CBS Facilitates Terror

This story is turning out to be of much bigger import than I originally thought. A CBS cameraman in Iraq, wounded in a firefight with American troops (he was apparently "embedded" with the jihadists), has now been arrested.

And with good cause:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A CBS stringer has been arrested as a suspected insurgent, U.S. military officials said Friday.

The video cameraman was wounded during a firefight in northeastern Mosul between U.S. troops and insurgents Tuesday.

U.S. military officials said the man's camera held footage of a number of roadside bomb attacks against American troops, and they believe he was tipped off to those attacks.

As pointed out at Belmont Club:

What is most disturbing about the 'news footage' in the CBS stringer's camera is how the arrow of causality flows in exactly the opposite direction from that which we are accustomed to: not events captured on film, but events manufactured for film. It is self-evident that the assault on Iwo Jima was not staged from Rosenthal's benefit: there were serious military reasons for assaulting the fortified Island. But apart from the Pulitzer prize photo what tactical justification is there for murdering 2 ordinary Iraqi election workers with a force of over 30 men in daylight Baghdad?

Good question!

The point is, with their official, Western, CBS-bestowed "press credentials", these people have not only access to our behind-the-scenes secrets, but also they have a "protected status" to hind behind, as members of the "press."

When in fact they are just spies for the enemy:

Had those 'insurgents' the slightest doubt of the reliability of that AP photographer or the CBS cameraman they would not have proceeded with the operation. The insurgents' willingness to tip off these persons, protected as noncombatants under the Geneva Convention, to forthcoming attacks where surprise was the prerequisite for the survival of the attacking force speaks volumes about the relationship between the insurgents and these 'noncombatant protected persons'. It is instructive to compare CBS's statement on its cameraman with that of the Associated Press on their unidentified Haifa Street photographer.
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"It is common practice ... several brave Iraqi photographers ... covering the communities they live in ... give them access" are weasel phrases which cannot disguise the essentially immoral relationship where news agencies bestow protected person status on enemy combatants in exchange for bloody images which can then be sold for money.

It is ironic that Jane Fonda is on a book-tour right now, attempting to rehabilitate herself for being a stooge of communists during wartime, and making a tape for the Vietnamese captors to play for our POWs berating them for "war crimes" against the gentle communists, who would go on to murder mass quantities of South Vietnamese as soon as they took over. She is a Traitor and should be prosecuted as such.

As should the terror-enabling media. As commenter Buddy Larsen observes,

It appears CBS is engaged in 'vertical integration', reaching down into the snuff-film part of the infotainment industry.

I mean, this qualifies, by any/every definition or point-of-view.

A human being is the base (raw) material, his filmed killing is the manufacturing process, marketing/sales is apparantly by custom order, wholesale distribution is via CBS's laundered channels to retailers (CBS affiliates) who are sort of the storefronts, deriving end-users (the great broadcast network clientele, the "booboisie").

So in a very real way, of the dollar I spend on a product manufactured by a company which advertises on CBS, some fraction of that dollar capitalizes a contract on the life of one of the American soldiers over there fighting for my way-of-life. This *way* more than totally sucks.
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If CBS really can't get film any other way than by incentivizing ambushes on its nation's troops, WHY doesn't CBS just SAY so, and then honorably DO WITHOUT that 'angle'? You know, "ethics"-style?

Instead, look for the Dan Rather Network to make the point that, yes, there 'may be' a little snuff-film problem here, "...but, hey, we're NOT in the kiddieporn and crack biz, uh, yet!"

Yeah, just wait.