HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7366-2002Apr18.html Media Drawn Into West Bank Propaganda War By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 18, 2002; 8:53 AM The Israeli assault on the West Bank town of Jenin has produced dramatically different media accounts. The British press is playing it as a massacre, while American newspapers say there's no such evidence. How on earth can journalists visiting the same refugee camp reach such different conclusions? At the moment, there is no hard evidence of deliberate mass killings, as some Palestinians have alleged. The media on both sides of the Atlantic have reported those charges. There is little doubt that civilians have been killed, as tragically happens in all wars. The Palestinian allegations should be aggressively pursued. But jumping the gun, so to speak, is dangerous business. Keep in mind that British papers are openly ideological, Tory or Liberal (although some would argue the American press is quietly ideological). Some of the British press reports seethe with anger toward Israel. The Brits also are willing to make sensational charges based on thin evidence. It was a British newspaper, after all, that ran a piece about American "torture" of Afghan detainees at Guantanamo Bay. That never came even close to being proven, but it fit the European stereotype of an arrogant and unfeeling Uncle Sam. So caveat emptor. The Independent runs this no-doubt-about-it headline: "Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime." http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=285413 Writes reporter Phil Reeves: "A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed. Its troops have caused devastation in the centre of the Jenin refugee camp, reached yesterday by The Independent, where thousands of people are still living amid the ruins. . . . "A quiet, sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis led us across the wasteland, littered now with detritus of what were once households, foam rubber, torn clothes, shoes, tin cans, children's toys. He suddenly stopped. This was a mass grave, he said, pointing. "We stared at a mound of debris. Here, he said, he saw the Israeli soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house. When the pile was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank." The Times of London has this report by Janine di Giovanni: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-268533,00.html "The refugees I had interviewed in recent days while trying to enter the camp were not lying. If anything, they underestimated the carnage and the horror. Rarely, in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life. "This was not only a town of fighters, as Israeli soldiers told me. It was a town of women, children and old men, who have seen the camp grow into a warren of ramshackle homes over half a century. Amnesty International called for an immediate investigation into 'the killings of hundreds of Palestinians,' saying crucial evidence may be destroyed as Israel 'continues to impede access.'" Now pull back to America and examine the New York Times account: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/middleeast/16JENI.html "Since the Israeli assault on Jenin began nearly two weeks ago, aid groups have complained that Israeli soldiers have blocked ambulances and prevented aid from reaching the camp. A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross was allowed to enter the camp for the first time today to search for wounded, evacuate the sick and remove bodies. "The Red Cross said it had recovered six bodies and had seen a total of about two dozen dead in a search of a portion of the camp. Red Cross officials said they were unaware of the case of the man who was pulled from the rubble, which has apparently not been reported to them. "Saed Dabayeh, who said he stayed in the camp through the fighting, led a group of reporters to a pile of rubble where he said he watched from his bedroom window as Israeli soldiers buried 10 bodies. 'There was a hole here where they buried bodies,' he said. 'And then they collapsed a house on top of it.' "The Palestinian accounts could not be verified." And The Washington Post report: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56619-2002Apr15.html "The rubble has obscured many facts, but some are indisputable. Some of the most brutal urban battles, heaviest air barrages and most devastating ground tactics in more than two weeks of Israeli assaults against Palestinian towns and communities across the West Bank have been waged here. "Others are less clear. Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops. "Thus far, about 40 bodies have been recovered, according to the Israeli military and aid groups." As for the windup of the Powell mission, the Los Angeles Times says what just about everyone says: it was a flop. http://latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-041802next.story "There is no evidence on the ground here that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's shuttle diplomacy between Israelis and Palestinians did anything to defuse the conflict he left seething behind him yesterday. "And it is far from clear that either Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat or Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is entirely unhappy with Powell's failure. "Powell secured neither an Israeli military withdrawal from Palestinian areas nor a clear statement from Arafat that he was renouncing violence and recommitting himself to negotiations. In Bethlehem, Israeli tanks remain pointed at the Church of the Nativity, where more than 100 Palestinian gunmen are holed up. In Ramallah, Israeli soldiers are still bunking down on the grounds of Arafat's battered and increasingly fetid headquarters. "Throughout the West Bank, troops and tanks continue to move in and out of Palestinian towns and refugee camps, and militants who went underground when Israel launched its sweeping offensive March 29 say they are itching for revenge. "With his state-in-the-making in ruins and his international prestige badly battered, Arafat might have been expected to embrace the terms for a cease-fire. But during his final, stormy meeting with Powell yesterday, the Palestinian leader refused to meet Israel's demand that he hand over the alleged killers of an Israeli Cabinet minister or accept an Israeli proposal that the gunmen in the Church of the Nativity surrender and face trial in Israel or go into exile." The Wall Street Journal editorial page, usually a staunch Bush backer, goes wobbly on W.: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=105001939 "Will the George W. Bush we once knew please stand up? Suddenly the president who soared by standing on principle seems to have been replaced by an imposter who's lost his foreign-policy bearings. "Last weekend alone, the U.S. got caught winking at a failed coup in Venezuela. A news leak targeting Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz seemed intended to undermine Mr. Bush's inspections strategy toward Iraq. And on ABC's 'This Week,' National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice admitted that the U.S. isn't sure what it's doing next in the Mideast. . . . "This isn't yet the gang that couldn't shoot straight, but without a course correction it may get there. The Administration that once dominated events now seems hostage to them. If we had to pick a date when this slippage began, we'd choose March 5. That was the day Mr. Bush imposed steel tariffs for domestic political reasons. The decision irritated most of the world, but that is not always bad. What made that decision so damaging was that it repudiated a core principle of Mr. Bush's foreign policy: free trade. "The policy mattered less than the abandonment of principle. It signaled to the world that Mr. Bush was not the President he had seemed after September 11; his moral and strategic clarity could be compromised for a price. His difficulties since have also occurred when he's wandered from his core beliefs. . . . "All of this is beginning to damage Mr. Bush's once-impregnable standing at home, too. Mr. Wolfowitz, one of the most pro-Israel figures in the administration, was booed as a presidential proxy when he spoke at a pro-Israel rally in Washington on Monday." Conservatives aren't the only ones blasting Bush, says the Washington Times: http://washingtontimes.com/national/20020418-86016012.htm "Democrats are stepping up attacks on President Bush in the belief that growing criticism from his conservative base over his handling of the conflict in the Middle East and his domestic policies has begun to weaken him politically. "'The Republicans have been calling any legitimate policy difference unpatriotic, and you can't do that when the incoming artillery is coming from your right flank, and that includes the Middle East,' said Erik Smith, chief spokesman for House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. "In recent weeks, conservative commentators, activists and some Republican leaders have questioned certain moves by the president - from trade tariffs on steel to amnesty for illegal immigrants - and said he must take a harder line against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. . . . "Democrats believe such criticism from Mr. Bush's conservative base has not only revealed a chink in his armor but presented an opportunity to attack more aggressively his foreign and domestic policies without seeming unpatriotic amid the war on terrorism." That other war-torn place is on the administration's mind as well. "President Bush today embraced a major American role in rebuilding Afghanistan, calling for a plan he compared to the one Gen. George C. Marshall devised for Europe after World War II, and vowed to keep the United States engaged in Afghanistan 'until the mission is done,'" the New York Times reports. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/18/international/18PREX.html "Speaking before cadets at the Virginia Military Institute, Mr. Bush warned that military force alone could not bring 'true peace' to Afghanistan, and that stability would come only after the war-ravaged country reconstructed its roads, health care system, schools and businesses - just as Europe and Japan did after 1945." Josh Marshall has an interesting observation on the '04 Dems: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/ "When you're trying out to be vice-president, and you make it to the final cut, you sit down with the nominee's people and assist in the preparation of what amounts to an opposition research dossier on yourself. "First this means tax returns and property holdings and all the relevant documents. But it also means coming clean with all the really uncomfortable details about your background, all of them. Especially the things that could sink a campaign or at least get everyone down into the campaign bomb shelter for a few days. Even innocent or benign facts that could be distorted in an ugly way need to be mentioned. It's a roadmap for how an opponent would attack you, so the nominee's people want to know what he's getting himself into. "It's a notoriously uncomfortable process, with the discussion of the really personal stuff often undertaken with one of the nominee's confidants. And candidates often, for obvious reasons, can't quite bring themselves to be entirely forthcoming. "In any case, who dished on themselves for Al Gore in 2000? If I remember right, it was John Kerry, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman. And who's running against Gore in the primaries in 2004? And don't think I'm the only one who's considered this." The American Prowler contemplates the future of a convicted congressman: http://theamericanprowler.com/article.asp?art_id=2002_4_17_1_18_17 "House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt is hoping to avoid ugliness if and when Ohio Democrat Rep. James Traficant shows up in Washington again. According to a Traficant staffer, one of the few left in his Washington office, Gephardt's leadership office has barred their boss from the Capitol and threatened to have him arrested and forcibly removed should he attempt to take the floor of the House. "Technically, unless the House Ethics committee recommends expulsion and a vote is held, Traficant can't be barred. Gephardt has been asking Democrats to organize on immediate expulsion of Traficant, in a way that would speed or bypass the ethics committee procedure. 'Surprisingly, Gephardt hasn't had many takers,' says one House member who was approached by the leader. 'If I had to put money down, my guess is he'll get someone like Maxine Waters to do the deed.' "(As always Democrats completely misjudged the eagerness of Republicans to help them out - yesterday Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner [R-Wisc.], the wealthiest man in Congress, became the first to call for Traficant's ouster.) "After Traficant's conviction on bribery and racketeering charges last Thursday, Gephardt moved quickly to demand that Traficant resign from the House. When reporters in Cleveland passed along Gephardt's suggestion, Traficant went ballistic." What follows are some comments unsuited for this pristine Web site. Salon's Eric Boehlert follows up our recent piece on Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41112-2002Apr12.html complaining that the cable networks all but ignore the Democrats in live coverage while carrying endless Team Bush events: "On Monday afternoon, President Bush visited the General Mills Cereal plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Speaking in front of a few hundred invited guests, flanked onstage by boxes of Wheaties and Cheerios, the president urged Congress to make permanent the 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cuts enacted last spring. "Bush also took time to extol the virtues of local Republican Rep. Greg Ganske, who is favored to win the GOP nomination to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin in November. . . . "So why was Bush's 33-minute speech carried live on CNN, MSNBC and the Fox News Channel, interrupting regularly scheduled news shows? The event was hardly an isolated one. Bush's afternoon stump speeches, from cereal factories, elementary schools, chambers of commerce and union gatherings, have become a staple on the cable news networks. And it's driving Democrats crazy. . . . "According to an electronic search of the Nexis database, since his inauguration 15 months ago CNN has cut into regular programming approximately 150 times to feature Bush speaking live. In comparison, during President Clinton's final 15 months in office, CNN carried just 18 live remarks, or 132 fewer than Bush. "Even if Clinton's last two full years in office are included (since 2000 was an election year and he remained in the background politically), CNN aired just 50 live speeches, compared to Bush's 150. . . . What's most telling is that in the eight months of the Bush presidency before the attacks of Sept. 11, CNN had already broadcast 65 Bush addresses live." Ah, who cares about opposition parties anyway? Finally, GOP strategist Rich Galen, on his Mullings.com Web site, http://mullings.com/ gets hot and bothered about Al Gore: "The Democratic Party now officially has a 'Gore Problem.' The reception his speech got among the party workers, in the hall, on Saturday was anything but music to the ears of Democratic Party elites who want someone - anyone - else. "If you have seen footage of Mr. Gore in shirtsleeves you know that he was sweating when he began the speech and continued to sweat throughout the speech. If he had gone much longer than the 22 minutes the speech actually lasted, the headlines the next day might well have been: 'Gore Drowns!' "Someone said given the fact that he had nothing new in his speech, it should have been titled 'Sweatin' to the Oldies' and he should immediately announce Richard Simmons as his vice presidential running mate." Of course, if Gore hadn't sweated, critics would have said he lacked passion. C 2002 The Washington Post Company --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
