Rare Praises for NPR

I was going to write about yesterday's deceitful and stupid report on the CIA by Pamela Hess of the AP (Media Bloodhound and Left I on the News often expose the AP for being the lazy rebroadcaster of US government propaganda that it is) or Juan Forero's (the reporter who couldn't read straight) pro bono work this morning for the owners of Venezuelan plantations (farms in Forero-speak) or Inskeep's coffee-clutch against the public health insurance option with the PR man for Wellpoint the parent company of a foundation that just happens to be one of NPR's biggest annual donors (hint: it's the California Endowment).

(From NPR's 2005 [most recent] Annual Report -PDF file)

But heck, it's summer and let's give credit where credit is due. First to Robert Siegel (there I said it!) who, on Monday's ATC, presented the Alito remarks about empathy as a counter to the attacks on Sotomayor's remarks about empathy. Siegel was interviewing the twittering Chuck Grassley of Iowa and confronted him with the Alito statements AND even asked a few follow-ups when Grassley tried to squirm out of making a complete ninny of himself. It was delicious.

More importantly, this morning Peter Kenyon actually covered the story of the 25 IDF soldiers who have documented the systematic war crimes of Operation Cast Lead. NPR actually sent a reporter on the ground in Gaza and talked to a Gazan who lost his parents to Israeli shooters in a case similiar to one related by an Israeli soldier. Several commenters on the web site of the story thanked NPR for reporting this - one who summed it up well as a commendable "baby step."

3,000,000 + 58,000 = 58,000

One of history's great villains died yesterday, and NPR was on-call to provide its special math for the occasion . Robert Strange McNamara died yesterday and Monday's ATC featured three segments on his life and legacy - one by Daniel Schorr, the second by Mary Louise Kelly, and the last being Robert Siegel interviewing Errol Morris, McNamara filmmaker and documentarian.

Here's a challenge: listen to all three reports and see if you can find mention of the millions (2 to 4 is the usual estimate) of civilians killed by the United States in the Vietnam war. At least twice, you'll hear of the 58,000 US service people killed in Vietnam. Siegel safely mentions something that McNamara has already admitted to - 100,000 Japanese civilians burned alive in one night of bombing he helped engineer during WWII - but those millions of Vietnamese dead somehow just vanish.

In addition to disappearing millions of civilian victims - there are other distortions in the reports. Daniel Schorr describes McNamara's killing spree as "his stewardship of the Vietnam War." Also McNamara's presidency of the World Bank - where he lavished money on the torture states of Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Romania - is described by Mary Louise Kelly as "a successful tenure" and by Schorr as "helping underdeveloped countries." Schorr goes even further and sees it as McNamara's "way of working out a sense of guilt."

Siegel's interview with Morris offers a telling bit of analysis from Siegel himself. Citing critics who have complained that if McNamara had admitted to some of his mistakes sooner it might have made an actual difference, he surmises "but that might have required his exile from the Washington establishment." Well, Mr. Siegel, turn that judgement on yourself and NPR: to investigate and report the news truthfully would put you and NPR on the outs with those who wield economic, military and political power - and might just lead to NPR's "exile from the Washington establishment." And that just wouldn't do...would it?

Wiped

If you listened to NPR Tuesday morning you might be surprised to know that in the US there are such things as laws on torture and that those who flagrantly violate them are subject to prosecution. In Tuesday morning's coverage of the torture memo release there was no suggestion that law has anything to do with it, or that we actually have a Constitution that requires that treaties and laws be enforced.

What we do get is Mary Louise Kelly issuing a vigorous defense of the CIA's right to torture detainees. She begins her defense with some rather bold disinformation as she covers President Obama's reception by members of the CIA, a reception which was according to Montagne "a surprisingly warm welcome." After hearing the CIA employees whooping and cheering for Obama (keep in mind that he just released the torture memos) Kelly concludes

"clearly the silent warriors of the CIA needed to blow off some steam."

That's odd, because the last time I looked, blowing off steam is what people do when they're really angry at someone. In case you still don't buy Kelly's dishonest fabrication she declares - apropos of nothing -

"the roaring reception for President Obama belied the deep concern CIA officials feel for his decision to declassify the memos. On FOX News this past weekend..."

Did I say apropos of nothing? Oops, I stand corrected - Kelly picked up her facts from FOX News! Kelly's not done, either. Anyone who gives a crap about our country's Constitutional values and about the rule of law might be a tad appalled at the sickening details of torture in the released memos and might even be wondering when investigations and prosecutions will begin. But not Mary Louise Cheney Kelly; according to her

"the big question hanging over all this is what happens now if the US government finds itself holding a terrorist with knowledge of an upcoming attack on the US who won't talk."

What more can you say to this? Well, Kelly has plenty. She asserts that

"there seems to be general consensus on this point that whatever legal guidelines the task force eventually agrees on, the President must still be able to grant the CIA emergency authorization for more aggressive tactics."

To prove her point she turns to a former general counsel to the CIA and a former Deputy Director of the CIA, who - surprise - agree wholeheartedly with Kelly.

And then there was Juan.

After Kelly's assault, why not just go right to the FOX himself, Juan Williams? Montagne and Williams spend four minutes rehashing all the authoritarian protorture critiques of Obama's release of the memos.

There is never a mention of law, treaties, or the Constitution. Instead Williams cites Cheney several times, noting that Cheney "says they got critical information out of these detainees" and this whopper:

"that there's no benefit to the US in confirming these reports and Vice President Cheney's point is that those reports and the memos contain only the detainees' side of the story because they don't reveal what further terrorist acts were prevented by getting this information at that point, arguably a critical point."

According to Montagne and Williams its not about the rule of law, or the threat to all of us that torture represents - it's about attitude. And what is that attitude? Let's let Montagne sum it up in her inimitable way:
"...how much is this about extreme techniques preventing another 9-11 as many critics have claimed?"

Fortunately in the real world we still have some semblance of laws and citizens can act to pressure officials and representatives to enforce these laws. You can visit the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights or Amnesty International among others to take action now.

More Go Slow Gitmo

Tonight on ATC a virtual repeat piece from back in November, including the expert opinions of Scott Silliman again. Look at this report from the Detroit Free Press; there are a lot of experts with similar backgrounds as Silliman who want Bush administration officials investigated for war crimes - but not Silliman (sounds like a ticket to the NPR studio to me).

You can take look at the comments under the web posting of the report to see what I contributed there regarding Silliman's rather unique views on dangerousness and evidence.

The Great Task of the Israeli Defense Forces

Regarding the assault on Gaza, the Israeli Army has learned "to take the operation slowly in a manner that will not only safeguard Israeli troops to the degree that you can, but also minimize the number of civilian casualties on the other side." Additionally, "keeping those civilian casualties less than excessive, as you would say, is the great task of the Israeli Defense Forces and I think up to this point we are doing very admirably in that way."

It must be true because I heard it on NPR this morning - and from a "scholar of military history in the Middle East" no less. I would definitely agree that NPR favorite, and war criminal spokesperson Michael Oren is certainly doing an admirable job with his assistant Ari Shapiro.

Shapiro goes along for the ride even as Oren proudly claims that of the slaughtered Gazans "well over three quarters have been armed gunmen and that is a percentage which is very rarely attained in urban warfare." Armed gunmen? Well over three quarters? As if one quarter of the dead being women and kids is just hunky dory - for God's sake.

It is disgraceful that NPR again and again gives unchallenged coverage to such Israeli government propagandists when that same government bars independent reporting from the inside Gaza.

BTW, see earlier posts on Oren (May 2008 and Nov. 2006).

Accomplices

(source of original image)

Friday Morning two busy little spin bodies (h/t to War on War Off ) were busy on NPR:

• Steve Inskeep: "And here's what raises the question of how Israel intends to finish the operation. The bombing was intended to stop Palestinian rocket fire into Israel and despite hundreds of bombing runs those rockets are still arriving."

• Mike Shuster: "First Israel hit military targets - buildings tunnels and bases used by the security forces of Hamas..."

If a war crimes trial is ever held for the Israeli leadership that launched this "operation" on "military targets" I hope they save two seats in the docket for Shuster and Inskeep.

But Some Are More Equal Than Others

NPR continues to suppress news of the ongoing war crime being committed by the Israeli government against the civilian population of Gaza. On Saturday Juan Cole, noting the Independent's article "Chronic malnutrition in Gaza blamed on Israel," sarcastically asks, "Oops, you mean it is not a headline in the U.S.? How odd? Why is that?" Maybe NPR fears ruffling Israeli government feathers, and they can always claim that they just couldn't get any reporters into Gaza anyway, how convenient.

Honestly, can you imagine the wall-to-wall coverage NPR would be giving to a US ally suffering a food and fuel blockade? I guess all civilians are not equal - some are more equal than others.

Can We Please Take "On the Table" Off the Table?

One of NPR's most crucial roles as an enabler of unchecked power for the US state is to normalize the most grotesque and barbarous activities of the US. The support of torture states in Central and South America becomes a positive "counterinsurgency" strategy - and it's victories are praised as in yesterday's piece and many others. Civilians killed by the US and its allies are barely mentioned, and if mentioned are usually lumped together as "insurgents" or "militants." And of course our torture is never torture, just "enhanced interrogation" or "harsh interrogation."

You'd think there might be limits to encouraging the banality of evil, but not on NPR. The supreme crime of Nuremberg (that quaint trial of the 1940s), as eloquently spelled out by US Justice Robert Jackson in his opening statements was the Crime Against Peace:

"A basic provision of the Charter is that to plan, prepare, initiate, or wage a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances, or to conspire or participate in a common plan to do so, is a crime."

Count 2 against the defendants in the trial included:

"All the defendants with divers other persons, during a period of years preceding 8 May 1945, participated in the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances."

So it is that I am really sickened to hear the matter-of-fact tone that NPR uses in discussing the Bush Administration's threats to wage a war of aggression against Iran. Here's Inskeep and Gonyea this morning:

• Gonyea: "...at a press conference yesterday with European Union leaders - when asked about Iran - the President did not say something he has always said when talking about Iran: that all options are on the table in dealing with the Iranians. It made some of us think that perhaps he had taken the military option off the table. Well, guess what, he was asked about Iran today and he said not once but twice that all options are on the table, so if there was a slight easing of the rhetoric yesterday. It was back in place today.

• To which Inskeep responds: "But wait a minute. One of the questions here is can the US and Europe agree on how to handle Iran? Is Germany saying that all options are on the table?"

Honestly, if there's another war crimes trial in the future, NPR should have several seats reserved - in the docket. Have these mouthpieces for war ever considered demanding from officials EXACTLY what "all the options" are? Do they include surprise attacks, tactical nuclear weapons, terrorist bombings within Iran, assassination, etc? How do military options square with international laws and treaties?

A Meeting of the Minds

Steve Inskeep interviews Douglas Feith. Tell your kids to leave the room because it ain't pretty. Consider that Feith is not only a murderous psychopath, with a long, well-documented history of being a liar, war monger, and gross incompetent to boot. You'd think that on a public news program, Feith would be hit hard with questions about not only poor planning for a war, but the more fundamental crime of subverting democracy (with false intelligence) and launching a war of aggression (a crime against peace, the preeminent Nuremberg war crime).

Alas Feith, the "stupidest f***ing guy on the planet" in the words of General Tommy Franks, is being interviewed by the equally competent Steve Inskeep. Inskeep focuses only on Feith's planning before the war, completely accepting that the war was a reasonable, legitimate act of the US government. At one point Inskeep asks about arguments regarding troop levels and training for post invasion Iraqi troops and frames it as "training new Iraqi forces, Iraqi liberation forces, or whatever you want to call them." Liberation forces - that's an unbiased description, eh? During the interview Inskeep pushes, "Whose job was it to force the government to accept some idea or acknowledge that we weren't ready to go to war." The focus is only on being ready, not on launching a war that was unnecessary and illegal. Feith, of course is pleased with the pliant Inskeep and says, "Well that's an important question..."

The bulk of the interview revolves around Feith trying to claim that he pushed a "memo" about the need for law and order after the fall of Saddam. Inskeep just lets Feith sell the line that " I regret that I didn't make more of that memo. Looking back, I think there were a lot of problems that flowed from the lack of law and order...If we had pushed it harder..." To which Inskeep concurs that that "might have mitigated other problems."

Scary.

A Tip of the Helmet

Democracy Now! is covering this weekend's Winter Soldiers: Iraq and Afghanistan event organized by the IVAW (and covered succinctly on Wired). This essential story was virtually a nonevent in the mainstream media, but NPR did give it coverage on Sunday's ATC.

Credit where credit is due.

Skipping the Dirty Details

Some weird stuff on NPR lately. Friday on ATC Siegel talks to Mark Mazzetti, of the The New York Times, about Colonel Klink General Hayden of the CIA pulling a little coup on his "independent" Inspector General, who apparently has been probing a little to hard at the old CIA. Mazzetti broke the story about this unprecedented usurpation of CIA power by a director. All right, so far so good. But the bizarre aspect of this piece is that Siegel gives no weight to the CRIMES of TORTURE and KIDNAPPING that the spooks have been committing and that
CIA Inspector General John Helgerson seems to believe may be illegal. Instead Siegel refers only to "interrogation" and "rendition" and focuses on how many inside the CIA think that Helgerson is leading a "witch-hunt" and how agents involved in dirty op's resent some Washington based softy who just doesn't understand how dangerous and necessary these crimes are.

Wow.

The Supreme International Crime

On Thursday morning, I first read on Juan Cole's Informed Comment about the stunning El Pais release of more indisputable evidence that Bush and Co. conspired, planned, and carried out the supreme international crime as defined at Nuremberg

...the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

For the United States, this IS one of the most important news of the week; there's nothing bigger. So let's see where it gets covered on NPR News - as of Sunday morning (9/30/07), nowhere! If you search "Aznar" on NPR you'll see that it got a decent mention on Day to Day, that's it. Basically the same treatment that the Downing Street Memo received.

A Killer Angel

On one hand we have bigots like Ahmadinejad who deny the Holocaust, and then on Tuesday morning we have NPR joining in to exploit the Holocaust. Could there be anything much more revolting than celebrating one of the 20th century's greatest war criminals and mass murderers as a Holocaust hero? Talk about cynicism. We get to hear Kissinger say "There's nothing I'm more proud of, of my service to this country, than having been one of those who had the honor of liberating the Ahlem concentration camp." Ugh...

Steel yourselves for the day Kissinger dies. I'd wager money that when it happens, NPR will give him a glowing send-off.

Genocide Lite

On Wednesday's ATC Robert Siegel introduces Westervelt's report on Israel's plans for speeding up its genocide against the 1.2 million Gazans by saying, "Angered by Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, Israel today turned up the pressure on the militant Islamist group Hamas...cutting off fuel and other vital supplies." So now depriving 1.2 million ghettoized civilians of the basic necessities of life is "turning up the pressure."

Knees, Teeth, Vistas and Distractions

Entertaining the Masses

I had one of those "I'm living in the Roman Empire" moments Friday morning. Morning Edition dedicated more than four minutes to the intricacies of the knee problems that have ended Greg Oden's upcoming NBA rookie season. Every damn detail about his knee and imminent surgery was covered. If only NPR News had been around 2000 years ago to do such masterly coverage of the superstars of the Colosseum.

Dental Metaphors


The Good Ol' CIA with Mary Louise Kelly. The CIA has a new director of clandestine intelligence, Mike Sulick. "Michael Sulick is an old school spy's spy...he cut his teeth in Asia and Latin America." Around the CIA Kelly tells us, "delight is the word I keep hearing." Fair enough that Sulick is not a complete know-nothing partisan appointment like Porter Goss was, but this shiny gloss on the disgusting CIA is more than I can stomach. Kelly likes that phrase "cut his teeth" but I think when talking of the CIA in Latin America "sharpened his fangs" would be more accurate.

That Vast Expanse between Right and Far Right

By Friday afternoon, NPR turns to some experts. Melissa Block tells us, "for some analysis...we turn to our political observers: E. J. Dionne is a columnist with the Washington Post and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review." Ah yes, the range of opinion from center right to goosestep. For an antidote to this blather Glen Greenwald has some strong medicine.

Scott Simon for the Defense

On Saturday Simon talked to Democratic Senator Dodd. Dodd's father was a lawyer who assisted in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, and Sen. Dodd has published a book of his father's letters from Nuremberg. About why he published the book, Dodd said an amazing thing: "...my motivation on this came with the decision by Congress to support the Military Commissions Act which stripped Habeus Corpus, basically restored the idea of torture in interrogations...." This is stunning; a senior Senator and presidential candidate has published the Nuremberg Trial letters of his father because the actions of the Congress and President are such a fundamental assault on humanity and the rule of law that they bear comparison to the crimes of the Nazis. Wow! And guess what Simon's reaction is? Does he mention Bush's violation of Nuremberg's supreme crime - aggressive war? Not a chance. He completely ignores Dodd's statement and focuses in on Dodd's father's troubling statements about the trial becoming a "Jewish Trial" and then oozes over the sentimental aspect of the letters (which were written to Dodd's mother). Saturday morning's prince of schmaltz and distraction strikes again.

Werewolfowitz

NPR covers the Wolfowitz sleazy favors at the World Bank. Amazingly, they offer nothing of Wolf's criminal responsibilities for the war in Iraq and the rampant corruption and favoritism in that project of "this new American century." Would it be so hard to offer just a little background for this unindicted war criminal, such as that offered by the BBC when Wolf first came to the World Bank. Other than contributing to the US of Amnesia, the story does a pretty good job of explaining the current controversy.

Failings Will Happen

This morning we learn how the US has the "best trained armed force that we’ve ever had." We learn that after hearing about how sensitive and gentle the US military is in extreme situations in places like Iraq. I loved how in the audio clip of JAG training, the US didn't shoot a guard who raised his weapon...that was pretty funny.

Listening to this piece on NPR you would never know that Abu Ghraib was not an aberration, but was the standard operating procedure for abusing detainees in Iraq (the aberration being that it was indisputably caught on film). Instead Ari Shapiro tells us that "when the military has high profile public failings like the Abu Ghraib abuses or the massacre at Haditha, JAGs investigate." See, it was just a public failing--and JAGs took care of it.

We also hear from a retired JAG who runs the oxymoronic "Center for Law Ethics and National Security" at Duke University. According to Shapiro this man "says failings will happen." That's reassuring.

What I find really aggravating about this piece is that I actually would like to hear from some JAGs -- those who have shown the integrity of opposing the treatment of detainees in the sham of the "war on terror" -- and not these sorry apologists.