A Tale of Two Cities - NPR and US Exceptionalism

This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday, I heard the following:

"...but the fact is...this is all unconfirmed. We know the government...has lied on several occasions about civilian casualties and strikes and damage, and frankly, we only have their word so far for what happened."

Isn't that the standard that ought to apply to all reporting? It seems reasonable that when a government has been proven to have lied about civilian casualties (e.g. here and here), lied about its reasons for going to war, and lied about the torture and murder of detainees then shouldn't all unconfirmed claims by that government be treated with skepticism and always be prefaced with the qualifiers included in the quote above. The answer is a rather obvious, "Yes." But on NPR there is one standard for countries and forces that the US government opposes and a completely different standard for the US government and its closest allies. Despite a long record of systematic lying about war, civilian deaths, and the abuse of detainees - I have - over the past five years - documented how NPR consistently grants official US statements the weight of confirmed evidence (or simply ignores stories where the evidence points to systematic lying and wrongdoing).

The quote above, from Sunday's Weekend Edition, is about the war in Libya and the lying government in question is the government of Libya's Gadhafi. The war in Libya - and especially the siege of Misrata - offers a unique opportunity to highlight NPR's embrace of American exceptionalism.

The forces of the Libyan government have attempted to destroy the rebel forces in Misrata in operations that are chillingly similar to the US military's destruction of Fallujah in Iraq. Misrata and Fallujah have about the same population size, about half-a-million for each. In April 2004 in Fallujah, as documented by the intrepid Dahr Jamail, the US used cluster bombs, indiscriminate sniping of civilians, and attacks on medical facilities. George Monbiot documented further war crimes of the US November 2005 assault on Fallujah - including the use of white phosphorous, thermobaric weapons, and the refusal to allow males of "fighting age" to flee the city. As in Misrata, US forces illegally focused their operations on hospitals and medical facilities. In spite of these illegal and barbaric tactics, you can search NPR in vain for stories on these crimes (cluster bombs- nothing, white phosphorous - mentioned after Pentagon admitted it, sniping civilians - nothing, attacking the hospital - nothing). Not only has NPR never reported the US war crimes against Fallujah, it has actually celebrated the assault.

Consider that NPR's censorship of the US horror show in Fallujah is now into it's eighth year, but in the less than two months of Libya coverage we have been given extensive coverage of every crime that the Gadhafi forces have perpetrated on Misrata. For example, in just this one Morning Edition report from April 13th, we hear the following from refugees:

• "We heard the Gadhafi troops were kidnapping people."
• "The Gadhafi forces aren't differentiating among their targets. They're attacking the young, the old, women, dragging people from their houses."
• "In the streets of Misrata I've seen bodies, I've seen them burned. The snipers are shooting people at random."

And a few days later on April 17th Lourdes Garcia Navarro reports on Misrata,

"From rebels that I've spoken to, Gadhafi's forces are shelling civilian areas - we are talking grad missiles, mortar fire, tank fire. A few days ago came the first reports of cluster bombs, which are banned by international law for use in civilian areas."

It's too bad that it is really impossible to imagine NPR ever providing such immediate reporting on US military actions and their impact on civilian populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, etc... or to imagine that they would ever give such well deserved qualifications of the lack of credibility that should always be given to any official statements issues by the White House, the US military, the State Department, NATO, etc.

Reciprocity Anyone?

Certain things often get discussed on NPR that make my skin crawl. On Saturday's ATC Guy Raz talks with Richard Clarke about "probing" Bush-era crimes by ignoring US laws and international obligations and instead holding a "kind of truth and reconciliation commission." Why NPR thinks it's adequate to have a legal no-nothing like Guy Raz interview Clarke on such matters is beyond me, but one part of the interview really jumped out - the endorsement of extrajudicial executions.

Raz says, "...a few weeks ago, of course, the CIA director Leon Panetta shut down a program to assassinate members of al-Qaeda - a program that was actually never implemented..." [Raz just accepts that the program was never implemented because CIA officials said so to the New York Times - even though Seymour Hersh reported a strikingly similar implemented program back in March].

Clarke eventually gets around to talking about the assassination program. The conversation proceeds as follows:

[Clarke] "The other issue is should we have a hit squad to go out after the leadership of a terrorist organization that's trying to kill us. I think most Americans would say yes we should under very tight controls, and frankly CIA is not the right place to do that..."
[Raz] "...who should do it?"
[Clarke] "the best way to do it is to give it to a well-trained, well disciplined unit in the US military."
[Raz] "Forgive me, this may sound terribly naive, but why should the United States government be in the business of doing this at all?"
[Clarke] "Only because we have enemies out there who do wish to do us harm and we do need to act in our own self defense against terrorists."

That's it: a pathetic "Forgive me, this may sound terribly naive..." whimper is the only challenge offered to a US Government program of assassinations. Missing is any discussion of international laws and human rights issues, including the recent UN concern. Also missing is any history on any similar US assassination programs - even by "well-trained, well disciplined units." If in some ideal world the US actually had reliable, actionable intelligence (which it often does not) then why not arrest and prosecute? In Pakistan the US military use of drone assassinations highlights the rampant slaughter that almost always follows a policy of supposed "targeted killings."

Finally, Raz's deafening silence after Clarke's justification for carrying out extrajudicial killings ["because we have enemies out there who do wish to do us harm and we do need to act..."] begs the question of reciprocity. Why doesn't he ask, "So by your standard, countries - let's say Cuba, Nicaragua, or Iran - that have experienced state terror from the United States would have the right to launch assassination programs against US officials and agents, wouldn't they?"

Unfortunately, on NPR it never enters the newsreaders' or reporters' heads to apply a standard good enough for the rest of the world to the United States - because we are so exceptional.

No Comment Department

Gregory Feifer during Sunday's ATC reporting on the ground from - Moscow:

"...the Mujahedeen rebels would attack the Soviet forces and then climb into the mountains out of reach, and the Red Army really took out its revenge on the local population that was supporting the rebels. US and NATO forces today are trying to do exactly the opposite."