SADDAM'S CENSORED SADISM

The New York Post’s Deborah Orin has a fascinating story about the media blackout of the Saddam torture videos. It turns out that the Saddam regime videotaped its torturers at work. Literally thousands of videos exist of hands being cut off, prisoners being beaten, shot or beheaded and women being raped in front of their husbands.

Now this is a story, right? Well, not so fast. The mainstream media, having regaled us with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in which people are shown standing on a box, wearing women’s underwear and wearing dog collars held by a female guard, are suddenly shy.

While there are occasional references to Saddam’s tortures and mass graves, they are buried somewhere on page 14 and given passing reference. To compare that to Abu Ghraib, keep in mind that the reports of abuses by American guards was released by the Pentagon in January of this year. It was not given much coverage. But when the media got hold of pictures the story exploded and kept exploding despite the fact that nothing new was being added to the incessant front page media exposure. The main story was the pictures.

Well, now we have pictures of Abu Ghraib under Saddam. The Pentagon has literally thousands of videos. Access to these videos isn't hard to get; two U.S. Senators gave a press conference showing some of the videos. The result of this juicy bit of news: nothing, zero, nada.

Is this deliberate? You bet. Everything that shows in the press is deliberate. Nothing shows up in the front pages by accident. So the decision to “spike” this story, despite graphic pictures is a deliberate political act.

The whole story can be read HERE. But here are a couple of interesting parts.

Last week, The Post revealed that reporters were ignoring a gruesome video of torture by Saddam's thugs while obsessing over prisoner mistreatment by a small group of U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib jail where the photos are less upsetting.

That prompted Laura Daniel to write New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent to complain, to no avail.

"I don't think the NYT needs to cover the video — but I do think it should make periodic mention of Saddam's torture — which, in fact, I believe it has, and does," Okrent emailed back.

"That's intellectually dishonest, and he knows it," retorts Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who co-hosted an airing of the Saddam torture video on Capitol Hill with Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.).

"There's no question if we had pictures of American soldiers chopping off hands, they would air it. It's just a double standard . . . The idea that if you mention [Saddam's torture] you have somehow checked your box of being fair is ridiculous," he adds.

By contrast he points to "front-page, eye-catching, big headlines that say, 'America bad, America fails.' What is the overall message that's getting out? It's not what's mentioned in paragraph 13 — 'Oh, by the way, Saddam was bad, too.' "

Last fall, when Fox broke the story of the Saddam torture videos, the Times ran all of five paragraphs back on Page A-14 with a small picture — versus, so far, 181 stories on Abu Ghraib, more than 40 on the front page
…
… says former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who did a tour in Baghdad training Iraqi policemen, that video isn't even the tip of the iceberg. He has 30 or 50 DVDs that show the same kind of Saddam torture and much worse.

"I've had guys from the NYPD, veteran homicide cops, whose stomachs turn when they watch it. What went on at Abu Ghraib under Saddam was 1,000 times worse, but we don't see it. They write a paragraph about it," Kerik says.

…"When Ted Kennedy says Abu Ghraib has reopened under 'U.S. management,' the guy hasn't got a clue. It just shows what kind of world of unreality he lives in. His whole agenda is political," Kerik adds.

And there are other Saddam horrors on tape. Former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke says there are thousands of tapes of rapes by Saddam's thugs, since one of his pet practices was to rape wives in front of their husbands. Sometimes the rapes were videoed from a few different angles.
In case a husband got out of line again, he'd be sent his wife's rape tape, she says.

We are in a war. Our troops are being killed. Yet the media give us no context for the war. Instead, we are constantly told we can’t win, Iraq is a “quagmire,” that we are committing atrocities in Abu Ghraib, and Iraqis were happy and prosperous under the benevolent rule of Saddam Hussein according to the chronicler of the left, Michael Moore.

There are literally thousands of newspapers, radio and TV stations in the U.S. Why are these very graphic, very “juicy” (from a news perspective) pictures not getting the attention of Abu Ghraib? There are two primary ones that I can think of: first, the news industry is populated by people who are to the Left of the residents of Berkeley. Showing Saddam torturing prisoners would help George Bush, and there is no inclination to help Bush. Remember that this is an election year. For proof, I refer you to the economic news. Last year when the economy was in recession and job losses were mounting, the economy was topic “A” in the news. Now that economic growth is higher than it has been for 20 years and hundreds of thousands of new jobs are being created every month, the economy has disappeared from the news.

The second reason is the New York Times. Despite its modest national circulation, the NY Times sets the agenda for the major newspapers and TV networks, with the solitary exception of Fox News. For the mainstream press, if it isn't in the Times, it didn't happen. And the current publisher of the NY Times sided with the Communist North during the war in Viet Nam. That’s all you need to know about the Times.

Deborah Oren concludes: “Most of the press still isn't ready to face up to how to report the real horrors of what terrorists do. It would be a good start if newspapers like the Times would admit there's a problem when they downplay those horrors.” I think the press is aware of the horrors … and doesn’t care.