Under the ironic headline “God Damn The God Damn Liberal Media” (A Tiny Revolution, 11/20/08), Jonathan Schwarz points out an astonishing quote
from Scott Horton‘s new article in Harper‘s on creating some kind of accountability for the torture conducted by the Bush administration (subscription required):
[I]n a 2006 radio interview, Dick Cheney said simply that the use of waterboarding to obtain intelligence was a “no-brainer.”
Cheney at the time declined to refer to this practice as torture, preferring instead to describe it as “robust interrogation,” and that reluctance has been echoed in the press. I myself was twice warned by PBS producers, in advance of appearances on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, that I could use the word “torture” in the abstract but that I was to refrain from applying it to the administration’s policies. And after an interview with CNN in which I spoke of the administration’s torture policy, I was told by the producer, “Thatâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s okay for CNN International, but we canâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t use it on the domestic feed.”
Schwarz closes, sarcastically: “As always, the question remains: why is the major U.S. media so incredibly left-wing?”
Read FAIR’s magazine Extra!: “From Water Torture to ‘Waterboarding’: Media Rehabilitate Torture as Aquatic Sport” (5-6/08) by Isabel Macdonald
Ironic that torture is claimed to be necessary to extract “intelligence” from its victims, while the corpress’ intent is to keep true intel from the public, don’t you think?