It occurred to me, as it usually does reading coverage following Bush speeches, that the BBC had missed the point about Bush’s speech containing his statement on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al when they headlined it “Bush admits to secret prisons”.
They were not alone in their absurd focus- which is really a kind of ‘told you so’ journalism, the ‘told you so’ involving restating the unnecessary- and, of course, stating the untrue, that Bush mentioned “prisons”, when he didn’t.
As the boys from Powerline pointed out concerning the very similar AP focus:
“This is not exactly a news flash. We knew that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al. were not at Guantanamo, and no one ever imagined that they were inside the U.S. The fact that this handful of top-level terrorists was being held by the CIA, somewhere outside the U.S., has been known and widely reported for years.”
Exactly. Not even news, agendarising in the face of some well above-par Bush performances of late.
I was impressed by a far more apt and interesting headline from Hot Air, which was far more newsy although it should properly have been something like “terrorist masterminds to get Geneva protection”. This places the balance where reasonable people would place it: regarding terror suspects as the suspicious ones; permitting them respite an act of compassion.
Paul Reynolds’ analysis is as it commonly is better than other BBC output, but he persists in the central myth of “secret prisons”. This is nonsense (as Powerline also point out) as you don’t need a prison- and could even manage with a few carefully chosen hotel suites- to interrogate 14 rather special terror suspects.
You can read the Bush speech containing descriptions of the intelligence gathering operation here. Some curiosity about detailed Bush speeches wouldn’t go amiss in the UK, I think (he said, continuing the British tradition of understatement).
If that isnt news, then what is?!?!
Yes! An opportunity! 🙂
Of course Bush’s speech was news. But why? Was it because his comments en passant confirmed what the BBC and others had accused him of for so long? Or was it because Bush was changing the status of terrorist mastermind detainees, in doing so addressing the US legal authorities’ concerns while confirming the usefulness of the tactics?
Well of course, for the BBC what counted was that their reporting had been in some sense reinforced- though no-one actually questioned them on it. Coincidentally Bush bashing may be invigorated, as if that were necessary. For the world though the significance of Bush’s speech ought to have been both his detailed statement of success and of concessions to legal process.
What will people latch onto? “secret prisons”- as per the BBC’s prejudicial coverage.
If we really do have ‘secret prisons’ I suggest we quietly transfer all the men in Gimo to them.
How about some secret executions as opposed to military tribunals?
No need for secret executions…..
Apparantly. the Iraqis who are working with and supporting Americas reforms, have Executed 27 Terrorists in Abu Grabe yesterday….. 🙂
BBC is being very quiet about it…..
Of course, if the US had executed 27 Terrorists in Abu Grabe, we’d be hearing about it for the next 20 years…..
The BBC is now considered retarded……truely, it is lost, and only supported by TV Couch Potatoes, and Islamic and Left Wing Fascists……
They have picked the wrong horse, and as such, they are going to go down with the losers….Fascist Islam and Socialism……
I have spent alot of time in Iraq and you are going to see changes now the Iraqis are in charge of their jails and security.
The US military had so many PC restrictions it was untrue, Insurgents knew that if they were caught, it’s 3 meals a day and relative comfort.
Watch with interest the Bbc’s yeah but, no but stance.
Yes, it will be interesting to see how the BBC spins it. No doubt they will automatically be on the side of the terrorist prisoners, and yet they wont be able to criticize the prison system too much since it will be run and staffed by Muslims. So they’ll probably just cop out, as they generally do in such situations, and simply not report what’s going on as the Iraqis revert to Saddam-style treatment of prisoners.