If this is true....

[Golgo-13]

...then I am disgusted. CNN is not high on my list already, if this is true then it sinks even lower. This is an office email pass around, so I'm not promising validity, but it sure is interesting:

"Friday, April 11, 2003

CNN Exec Admits Covering Up 'Maniac' Saddam's Atrocities

Here's another fascinating item we'll dedicate to Jacques Chirac, Nancy Pelosi and the other humiliated appeasement activists: A CNN big is admitting his network covered up the atrocities of Saddam Hussein.

Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, writes in today's New York Times:

"Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff. ...

"The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. ...

"I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. ...

"Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.

"I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely."

[redman]

The crime isn't necessarily that he kept quiet for all these years about these horrific tales. He may well have been right that there would have been repercussions against some Iraqis for letting this information out (although one wonders how much his interest in keeping the CNN-Baghdad bureau open influenced this decision . . . ).

Where I blame CNN is that, possessed with this knowledge, they still maintained an editorial policy that condemned aggressive military action against Iraq that would decisively and finally remove this regime. I know it won't, but it should weigh heavily on their hearts.