Classical Values :: More AP bias in Armstrong Beheading Report

September 21, 2004

More AP bias in Armstrong Beheading Report

The AP's story on the beheading of American engineer Eugene Armstrong contains an odd but familiar line:

The 9-minute tape, posted on a Web site used by Islamic militants, showed a man seated on the floor, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit - similar to the orange uniform worn by prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - with his hands bound behind his back.

It was used in the past by the AP when Kim Sun-il was murdered:

Kim was shown in the videotape kneeling, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit similar to those issued to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The first time I spotted the line it struck me as inappropriate, or at the very least unnecessary:

Or a jumpsuit similar to ... well, orange jump suit pretty much captures it. That little explicative detail feels like a subtle effort at equating the killers in Iraq with US guards at Guantanamo.

This is clearly meant to lend legitimacy to the cause of the terrorists, and it doesn't stop there:

In a video Saturday setting the 48-hour deadline, the militants demanded the release of female Iraqi prisoners detained by the U.S. military. The military says it is holding two women with ties to Saddam Hussein's regime, including Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha, a scientist who became known as "Dr. Germ" for helping Iraq make weapons out of anthrax, and a biotech researcher. But there may be women held as common criminals.
They said no women were being held at the U.S. military prison at Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, where American soldiers were photographed sexually humiliating male prisoners, raising fears about the safety about women detainees.

So you see? The claims made by the ~~terrorists~~ militants are based on legitimate fears for the safety of their womenfolk.

But whose fault is it, really?

At least 55 American civilians have died in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat complete on May 1, 2003.
In addition to Armstrong and Berg, at least two other Americans have been beheaded since Bush launched the war on terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bush Bush Bush!

posted by Dennis on 09.21.04 at 12:48 AM

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Comments

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

Yours,

Michael Moore

http://michaelmoore.com/words/message/

KERRY KERRY KERRY! · September 21, 2004 08:37 AM

The reflexive, often erroneous, and largely uninformed media obsession with body count has been a peculiar feature of the Iraq story. Even if you add the deaths of American civilians in Iraq to the total military dead, in a year and a half of operations in Iraq, we’ve incurred only about a third of the losses we suffered in a single day under the old paradigm. That’s a bit of comparative risk analysis we seldom, if ever, hear about.

Somehow, the reporting on the war against terrorists fell into a curious cognitive bias, implying that if we had done nothing after 9/11, no more people would have been killed and, overall, lives would have been spared. It seems like something akin to the common “magical thinking” error described by cognitive psychologists. Passivity brought us the disastrous progression from WTC ’93 to the Khobar Towers to the African embassies to the USS Cole to 9/11 (and we now know that even the “Blackhawk Down” episode involved Al Qaeda as well). To paraphrase Alexander Hamilton, a man must be far gone in utopian speculations who can seriously doubt the truth of that vicious lesson.

Roger Mitchell · September 21, 2004 11:33 AM

Excellent comment, Roger!

Examples of doubting the truth of that vicious lesson abound; in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, the beheaders are referred to not as "terrorists," but as "extremists." (A term they use to describe American anti-tax protesters.)

Eric Scheie · September 21, 2004 01:23 PM

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
-Barry Goldwater

To equate Senator Goldwater -- or Ayn Rand, or George Washington, or William Lloyd Garrison -- with murderers -- or murderers with such heroes -- is despicable.

Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato the Elder) the Lesbian-worshipping gun-loving selfish aesthete · September 22, 2004 01:23 AM

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