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THE video only lasts four minutes or so — grue some scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over.
Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade — all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises.
Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader.
But these awful images didn't show up on American TV news.
In fact, just four or five reporters showed up for the screening at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which says it got the video via the Pentagon. Fewer wrote about it.
No surprise, since no newscast would air the videos of Nick Berg and Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl getting decapitated, or of U.S. contractors in Fallujah getting torn limb from limb by al Qaeda operatives.
But every TV network has endlessly shown photos of the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib. Why?
"Because most [journalists] want Bush to lose," says AEI scholar Michael Ledeen, who helped host the screening of the Saddam video.
It's not just journalists. The Pentagon has lots of Saddam atrocity footage — but is loathe to release it, possibly for fear it would be taken as a crude attempt to blunt criticism of Abu Ghraib.
So the world sees photos of U.S. interrogators using dogs to scare prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But not the footage of Saddam's prisoners getting fed — alive — to Doberman pinschers on Saddam's watch. (That video's been described by former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.)
Read the whole thing at the New York Post
Posted by Ted at June 16, 2004 10:57 PM