of the crime for which he was detained and tortured to death, but his US torturers knew it -- and killed him anyway. (THAT little detail never made the TV news in the US.) Like I said, Jim -- you really don't want to go here.
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