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PEACE: Foreign Policy & Terrorism | June 7, 2005

MUST SEE TV

A Posting in "GordonTalk" & "Comments from Left Field"

For those of you who say, "There's nothing good on TV anymore" (and you know who you are), perhaps you should move to Baghdad, where the Al Iraqiya television network, run by an American contractor as the official propaganda organ of the new Iraqi government, airs a wildly popular program that gives new meaning to the term "hit".

"Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" picks up where "Cops" leaves off.

Six nights a week, folks, you can be treated to an endless parade of lowlife scumbags as they confess their crimes against humanity and Islam freely and without reservation.

Murderers. Rapists! Pedophiles!! Homosexuals!!! All on videotaped display for your collective revulsion and humiliation.

What better way to spend an evening at home with the family? Assuming of course, that the electricity doesn't go out.

So when you hear the terrorists claim to be "patriotic, faithful Jihadists fighting the infidel occupiers and all their collaborators", just remember that they are actually bloodthirsty criminals who will do anything for the money they are paid by their Saudi patrons.

When you hear endless reports of endless bombings and wild speculation about religious and tribal vendettas dragging the nation ever closer to the brink of civil war, just look and see how the despicable ones are truly at our mercy.

"Our work is being appreciated. That's the biggest objective," beams a proud Iraqi colonel of police. "People are demanding that the cruelest punishment be inflicted on those shown on TV."

Just do not let your evening entertainment be spoiled by the grumblings heard out of the mainstream that the criminals are presumed guilty without legal counsel or trial (If denial of due process is good enough for Gitmo, it's good enough for Baghdad!), that the murderous plots revealed by the confessions on TV seem way too "scripted" for some to believe, or that some of the victims of the murders confessed to are actually still alive.

And above all, pay no attention to the bruised and battered faces and bodies of the detainees, freely confessing their crimes.

After all, despite what a US 1st Cavalry investigation revealed, Iraqi police and soldiers do not systematically choke and electrically shock suspected evil-doers into confessing -- why, even though the jails and prisons are run by Iraqis, they're overseen by Americans; and despite what those namby, pamby Amnesty International folks might say, the American government does not condone or practice torture.

Of course, it depends on what the definition of torture is.

Sort of makes you long for the days when we just argued over what the definition of "is" is.

Then again, I guess violence can be "sexy" too, in a sado-masochistic sorta way.

Just take a look at one of the pictures most oggled at today: The battered face of the whistle-blower, beaten and left for dead, in the Congressional investigation into alleged financial "irregularities" at the Los Alamos nuclear lab.

Maybe it was just one of those random acts of violence that can be seen, either factual or fictional, as commonly on American as Iraqi TV.

Or maybe it was the price exacted upon someone for revealing the truth. And some still wonder why Deep Throat was so secretive.

Whether it's in Baghdad, Guantánamo, Los Alamos, or anywhere else in creation, America should not descend to the level of those we rightfully hold in contempt.

We are far better than that.

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