by James Glaser
May 25, 2005

At one time the United States could boast of having the freest press in the world, but times have changed and according to Freedom House, a New York-based rights group, the US media has suffered "notable setbacks."

William Fisher of Inter Press Service writes, "The United States was tied with Barbados, Canada, Dominica, and Latvia at 24th place out of 194 countries covered in the survey." Finland, Iceland, and Sweden had the freest press and North Korea, Burma, Cuba, and Turkmenistan the most restrictive.

Here in America during the last couple of years, we have learned about the White House employing pundits at a cost of hundreds of thousands of tax dollars and wide spread government production of fake video news stories that are broadcast across America as 'real' news to push Bush administration policies.

Today on National Public Radio it was reported that the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, was upset because some Afghan nationals were "Abused and two died in custody. NPR's use of the word Abused sounds like it was a child custody case. The truth is that American guards kicked the two men who died to death while they were chained to a wire ceiling. "He was locked in an isolation cell with his hands shackled to the wire ceiling over his head. The report says he was literally kicked to death over several days."

The report that is talked about here comes from a leaked US military 2,000 page investigation report, Parts of which were published in the New York Times. Some government official was so upset by the graphic details of these killings, that he or she risked their career to expose what is going on in our War on Terror. NPR chooses to tone down the impact of the killings with their choice of words and the American public is kept in the dark again.

In the report, SPC, Cory Jones says, "He screamed out "Allah! Allah! Allah! and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his God. "Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny," The report says it became a running joke and prison guards kicked "Dilawar" just to hear him scream "Allah." "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think it was over 100 strikes."

Lieutenant-Colonel Elizabeth Rouse did the autopsy and said Dilawar died of heart failure caused by, "blunt force injuries to the lower extremities" She told a pre-trial hearing that his legs "had basically been pulpified...I've seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus,"

National Public Radio reports two men kicked death as being, Abused.

Today a report by the Associated Press tells about five soldiers being killed in Iraq on Sunday. What is so strange about this report is the way the AP described the units these soldiers belonged to. Instead of the usual 25th Infantry or 3rd Marine Division or such, now it is reported that "Three Task Force Freedom soldiers were killed" and "A forth Task Force Liberty soldier died of wounds."

Now are units are called by the name Liberty or Freedom in stead of being Infantry or Special Forces or even Marines or Army. This is propaganda to soften the verbal sounds of war. It makes you think these soldiers were going around Iraq working on local election campaigns.

Our Soldiers and Marines are in Iraq to do one thing and that is to kill the enemy. That is what they are trained to do and that is what they are good at. They are not there to bring Iraq liberty or freedom. That might be what this war has morphed into, but we were sold on this war because our country needed protection from Saddam Hussein and his military.

National Public radio can keep the American people in the dark about the horrors happening in our War on Terror and the AP can call out troops by soft, nice sounding names, but the truth is that our young men and women are in real combat in a foreign land and some of them are getting killed and maimed while they are trying to do the same to those trying to kill them. By softening the reality of war, the American media does this country a real disservice. War is hell and it turns some young men and women into animals and yes, they will kick a shackled man to death and we should all know that is part of the price of going to war.