MORE FROM JOHN BURNS
By Cori Dauber
The reason I have such abiding respect for the Times' John Burns is that he stands out as the one American reporter who never backed down from making clear to his readers what kind of a society he was reporting from, even though that meant he risked losing his reporting visa -- and once the war had started, risked a great deal more. He's on record as saying that the unwillingness of other reporters to do so, their abject caving to the regime's demands even to outright bribery just to be able to stay in the country, was a historic failing of the profession, and that Iraq under Saddam was one of the worst dictatorships of the 20th century.
We've seen his straight news coverage of Saddam's day in court, and his color commentary. But today something perhaps even more fascinating: his thoughts on what the hearing, for all twelve defendants, says about all those years they controlled and terrorized a country. (Look, by the way, at the accompanying photo, which I don't think had been released before today.)
He writes about how small these men look now, and how surprising that is. And about how glad they were to be told of the rights they would have. I found this line especially striking:
For men who held unlimited powers, with little or no need to consult law books, it seemed possible that the moment when the manacles were removed and they stepped into court may also have been the first moment they realized that they were to be assured of rights, or even what legal rights in a country emerging from dictatorship might entail.
Sun, 4 Jul 2004 07:17 AM
Updated Sun, 4 Jul 2004 07:18 AM
Email | Save
THE GAP
By Cori Dauber
The Post's online edition today has a simple, powerful story about the way American war dead are repatriated at Dover and one of the military Chaplains who greets them when they arrive with a prayer before the coffins are removed from the transport plane. The story is headlined, appropriately, "Simple, Solitary Prayers For Fallen U.S. Troops."
But on the Post's home page (as always, oddly, subject to change) the headline has a negative spin, "Quck Prayers for the Fallen: Chaplain left with little time to prepare blessings for slain U.S. soldiers," as if either the Chaplain is being rushed or, worse, the flow of casualties is such that the man has no chance to prepare prayers before the next plane load has arrived.
By the way, one of the two controversies about Dover was that families were not being allowed to meet the planes. That was, admittedly, probably a silly policy. But the idea that there was a ground swell of demand from families to go out to Dover was pretty clearly a press construction. And the proof is in this article. Since the policy was changed -- a single family has taken advantage of it. Now, the fact that only one family wanted it and that it meant so much to them probably also proves that it made sense to change the policy, no doubt. But it was hardly the difference between whether military families did or did not feel well treated by the military (or by the administration.)
rantingprofs.typepad.com |
