Janet Albrechtson - cat got your tongue?

15 May 2007

Re a Janet Albrechtson article on David Hicks:

I tend to think that Hicks is a straw man you have created for your own ends. Was there ever great public support for him, separate from the issue of him deserving a fair trial? (Even Herman Goering and Saddam Hussein got those.)

Do 'lefties' and 'bleeding hearts' and the other characters in your demonology really love David Hicks and support his terrorism, or wish for him to profit from it? I think you have imagined most of that.

As is often the case in this wretched propaganda rag, what is not being printed is far more significant than the tangential matters which are:

You and most of your fellow commissars have gone deathly silent on the subject of Iraq. Sure, the war is reported on in a narrow factual sense. Maybe partition will be discussed in a column. George Bush's woes raked over once in a while.

But the noble enterprise to rid Saddam of WMDs, and democratise the Middle East - which it seems you were urging on us only yesterday - what happened to that?

If you still believe you are right, kindly have the courage to continue defending the war.

If you have decided you were wrong, do you not owe your readers an apology?

After all, this is not some theoretical issue - this is the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. 

Without media war spruikers such as yourself, the US, UK and Australian governments could never have got away with it.

Just because there were many of you, scattered through the Murdoch press and beyond, does not diminish your personal responsibility.

Cat got your tongue?