In the UK, retired judge Sir William Gage made public his inquiry into the death of Iraqi hotel manager Baha Moussa, allegedly tortured by British soldiers in 2003 in Iraq's main southern city of Basra. During an interrogation by British soldiers belonging to 1st Battalion, the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, an interrogation that would have lasted 36 hours, Moussa would have suffered 93 injuries, including broken ribs and a broken nose.
The gist of Gage's report is that 'An Iraqi man died after suffering an "appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence" in a "very serious breach of discipline" by UK soldiers, as De Standaard's pals from the BBC were so eager to report.
Naturally, a conclusion like that is gefundenes Fressen for DS as well as for the entire Belgian media landscape, which is as politically diverse as ink jet black has shades of green and red. Not a hint of WHY exactly it was that 1st Battalion, QLR saw fit to detain Mousa and several companions, but that must have been grossly unimportant.
The caption in this Thursday, September 8, 2011 DS article reads 'British government criticised for torture in Iraq'.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for an institution like the British Army to keep a spotless record with regards to upholding human rights, ridding itself of war criminals and so on. If Mr Moussa was indeed tortured for no good reason and if he died as a result, the service members responsible for his death should face justice.
But that's not the point.
The point is that a leftist rag like De Standaard, which because of some cosmic anomaly keeps presenting itself as 'objective' will just NEVER fail to inform its readers of alleged misconduct by western forces in the conflict du jour.
HOWEVER...
when it's about this kind of stories, De Standaard readers are left curiously in the cold.
from The Daily Mail, October 11, 2010.
"The families of six British military policemen killed by an Iraqi mob reacted with outrage yesterday after two men were cleared of the murders.
More than seven years on, the trial collapsed in Baghdad after prosecutors bizarrely asked for the charges to be dropped, admitting the evidence was not strong enough.
John Miller, whose son Simon, 21, was among the dead, said it was a 'disgrace' that there had been no public inquiry into the Red Cap massacre while £3.5million has been spent on an investigation into the death of one Iraqi in British Army custody"....
The pain and grief of, say, the parents of Simon Miller?
NOT IMPORTANT for De Standaard! Doesn't even register on their radar! The result is that we are all well informed about Mr Mousa, but not at all about Simon Alexander Hamilton-Jewell, Russel Aston, Paul Graham Long, Simon Miller, John McGowan Hyde and Thomas Richard Keys.
Or, would it not be better to say 'De Standaard considers them nonexistant'? I think it would be.
I remember the sad deaths of these six men. I remember how appalled I was, seven years ago, to read about how these men, who were training local police forces and doing a job for the good in an islamic hellhole, were butchered by muslim animals.
I haven't forgotten. De Standaard, on the other hand, has chosen never to know them.
Until we get rid of this sickening pathological tendency to see the worst in the best of us, and the best in the worst of our enemies, our continent and indeed, western civilization, will continue its demise.
Tell your children.
MFBB.
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