Tuesday, April 21, 2009

WTF CNN?!?! What are you really getting at?

With all the talk about prosecuting torturers from the Bush "administration" these days, is there some reason that I'm not aware of that CNN.com would choose to run this as their lead headline?
Nazi victim: Pursuing war criminals not worth it

"LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- For 65 years, Elisabeth Mann has carried with her the pain only a Holocaust survivor can know. The only one in her Hungarian Jewish family to make it out of the Nazi death camps, life for a long time felt like punishment . . . .

. . . Given the horrors she's lived and witnessed, one might think Mann, now in her 80s, would be among those demanding that Nazi war criminals be brought to justice. And yet she's uncomfortable with the ongoing attempts to deport to Germany for trial John Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old Cleveland, Ohio, man allegedly linked to mass killings at Sobibor, a death camp in Poland.

Demjanjuk insists it wasn't him. The pursuit of him -- and of suspects like him -- isn't one Mann supports. She said she never wanted revenge, because "I did not want to be like them."

Mann doesn't think going after war criminals now is worth the cost and energy, nor does she think the legal process will make a difference to such men who've already lived a full life."
Lemme get this straight.

Less than a week after President Obama releases some disturbing and damning memos issued by the Bushies' Department of "Justice," EXPLICITLY AUTHORIZING waterboarding and confining detainees in boxes filled with insects, memos which indicated that one "high value" detainee was waterboarded 183 times in one month, CNN uses the occasion of World Holocaust Memorial Day to run a lead story that basically says: "Well this victim of Nazi death camps doesn't think prosecuting her abusers is worth it." Nevermind international law and the Geneva Conventions. No need to offer any mention whatsoever of the explosive information contained in the memos released last week.

Nope, let's just run a story that says: "prosecuting torturers isn't worth the time and effort. See this Holocaust survivor says so herself!" I don't know if the publishers and editors over at CNN are trying to send us a message here, and to be fair, prosecuting former concentration camp officers (whose crimes were committed 65 years ago) isn't a perfect analogy for prosecuting Bush "administration" officers who committed their atrocities during the shameful reign of our previous president. But let's just say that, to my ears, a message is being received. And it's a pretty straightforward one:

"Let it go, don't bother prosecuting torturers. It ain't worth it."

With all due respect to Ms. Mann, and her struggles, her tortured logic here, pun intended, is problematic in and of itself. "There's no use prosecuting those who have no souls?" I'm sorry, but I think we ought to allow the courts to worry about justice, and God to worry about the souls of those who commit atrocities.

This is the sort of "coverage" of the Holocaust Memorial Day I could definitely do without.

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