As debates rage about whether bloggers are journalists, whether they need shield laws to protect sources, whether they brought down Dan Rather and are going to take over the media world, on the other side of the blogosphere the diarists and memoirists and mothers are coping with a different set of ethical dilemmas: How much of themselves should they expose online, and how easily should they indulge their urge to confess?
Collaborating with Swedish intelligence services to, in apparent contravention of Swedish law, kidnapping Arabs residing in Sweden and ship them off to Arab states to be tortured was bad. Very bad.
So now we've got renditions in the crosshairs -- a radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar was walking to a Milan mosque for noon prayers in February 2003 when he was grabbed on the sidewalk by two men, sprayed in the face with chemicals and stuffed into a van and never seen again. The CIA is suspected of snatching Omar from the streets of Milan and shipping him off to Egypt for torture after authorities checked flight records at US bases in Italy. European investigations are producing new revelations about the suspected U.S. involvement in the disappearances of four men, not including the Egyptian, each of whom claims they were physically abused and later tortured. Whoa boy...
The Europeans weren't wild about Abu Ghraib or Gitmo or tales of trigger-happy US forces in Iraq, but it was more a matter of disdain or disgust. But when it comes to their own citizens being shot or kidnapped, the attention ain't gonna be pretty and things are gonna go really, really, really awry.
UPDATE: "A CULTURE OF ABUSE DOESN'T STAY IN THE BOX"....Jeanne of Body and Soul has an extremely powerful essay on the latest round of detainee abuses now coming to light. Just go read it.
"Americans don't commit torture" seems to be the standard line these days, even though the evidence is that we have and we do.
Recall that most German people said post-WWII that they had no knowledge of concentration camps and genocide. Americans are now making the same claim.
Rome - The Italian journalist and former hostage who was wounded by United States gunfire in Baghdad sent a letter to Pope John Paul II thanking him for his appeals on behalf of people kidnapped in Iraq, her newspaper said on Saturday.
Giuliana Sgrena - released from captivity in Iraq on March 4 and then shot on her way to the airport - wrote to the pontiff from the Rome hospital where she is recovering from a shrapnel wound to the shoulder, said Il Manifesto newspaper, adding that it had no specifics on the letter.
Her letter was brought to the pope's attention at a Rome hospital across town, where he is recovering from throat surgery. The pontiff's Sunday message on February 13 included an appeal for hostages in Iraq, including Sgrena.
Also on Saturday, Sgrena went on television to appeal for the release of a French colleague captured in Iraq, calling on those holding her to "respect Islam" and let her go.
Veteran French reporter Florence Aubenas disappeared along with her Iraqi assistant, Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, on January 5. They were last seen leaving her Baghdad hotel. It is not known who might be holding her.
"I beg you, use the same clemency that was used with me: set her free," said Sgrena, in a message to the kidnappers broadcast on Saturday on French TF1 television. "My kidnappers always referred to the Qur'an, which calls for the respect of women."
"I ask you to respect Islam, and free Florence Aubenas," she added speaking from the hospital.
Sgrena was freed on March 4 after a month in captivity, but was wounded when US soldiers opened fire on the car taking her to the airport. An Italian intelligence agent accompanying her was killed.
The reporter was quickly brought to a US military hospital in Baghdad, where she underwent surgery to remove the shrapnel.
She is set to have a new operation on the wound on Monday, her newspaper said. - Sapa-AP
Giuliana Sgrena seems grateful towards the Pope's assistance and concerned about a fellow hostage Veteran French reporter Florence Aubenas, both statements seem noble sentiments for a person who had been kidnapped and then nearly killed by shots fired at her car.
Then what about this trashing of Giuliana?
In Italy, media outlets of all stripes supported Giuliana. There was solidarity, a concept few American media types seem to understand. Here in the Fox and blog-infested waters of the U.S.A., consensus seems impossible and polarization is the template. In some quarters, torture by Americans is deemed acceptable and any concerns about the less than stellar job done by 'our troops' is considered heresy, if not treason. Already the victim is being blamed for the crime. A letter to another blog hints at a plot because Al Jazeera had a picture of the Italian agent.
The right-leaning site, Little Green Footballs, predictably tries to discredit Giuliana and anyone who believes her:
"The details of this situation have been described in so many different ways that it’s very difficult to get a clear picture of what happened – and mainstream media has predictably ignored Sgrena's radical anti-war background… The inmates of Democratic Underground are beside themselves with glee, of course, accusing our soldiers of murder with no evidence. (But don’t forget, they support the troops!)"
Michelle Malkintakes the "word of U.S. troops [rather] than an Italian anti-war journalist['s]."
Even worse, a web site calledMy Pet Jawais, without evidence, blaming Giuliana for being a terrorist collaborator: "Suspicion continues to mount (Where? DS) that Giuliana Sgrena, the journalist for the Italian Communist (Wrong) paper Il Manifesto, either faked her own abduction or became an accomplice after the fact with her jihadi captors."
"To all war correspondents out there, to all those who cover the horror of mankinds cruelty to mankind, maybe one day the horror which you captured may persuade us that war is a barbaric way to solve our differences. An independent journalist who covers war is a peacemaker. The pursuit of truth can bring grim consequences to those who pursue it. Thanks to those who have been killed in their duty of reporting on the truth and to those imprisoned and tortured.
