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Rescued Iranian Fishermen – How Comes The Times Is Involved?
So a carrier group from the U.S. Navy rescues some Iranian fishermen who were captured by Somali pirates …
And just by chance the New York Times' very best war reporter, former marine captain C.J Chivers and his photographer side kick Tyler Hicks, are somehow on board of one of the Navy ships. Their story has the fantastic dateline "ABOARD THE FISHING VESSEL AL MULAHI, in the Gulf of Oman". It gives a detailed reportage of what happened including interviews with the Iranian captain and some pirates.
It is well written, as usual by Chivers, but there is something missing in his piece. Why is he where he is?
When was he send to that carrier in the Arabian Sea? That carrier went through the street of Hormuz only three days ago. Chivers being there was just by chance? His reporting with a teaser today and the main fill on tomorrow's NYT weekend edition page 1 is just by chance? He just got lucky?
Sure. Those Iraq WMD stories in the NY Times were also just by chance? They also by chance always came in the weekend edition? Judith Miller was just lucky that she picked them up?
The real questions: How long ago was this propaganda show planed? Who set it up? And how much of it was real?
And what will the Times have to pay back for getting this propaganda coup scoop handed to it by the Navy?
The Taguba Report…More than “a few rotten apples”
Seymour Hersh, “The General’s Report, How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all
Army Major General Antonio Taguba was given the assignment of investigating what happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
He was “summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. “Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib…Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”
Taguba said, “Rumsfeld was in denial.” He had submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through several channels at the Pentagon and to the Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, which ran the war in Iraq. By the time he walked into Rumsfeld’s conference room, he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders on the report…Taguba also knew that senior officials in Rumsfeld’s office and elsewhere in the Pentagon had been given a graphic account of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and told of their potential strategic significance, within days of the first complaint.”
“Nevertheless, Rumsfeld, in his appearances before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees on May 7th, claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse. “It breaks our hearts that in fact someone didn’t say, ‘Wait, look, this is terrible. We need to do something,’ ” Rumsfeld told the congressmen. “I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn’t.”
“Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld’s testimony was simply not true. “The photographs were available to him—if he wanted to see them. Rumsfeld’s lack of knowledge was hard to credit.” He also recalled thinking, “Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There’s no way he’s suffering from C.R.S.—Can’t Remember Shit. He’s trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves.” It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials.
“The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects—‘We’re here to protect the nation from terrorism’—is an oxymoron,” Taguba said. “He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them…Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib failed the nation.”
“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”
Taguba was forced to retire from the military in January 2007.
Following World War II, Justice Robert Jackson argued, “If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” He believed in a single standard to be applied not only to our enemies, but to ourselves as well. He stated at Nuremberg, “We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.” Justice Jackson said of aggressive war, “It is utterly condemned as an instrument of policy.”
We have a long way to go to live up to our ideals, those we imposed upon the Germans at Nuremberg. We will not get there until we impose accountability on our own leaders for failing to uphold our obligations under by international law and our own Constitution.
Posted by: DakotabornKansan | Jan 9 2012 17:24 utc | 39
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