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Deja vu — Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

WHY MSM IGNORES BOMBING OF BASRA ELDERLY

Bomber hits Iraq old age home reports news 24, a South African news outlet.

The headline above is the only one I could find by Googling Basra, bomber, old age home.

The BBC hid the information in the last sentence of the article about the two American servicemen tortured to death by their Al Qaeda Iraq abductors. The rest of MSM followed the same pattern.

How is it that the champions of the Third World underdogs show so much interest in the death of two American soldiers but so little interest in the fate of Basra's elderly victims?

Just imagine how different the response would have been if an Israeli or American artillery shell had been the culprit. Actually, you do not need to imagine. The extreme rush to judgment by both MSM and HRW is there for all to see as is their extreme disinterest in the mendacity of Islamist terror.

Indeed, it would be accurate to say that both MSM and the Human Rights community is involved in a major struggle to convince the world of the essential moral equivalence between democracies and terrorist organizations(tyrannies are presented as morally superior put upon "moderates.") They do so by focusing on the imagined or real transgressions of democracies and by covering up the purposeful viciousness of the terrorists.

Think. When was the last time you saw the NYT show a picture of a summary executions in the public square of Palestinian or Iraqi "collaborators?"

Furthermore, despite repeated proof of terrorist media manipulation, MSM reports their charges without the same caveats it routinely attaches to Israeli, British or American reports. Indeed, they take advantage of the careful pronouncement "we are investigating" democratic officials are forced to make to run with unproven charges. By the time the results of the investigation are revealed the damage is not only done but findings which fail to substantiate the early charges are either ignored, dismissed as cover ups or relegated to the back corner of page 25.

Convincing the world of the moral equivalence between democracies and terrorists is just one of the aims of the international elite represented by MSM and the self appointed Human Rights community. Persuading the international community that the war on terror is unwinnable is another. Note how elegantly the BBC achieves its dual aims by placing the bombing of the Basra old age home in the context of coalition forces ineffectiveness rather than in the context of terrorist depravity:

Meanwhile, violence continued around Iraq despite Zarqawi's death and a new security clampdown involving tens of thousands of Iraqi and US troops in Baghdad:
At least three people are killed in a car bomb in a market in Sadr City, eastern Baghdad
Two more people are killed and 28 hurt in an explosion at a clothes market in central Baghdad
Elsewhere, at least one elderly woman was killed along with a suicide bomber who blew himself up inside a home for the elderly in the southern city of Basra.

The same elite which has focused like a laser on any misdeed real or imagined suffering of the terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay has no interest in highlighting the obvious evil inherent in an ideology which sends an 18-year-old Sunni wearing an explosives belt to blow himself up amongst senior citizens lining up to collect monthly pensions, killing two elderly women and injuring many others.

Do not expect HRW to rush a high profile ( if dubiously qualified) investigator such as Mark Garlasco to investigate the bombing scene. Do not try to find a BBC picture of the aftermath of the Basra bombing though the atrocity occurred in the British zone. After all, neither MSM nor HRW are interested in undermining their moral equivalency agenda by shaming terrorists. Nor do they care that their failure to do so permits the terrorists to go on crossing as many civilizational red lines they deem advantageous secure in the knowledge that bad publicity would not cut their recruitment or undermine their financial support.

All they need to do to keep the intellectual elite on their side is to kill a sufficient number of people to justify the honorific "insurgency" and thereby demonstrate the inability of democratic forces to end their wanton murdering. To further aid them, MSM and HRW will continue to do their best to shame the democracies into limiting their offensive powers by tying themselves into more and more legal knots.

No, stopping suicide bombers from blowing up old ladies in Basra is not the international elite's top priority. Their top priority is reducing the power of democracies and if the price is ignoring terrorist mendacity, it is a price they are willing to pay.

Posted on Wednesday, June 21, 2006 at 12:39 AM | Comments (2) | Return

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