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Here is more confirmation of why the country needs independent local media: a jaw-dropping interview with retired Army Major
General John Batiste in the September 27, 2006 issue of Rochester, New York's weekly City Newspaper [http://www.rochester-citynews.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A4845].
Batiste, who commanded the First Infantry Division in Iraq, has made international news by repeatedly calling for Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign, most recently when Batiste testified before Congress on September 25.
How did a small Rochester weekly score a full-length interview with a figure of Batiste's stature? Easy. He happens to live
in Rochester. Moreover, the local corporate daily, the Gannett-owned Democrat and Chronicle, will barely give Batiste the
time of day.
This is when alternative media shine. The City Newspaper interview provides a rare glimpse of how a trained warrior views
the dishonest and incompetent public figures from whom he is expected to take orders. In the interview, Batiste discusses,
in blunt detail:
- How Batiste, who was once assistant to Paul Wolfowitz and had a Pentagon office adjacent to those of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld,
observed first-hand how the two cherry-picked intelligence to justify their predetermined intention to invade Iraq.
- How Batiste, as Commander of the First Infantry in Iraq, refused to follow Rumsfeld's relaxed guidelines on abuse of prisoners,
and considers the nation's current disregard for the Geneva Conventions to be a moral failure and a military mistake that
endangers American troops.
- Batiste's long-standing assessment that America needs three times the current number of U.S. troops in Iraq to have a fighting
chance of securing stability, and that this is far beyond the troop strength that U.S. armed forces can now muster.
- His bleak observation that Americans still have no idea what a long-term commitment this war will require. In Batiste's
words. "We are fat, dumb, and happy. Our country really doesn't understand what it has gotten itself into."
And there's more. I suggest you read the entire interview. You simply won't get this kind of reporting in your local McPaper.
Long live the truly local press.
© 2006 Bruce A. Jacobs (Posted 10/5/06)
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