Cowardice award

The Newsweek controversy. Left and right wingers are using the so-called stuff-up of the establishment mouthpiece to prove their respective points. Tiresome, mostly. The key issues have been ignored and it’s taken muckraker extraordinaire Greg Palast to lay some facts on the table:

“It’s appalling that this story got out there,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on her way back from Iraq. What’s NOT appalling to Condi is that the US is holding prisoners at Guantanamo under conditions termed “torture” by the Red Cross. What’s not appalling to Condi is that prisoners of the Afghan war are held in violation of international law after that conflict has supposedly ended. What is NOT appalling to Condi is that prisoner witnesses have reported several instances of the Koran’s desecration. What is appalling to her is that these things were REPORTED.”

“Newsweek has now publicly committed to having its reports vetted by Rumsfeld’s Defense Department before publication. Why not just print Rumsfeld’s press releases and eliminate the middleman, the reporter?”

The reluctance of the American media to investigate allegations of abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay has been explained. God forbid an editor or journalist discovers something shocking, what individual, other than the bravest, will want to be chastised by Bush and his cronies?

I would have thought it was a badge of honour to expose the duplicity of the current regime and its client states. Thankfully, some people still think so.

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