NP misleading electronicintifada report (was Re: irrefutable evidence)

[davemarc]

In pynchonoid's apparent (but clearly off-topic) reaction to Colin Powell's
presentation of evidence of Iraqi
non-compliance, he quotes an article, by Ali Abunimah at
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1140.shtml, that boldly asserts that
"The
evidentiary value of the alleged recordings is close to nil." and adds "The
recordings
could easily have been faked, as the United States has a history of doing."

Soon thereafter comes this excerpt:

> More directly related to current events, New York's
> Village Voice newspaper reported late last year how,
> during the 1990s, a Harvard graduate student
> celebrated for his convincing impersonation of Saddam
> Hussein was hired by the high-powered, US
> government-linked public relations firm, the Rendon
> Group, to make fake propaganda broadcasts of Saddam's
> voice to Iraq. The student received three thousand
> dollars a month for his troubles. "I never got a
> straight answer on whether the Iraqi resistance, the
> CIA, or policy makers on the Hill were actually the
> ones calling the shots," the report quotes the ersatz
> Saddam saying, "but ultimately I realized that the
> guys doing spin (sic) were very well funded and
> completely cut loose." ("Broadcast Ruse: A Grad
> Student Mimicked Saddam Over the Airwaves," The
> Village Voice, 13-19 November 2002)
>
>From reading this electronicintifada.net description, pynchon-l subscribers
might get the impression that the goal of the broadcast was to fool
listeners into thinking that the Harvard graduate student's voice was
actually Saddam Hussein's.  Yet the Village Voice article clearly states
that the student's job was not to deceive in such a manner but to "Translate
and dub spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for
broadcast throughout Iraq."

More from the Voice article, which can be found at
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0246/urbina.php:  "'The point was to
discredit Saddam, but the stuff was complete slapstick,' the student says.
'We did skits where Saddam would get mixed up in his own lies, or where
[Saddam's son] Quasay would stumble over his own delusions of grandeur.
Transmissions were once a week from stations in northern Iraq and Kuwait.
'The only thing that was even remotely funny,' says the student, 'were the
mockeries of the royal guard and the government's clumsy attempts to deceive
arms inspectors.'"

According to the Voice article, this grad student became "Baghdad's
best-known
oppositional radio personality" during Clinton's presidency.

So the grad student was clearly taking on a persona in order to mock Saddam
Hussein, not be mistaken for him.  Yet the way that this article is quoted
and described at electronicintifada.net could lead a non-skeptical reader to
draw a significantly different conclusion.

Of course it is possible that the recordings that Powell presented in the
international spotlight are fakes.  But there was really no need for Ali
Abunimah to present visitors to electronicintifada with a
misrepresentation of the Village Voice article (and undermine his own
credibility) to make that elementary point.

d.