SADDAM'S CENSORED SADISM
By DEBORAH ORIN
June 24, 2004 -- AFTER terrorists beheaded Korean hostage Kim Sun-il, The New York Times kept the photo showing the horror of his final moments off yesterday's front page.
Instead, the Times' front page bizarrely describes Kim as "sitting or kneeling quietly" as he waited to die ? in reality the photo, back on Page A-11, shows Kim with his mouth open wide in terror, and the video shows him shaking with fear.
It's just the latest instance of how the press often hesitates to show the true savagery of America's enemies in the War on Terror, whether al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein's thugs, precisely because the images are so awful.
Last week, The Post revealed that reporters were ignoring a gruesome video of torture by Saddam's thugs while obsessing over prisoner mistreatment by a small group of U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib jail where the photos are less upsetting.
Calls from readers prompted the American Enterprise Institute to post the Saddam torture video on its Web site (with warnings about the graphic content). Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes" did a report in fact, last fall Fox exclusively revealed the existence of Saddam torture videos and aired sections.
National Review Online ran a detailed account of the video. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough plans to air it tonight. Otherwise, silence.
That prompted Laura Daniel to write New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent to complain, to no avail.
"I don't think the NYT needs to cover the video ? but I do think it should make periodic mention of Saddam's torture ? which, in fact, I believe it has, and does," Okrent emailed back.
"That's intellectually dishonest, and he knows it," retorts Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who co-hosted an airing of the Saddam torture video on Capitol Hill with Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.).
"There's no question if we had pictures of American soldiers chopping off hands, they would air it. It's just a double standard . . . The idea that if you mention you have somehow checked your box of being fair is ridiculous," he adds.
By contrast he points to "front-page, eye-catching, big headlines that say, 'America bad, America fails.' What is the overall message that's getting out? It's not what's mentioned in paragraph 13 ? 'Oh, by the way, Saddam was bad, too.' "
Last fall, when Fox broke the story of the Saddam torture videos, the Times ran all of five paragraphs back on Page A-14 with a small picture ? versus, so far, 181 stories on Abu Ghraib, more than 40 on the front page.
Incidentally, that Santorum-Lieberman screening of the Saddam torture video drew a roomful of reporters but resulted in just a couple of actual news reports. Christian Broadcasting Network aired the video by fuzzing the most gruesome parts.
Actually, says former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who did a tour in Baghdad training Iraqi policemen, that video isn't even the tip of the iceberg. He has 30 or 50 DVDs that show the same kind of Saddam torture and much worse.
"I've had guys from the NYPD, veteran homicide cops, whose stomachs turn when they watch it. What went on at Abu Ghraib under Saddam was 1,000 times worse, but we don't see it. They write a paragraph about it," Kerik says.
He recalls visiting Abu Ghraib about a month after Baghdad fell in 2003, a month after the last tortures and executions ? the stench of blood was still so awful, like a slaughterhouse, that even he had trouble walking through it.
"When Ted Kennedy says Abu Ghraib has reopened under 'U.S. management,' the guy hasn't got a clue. It just shows what kind of world of unreality he lives in. His whole agenda is political," Kerik adds.
And there are other Saddam horrors on tape. Former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke says there are thousands of tapes of rapes by addam's thugs, since one of his pet practices was to rape wives in front of their husbands. Sometimes the rapes were videoed from a few different angles.
In case a husband got out of line again, he'd be sent his wife's rape tape, she says. "Who's going to show that ?" Clarke asks.
In fact, Clarke recalls, she got angry complaints from three or four networks during the Iraq war when she tried to document Saddam's horrors by beginning a briefing with part of a BBC documentary on how Saddam used poison gas on his own people.
It showed a woman victim with half her face blown away.
"The criticism from several leading news organizations was intense. They said, 'Our people don't want to see this,' " Clarke reports.
One argument against airing the Saddam video horrors is that doing so would just serve as a recruiting bonanza for al Qaeda. But that's intellectually dishonest, since the exact same argument can be made against running photos of Abu Ghraib.
Most of the press still isn't ready to face up to how to report the real horrors of what terrorists do. It would be a good start if newspapers like the Times would admit there's a problem when they downplay those horrors.
Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington bureau chief.
