Off lately I have been reading a lot of blogs discussing the Abu Ghraib prison torture case. As usual the media, CBS for particular has been trying hard to impress its viewers after the Janet Jackson pop-out. First they came up with the so called 'stunning' photographs of POW's in Abu Ghraib and then as if that was not enough, they try to dig out Princess Diana's scandal, years after her death, broadcasting photocopies of the car crash photographs and trying to discuss whether she was pregnant when she died or was she really in love with Dodi. I will usually never recommend any American news programmes other than the 30 minutes of BBC news shown twice daily and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, both on the PBS channel. But not to digress..I think the Abu Ghraib prison torture case has been blown out of proportion. I do not blame the media completely, but the awe and disgust with which people react to it is something too much. I mean when a soldier or a person is taken as a POW, what the hell do you expect the captor to do with the POW.....fit an AC in his prison cell and treat him with food twice daily and a nice cozy matress to sleep on???? Excuse me.... this is war and chaos and commotion and confusion.....and war is a highly fluid situation!!! Obviously the POW's are going to be tortured! They will be forced to divulge information in anyway that is possible and whatever it takes to make them blurt it out. Even the slightest suspicion, that an individual holds information can lead to extreme torture until the captor is convinced that you are innocent. Not just Iraq, consider the plight of Indian POW's or even normal fishernmen taken captive in the Gujrat-Karachi waters. Some of them are returned back to India but what about those who go missing in action?? What about the POW's taken captive during Kargil. If anybody remembers, some of them were hacked to death and cut into pieces by the Pak soldiers. So such torture is bound to be obvious with POW's. It was a big deal when Jessica Lynch was rescued from Iraq after being held captive, but it was more important and a big sigh of relief when she was discovered physically unmutilated. Atleast her physical body was in one piece and I think she was extremely lucky. Had she not been found, we all would have probably forgot about her and considered her among those hundreds missing in action! Had Nick's headless body not been found on the highway, we probably would have not even known who Nick Berg was, and if the cheap video not surfaced on the internet, we wouldnt have gasped at the horrific act. I think it is not a heroic deed that the soldiers found Lynch but it was a great news that they found Lynch intact and alive. Also I admire Lynch for keeping a low profile and not try to make most of the situation where channels like CBS are always ready to pounce on such opportunities. I think it is highly doubtful and wrong to conclude from what you only see or what just comes to the surface. I think there is more behind the curtains from both sides and it is but natural. And then we have big talk about the Geneva conventions!
So coming back to the Abu Ghraib case, torture of POW's is obvious, and might still be taking place. It is only the dumbness of those who in the first place, took pictures and videos of such incidents and then again above all let the media lay their hands on it, and of all the channels it had to be CBS. "Langoor ke haath mein Angoor" I say (Grapes in the hands of a monkey) This is something very very extremely silly!! A place where the military intelligence and the CIA and FBI are highly active, I don't understand how can such a blunder take place?? The leaking of the photographs and their subsequent broadcast on prime time television is not only idiotic but also like splashing more oil to the terrorism fire. Extremists are always looking out for a chance like this and people like Al-Zarqawi would not hesitate to do anything more cruel in order to gain cheap popularity and clout in their own world of terrorism. The media giving more attention to all this does nothing but fulfills the exact reasons why terrorists do such things!
By the way if anybody watches 'The Early Show' daily morning on CBS, should be able to notice that, only co host Hannah Storm is somewhat acceptable and knows how to interview people on that show, but the other three- Harry Smith, Julie Chen and Rene Syler are just typical dumb-heads, asking silly questions. Also they are so conscious about the fact that they are interviewing someone, they make the opposite person equally uneasy. The trio is just really really pathetic.
I think I will stop here now.....More later!
Current Music : MAY IT BE :: Enya :: Best of Enya Disc 1
Wednesday, May 26, 2004