Journalist accuses America of war crimes in Iraq
Gerard Jackson
The humiliation of hardcore supporters of Saddam by a handful of rotten apples from the American army has certainly brought out the left's own rotten apples in force. One of those apples is Brian Toohey who without a doubt ranks as one of Australia's most vile and dishonest journalists, a man whose ethical standards are so low that only the Fairfax Press would hire him.
Now who, by the way, revealed the abuses that so enraged Toohey? Certainly not Toohey or any of his mates but the US Army itself. It's a fact that the goings on at Abu Ghraib had been public knowledge since January. So why didn't Toohey report them? Moreover, General Kimmet publicly announced on 20 March that criminal charges had been filed against soldiers and that 17 had been "suspended from their duties until the outcome of the investigations".
Yet Toohey and his hypocritical media mates behave as if there had been a cover up.
The lying Bush-hating Toohey, who doesn't give a damn about the prisoners, used these abuses as a platform from which he accused, without a shred of evidence, American troops of "indiscriminate use of force", of murdering "innocent civilians", of creating "mass graves" in Fallujah, of "murdering women, children and old men, as well as resistance fighters" (Abuse makes the peace hard to win, Sydney Morning Herald 9 May).
That's right folks, the murderers who are attacking coalition forces are now "resistance fighters". That's the repulsive line the Fairfax left is pushing.
However, it completely escaped the attention of this genius that if US troops had been indiscriminate with their fire-power Fallujah would have been flattened in short order and its inhabitants wiped out. This, unfortunately, is too simple a fact for Toohey's hate-filled mind to grasp
So who are Toohey's sources? He mention only one, probably because even he is too embarrassed to admit that he's cribbing one of al-Sadr's press releases, and that was Oliver Miles, a retired British diplomat, who complained about the use of "heavy machine-guns" in Fallujah by American forces.
Hmmmm, now let me see, murderous thugs – sorry, "resistance fighters" — not only burn aid workers and mutilate their bodies, they also use mortars, heavy machine-guns, grenades and rockets against US forces, and Miles and Toohey complain because US troops defended themselves with large calibre machine-guns.
I never tire of pointing out that what lefty reporters omit from their tales is what really matters. And the lying Toohey is no exception. What he neglected to mention is that Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, is on the payroll of pro-Arab anti-Israeli organizations that, like him, opposed the overthrow of Saddam's sadistic regime.
Moreover, Miles is the instigator of a vile letter that was signed by 52 ex-British diplomats that attacked Blair for deposing Saddam and supporting Israel. According to this bunch of Arabists (many of whom are being paid by Arab groups) the problems of the Middle East are all the fault of those lousy Jews in Israel.
It's no accident that so many of those who opposed the war against Saddam are also venomously anti-Israel. The repulsive Toohey is no exception.
So who are these brave resistance fighters? Well there is the Shi'ite cleric Abdul-Satar al-Bahadli who lives in Basra. And what a charmer he is. This medieval-minded thug bragged that "A 250,000 dinar reward will be given to whomever detains a female British soldier…She should be handed to the office of Sadr, the martyr, and she will be treated as a concubine."
"At a time in which the entire world is condemning the torture of Iraqi prisoners, Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani continues to ignore the matter and observe total silence. On his part there has been no condemnation, no fatwa or comment made regarding the controversy."
Perhaps the Ayatollah's silence might have something to do with the video tapes and photographs of Saddam's torturers in action that are freely circulating in the country. I guess these tapes and pics kind of put things in perspective.
What makes Toohey's charges of American slaughter all the more sickening is the man's hypocrisy. The fellow travelling Toohey who complains about abuses at Abu Ghraib supported the bloody communist conquest of most of South East Asia that put Pol Pot in charge of Cambodia and the vicious Hanoi regime that now controls South Vietnam.
Toohey is well known for his viciousness. In February 1998 Toohey used The Australian Financial Review to launch a vindictive and cowardly attack on Linda Tripp and Ken Starr. He falsely stated that Starr had made extraordinary efforts to nail Clinton.
Starr was a very reluctant prosecutor, a fact that received considerable comment in Washington. There is absolutely no doubt that Starr pursued Clinton with far less zeal than Democrats applied to the pursuit of Nixon. But then Democrats are born haters.
But to the Nixon-Reagan-hating Toohey, any pursuit of Clinton was unjustified. Toohey impugned Starr's integrity by suggesting that as "an avowed Republican" Starr could not be trusted to act honestly. According to Toohey's warped logic logic Democrats likes Lautenberg, Hillary Clinton, Gorelick, Ben-Veniste, Kerrey, Waters, etc., can be relied on to act honourably simply because they're Democrats and not evil Republicans.
Having maligned Starr Toohey then contemptuously (if not libellously) dismissed Tripp "as a salacious-minded liar". We had an American president who is a noted liar and cheat; a man who has used his power to exploit women — possibly much worse. And what did the virtuous Toohey do? He abused the critics. It was a vicious, miserable and cowardly thing to do. But that was vintage Toohey as was his defamatory attack on American troops.
Ever the patriot, Toohey complained that the DSD (Defence Signals Directorate) had monitored calls to and from the Tampa after it had picked up illegal immigrants. This shocked — as Captain Louis Renault would have said — Australia's leftwing journalists.
An outraged Toohey announced, without a trace of irony, that this action "undermined the trust essential for retaining its [DSD] highly privileged position in Australian society" (Intelligence agency tampers with trust, Australian Financial Review 1/2/02)
This is the same — I'm shocked and outraged! — extreme leftwing Toohey who, roundabout 1980, published very sensitive intelligence papers that had been leaked to him by, so it is rumoured, an important member of the Australian Labor Party.
That this act not only compromised national security but also may have "undermined the trust essential for retaining its [media's] highly privileged position in Australian society" didn’t faze Toohey anymore than it fazed his leftwing editors at Fairfax Press.
Toohey's integrity and commitment to honest journalist was summed up by his role in helping to cover up the late leftwing Justice Murphy's corruption and McClelland's perjury. I think it's pretty clear that Toohey has given additional meaning to the term "ethically challenged".
On a final note: Readers might think I'm exaggerating the dishonesty of the media, if only that were so. The Wall Street Journal published the story of Don North, an experienced TV news producer, who made a documentary on seven Iraqi businessmen had been surgically mutilated on Saddam's orders (Want a Different Abu Ghraib Story? Try This One, 14 May).
North's Remembering Saddam details what happened to these men under Saddam and how the liberation their condition was immensely improved through the help of the Bremer and Wolfowitz and the charity of Americans like Fred Kestler, Dr Agris.
So far every U.S. broadcast and cable network has refused to show the documentary. The same networks that have saturated cable and the airwaves with pictures from Abu Ghraib have adamantly rejected this documentary. Why? Is it because these journalists do not want the American public to see the true savagery of Saddam's regime and how some Americans are trying to repair the damage. After all, that might help President Bush.
Gerard Jackson is Brookes' economics editor
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 17 May 2004
Sadr, incidentally, is another of Toohey's much admired "resistance fighters". While we're at it, let's not forget the sadistic savages who videoed themselves decapitating Nick Berg with a knife and then paraded his head in front of the camera. These are Toohey's sort of men.
I think it's worth mentioning two events that scumbag journalists like Toohey have not reported. The first one was a Shi'ite demonstration in Najaf a couple of weeks ago against the continued presence of Sadr. The second was this report from Asia News:
he was beheaded
Oh, and the reason our media have saturated you with them is because they feel the public would be truly sickened. Just kidding. The real reason why our lefty pseudo journalists suppressed them is that they fear publication would increase support for Saddam's overthrow.
"resistance fighters"