CNN and Hamas's Human Shields

You just got to love the headline of this article on the CNN web site: Is Hamas using human shields in Gaza? The answer is complicated. The truth is, the answer is a simple, well documented, yes! So why is CNN having a hard time saying it? The answer, I suspect, is also quite simple.

It is the same reason that CNN hushed up the atrocities committed by Sadam Hussein, as admitted by none other than former CNN executive Eason Jordan way back in 2003:

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.

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. 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. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.

Hamas is a terrorist organization, a group of violent thugs who do not value human life. Using "human shields" is only one item on the long list of atrocities that this evil organization is responsible for.

Eason Jordan closes his "mea culpa" with the following:

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.

The same will be said when we finally get rid of the Arab terrorists in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. All of those journalists who feared for their lives and therefore covered up the crimes of Fatah, Hamas and all the other terror organizations, whitewashing their activities and calling them "militants", will be free to tell the truth.