Mirror editor, Piers Morgan, gone? ... Can Britain Be Far Behind? (and
other items)
I am disappointed and discouraged that so transparent a sting operation
against the courageous editor of the Mirror has succeeded. Reasonableness
would have been to understand that 1) newspapers can be given false
information deliberately, 2) checking for authenticity to the point of
absolute certainty in very im****tant stories must be weighed in trade-off
against timeliness, and 3) honest mistakes by an editor in the judging
trade-off between establi****ng authenticity and timeliness (realizing that
mistakes will happen, that the editors nose for a fraud can be deceived by
an accomplished deceiver) should be forgiven if retraction is offered as
soon as the error is discovered and the way the the mistake/deception
occured is re****ted.
Theologians can argue that the way to disprove that a pretender is a
"prophet of God" is to find him pronouncing one error. If the British do
not hold their prime ministers to this standard or intelligence services
to
this standard, why hold honest editors who are trying to keep people
informed of coverups of life-and-death evil in high places and who have a
six a.m. deadline to a higher standard?
By allowing the very people who may have originated the false information
to
call for and get the head of the editor they fooled does not send the
message "be competent or else" to editors, rather it sends the message "we
can put you out in the street too if you do not play along."
It so happens that I recognize this tactic because I have seen it used
against investigators and commentators on the internet.
One needs to look very carefully at the way in which the call for Morgan's
head was made and at exactly who pulled him down.
> Piers Morgan's gone ... but can Tony Blair be far behind?
> Faked pictures of abuse did for The Mirror editor but the reality of
> abuse by British soldiers may yet topple Blair, re****ts Westminster
> Editor James Cusick
> 16 May 2004
> http://www.sundayherald.com/42069
>
> He says he has learned to put up with it during 10 years as leader of
> the Labour Party. And he can't tell you how many "worst weeks ever" he's
> had. But this week Tony Blair isn't fighting off just another bad week,
> he's fighting off speculation inside his party, and crucially inside his
> cabinet, that due to the Iraq war there may be no good weeks left.
>
> It should have been a minor triumph when The Mirror's fake pictures of
> British torture in Iraq were exposed - there was even a scalp claimed,
> in the form of editor Piers Morgan - but all it has done is free up the
> press to concentrate on Blair's increasingly tenuous position.
>
> Blair knows he's in trouble. Speaking to a local paper in Newcastle he
> said: "I can make some people angry, but that's just part of life. It's
> like being a Premier****p manager - life is just tough, it's a rough
> ride."
Any hit man or drug dealer makes this same rationalization for bru****ng
off
civilized opinion.
More like America every day. Authority to license Iraq's television
stations, sanction newspapers and regulate cellphone companies was
recently
transferred to a commission whose members were selected by Wa****ngton.
http://tinyurl.com/ys49j
Bush getting US out of World Court treaty responsibilities. So far 89
countries have signed agreements with Wa****ngton promising that Americans
accused of grave international offenses, including soldiers and officials
charged with war crimes, will be returned to U.S. jurisdiction so their
cases can be decided by Federal Judges or Pentagon-run military courts
rather than international jurists.
http://tinyurl.com/2w3j5
Heavy Fighting in Karbala, Amara, Nasiriyah, Samawah 5 Americans Dead;
British Kill 20 Near Amara
http://www.juancole.com/
You knew there would be nothing but lies when you opted to sup****t this
war, right?
http://www.sundayherald.com/42068
Two versions of the truth and nobody taking note -- The death of an
eight-year-old Iraqi girl, a string of damning re****ts and yet not a
single
minister claims to have seen one of them, writes Westminster Editor James
Cusick
16 May 2004
WHY eight-year-old Hanan Saleh Matrud was killed is not clear. Hanan lived
in Karmat Ali, an area known to be hostile to coalition forces in Iraq,
when
on August 21 last year a patrol from the First Battalion of the King's
Regiment were "engaged" by several stone- throwing mobs.
A British soldier fired a warning shot into the air to disperse the stone
throwers, which they did, according to the army. But "a number of minutes"
later the patrol noticed "a girl who had been cut across the abdominal
area"
.. The girl was Hanan and she was still conscious, but the wound was
serious.
She was taken to the Czech hospital in northern Basra where she died the
next day.
However, the account given by Iraqi eyewitnesses - and re****ted by Amnesty
International - and Hanan's family couldn't be more different. One
witness,
Mizher Jabbar Yassip, said an armoured vehicle stopped outside the
entrance
to an alley that led to Hanan's house. Three or four soldiers got out. A
group of children gathered about 60 or so metres from the vehicle.
''Suddenly a soldier aimed and fired a shot which hit Hanan in her lower
torso.''
Her uncle, Fellah, carried her to the vehicle. Witnesses say the soldiers
were reluctant to take her to hospital, but they did. According to Hanan's
family, military police photographed the area and interviewed witnesses
the
day after the killing. Hanan's body was also photo graphed in the Czech
hospital.
However, Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, in a statement made on
January 19, said no investigation was initiated by the UK military
authorities into Hanan's death. She is only one of 37 civilians that UK
forces have been involved in killing since May 1 last year.
Just as Ingram was apparently certain that Hanan's death had not been
investigated, he is equally clear that his office has received "no adverse
or other re****ts" into the treatment of detainees in Iraq. Like the
differing accounts of the King's Regiment and Hanan's family, Ingram's
version of events and the account offered by the International Committee
of
the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, cannot both be correct.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote to his shadow Michael Ancram last week,
detailing an ICRC re****t that was delivered on February 26 this year to
the
office of US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer and officials from the
office
of the UK special representative for Iraq. At the meeting, the ICRC
presented a re****t on the treatment of detainees in Iraq by coalition
personnel.
Straw says the meeting was re****ted to London by the UK special
representative on February 27. A telegram noted that a copy of the re****t
had already been provided to Permanent Joint Headquarters (Northwood).
Although it was signed by the UK's Special Representative in Iraq, Sir
Jeremy Greenstock "in the usual way that telegrams are signed by Heads of
Mission" Straw admitted Greenstock hadn't in fact seen the ICRC re****t,
and
hadn't been at the meeting.
There is mounting political concern over why Prime Minister Tony Blair
said
he did not see the re****t until Monday, May 10, and said he did not know
of
the allegations it contained. Nor did Jack Straw, Ingram or Geoff Hoon.
But
the February re****t from the ICRC and the allegations of torture and abuse
it contained was not - as this newspaper re****ted last week - the first
alarm bell to have rung in Iraq. It was, in fact, only a summary of a year
of ICRC probes in Iraq.
According to the ICRC in Geneva, the February re****t "summarises a series
of
working papers handed over to the coalition forces". ICRC delegates'
findings were based on their observations and private interviews with
prisoners of war and detainees during the 29 visits the ICRC conducted in
14
places of detention throughout Iraq between March 31 and October 24, 2003.
The ICRC also says delegates met regularly with representatives of the
coalition authorities to "present them with serious concerns regarding the
treatment of persons protected by the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions"
who the coalition were holding in Iraqi detention centres.
The ICRC's director of operations, Pierre Krahenbuhl, now believes the
leaking of the February re****t may have damaged the political neutrality
of
his organisation, and has tried to close down the material coming out of
the
ICRC. But Krahenbuhl is not back-tracking on any of the content listed and
re-emphasised its conclusions in re****t after re****t during a year of
occupation in Iraq. He dismisses accusations that the re****ts were mainly
on
issues of food and water. "I won't go into details," he said in Geneva,
"but
the issues are clearly of treatment . some of the elements the ICRC found
were tantamount to torture."
The ICRC in London told the Sunday Herald that after each visit or
inspection a re****t was compiled and delivered to coalition authorities.
An
accompanying discussion with senior coalition figures was routine.
In addition to the ICRC's review of incidents where detainees had been
shot
or wounded, the ICRC also investigated the places where mistreatment of
detainees was said to be taking place. The mandate of the Geneva
Convention
technically allowed the ICRC unrestricted access. The military
intelligence
sections of Baghdad's Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib jails were inspected.
Other inspections included Al-Baghdadi, Heat Base and Hubbania Camp in the
Ramadi governorate; the Tikrit holding area (the former Saddam Hussein
Islamic School); a former train station, Al Khaim, that had been converted
into a military base; the ministry of defence and presidential palace in
Baghdad, and the former mukhabarat secret police office in Basra.
An ICRC source in London said: "Before and after each visit we would speak
to the person in charge of the facility. We expected them to look at our
recommendations. After each visit there would have been a re****t and a
dialogue with the coalition authorities - both UK and US."
Yet nobody in either the Foreign Office or MoD is able to say if senior
ministers read these re****ts and who should have ensured they did . The
Sunday Herald has established how this should have happened. The Foreign
Office has a seconded adviser on human rights working with the "ministry
of
human rights" inside the coalition authority in Baghdad. The ICRC re****t
would have immediately gone to the "human rights" department and then be
sent by secure "telegram" to London for distribution.
So how did Blair, Straw, Hoon and Ingram fail to get the re****ts? A
Whitehall source said: "It is entirely possible that ministers did not see
these re****ts - but only if they had specifically asked not to see them.
Not everything goes to ministers - especially if they wanted the bad news
kept well away from them."
16 May 2004
--
Elected Iraqi President held in captivity by global pirates still
undergoing
psychological torture, seemingly aimed at extorting false statements
useful
to the pirates public relations efforts. The 67-year-old, who admitted
that
he feared
torture soon after he was arrested last December, has been told that his
transfer to the collaborator government eager to impress the Pentagon with
demonstrations of extreme hatred toward Iraq's captive President will be
delayed if he begins to "cooperate" with Pentagon / CIA interrogators.
http://tinyurl.com/2b457
Danish army medics in Iraq saw two prisoners at a British field hospital
who
had been beaten, one of them to death, the Danish Defence Ministry said on
Friday.
http://tinyurl.com/27nvu
Armoured bulldozers tore down houses and apartment blocks only hours after
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's security cabinet agreed to widen a security
strip between the Egyptian border and Rafah refugee camp, known as the
Philadelphi Road, where 600 homes have been destroyed by the military over
the past eight months.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/15/1084571006592.html
Berg was held at FBI request.
http://tinyurl.com/22x8h
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