Sometimes letters are to the editor

Several posts below Lex takes on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution via the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette on the subject of rough treatment of POWs during WWII. The next day I received a note from the Journal-Gazette. The J-G informed me that since I’d had letter published in the last 30 they could not publish my latest submission. On the same page as the WWII excrement, the Journal Gazette published this bit of detritus on Bilal Hussein, a terrorist masquerading as an AP photo stringer. Michael Malkin has the skinny ol’ Bilal here. So, I replied back to the J-G with this:

Dear editors,

Yes, I'm aware of your policy. That truly was a letter to the editor. I hoped that you would consider bringing a bit of balance to your overwhelmingly left leaning page, much of what shows up there unfortunately being rubbish.

For instance your “Held without charges” editorial which never mentions the fact that Hussein was captured in the company of al Qaeda terrorists and tested positive for trace amounts of explosives on his body. According to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq, to AP International Editor John Daniszewski, "[Hussein] has close relationships with persons knownto be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces...The information available establishes that he has relationships with insurgents and is afforded access to insurgent activities outside the normal scope afforded to journalists conducting legitimate activities."

Letting your readers in on all of this might have added a bit of balance to the piece and would keep them from making fools of themselves in a discussion on the subject with an informed friend or co-worker. In my book, if he has unlimited access to terrorists, is captured with terrorists, looks like a terrorist, smells like a terrorist (i.e. explosives), he’s probably a terrorist.

Editors could have told the whole story while maintaining the central point of the piece that Hussein should be charged or let go. This would highlight the competing theories in our war on terror. The J-G’s apparently being that we’re not really engaged in a war at all, just a large-scale, world-wide, criminal investigation.

Also, calling any news service “objective” is nonsense. Due in large part to their twisting of the news to fit their liberal agenda, news outlets are among the least trusted institutions in America. 62%of Americans don’t trust the press, according to a Harris poll. Conversely, the same poll found that 63% of Americans do trust the military. But since the J-G’s circulation continues to go through the roof, I’m sure none of that concerns you.

Regards,