Bush apologizing on Arab TV. Aftermath. Why not Al-Jazeera ?

So Bush apologized and I can’t seem to get any videos of it. If you saw it how did it come across ? What have been the comments ?

Also they broadcast only on Al Arabiya and a US sponsored Arab network. Al-Jazeera being given the cold treatment ? I thought Arabiya was worse than Jazeera as regards America…

What I heard on NPR was that Bush didn’t actually apologize, but his spokesperson did, after the interview.

Us poor deluded Arabs are still knocked out by that Great Performance of the Fatherly Concerned Master. Who by the way did not exactly “apologize” in his Great Monologue (nobody calls a monologue an interview, by the way) telling that the Iraqis must understand… and the Arab people must understand… this and that.
Thank you Ya Great Master, but we can think and reason for ourselves and decide for ourselves that you accidentaly forgot to mention that :

  1. your lawless contracters are a bit of a problem to get persecuted
  2. the things your are so “shocked” about are going on since months and were reported already months ago
  3. Amnesty reported such crimes since months
  4. the Red Cross was banned from that Lawsless US Prison
    Thank you for wishing us “freedom and democracy” but I don’t think you and your Maffiosi are ever going to be seen as the Shining Example.

As for Al Jazeera: Nobody convinces the Arab street that it was accidental that they got bombed a few times and got a reported killed in such a US attack. It is certainly also not accidental that one of the US army demands during the siege of Falluja was that Al Jazeera stopped broadcasting from inside the town about the bloodshed caused by the US (when they were the only media left inside the town).
The US Maffia can’t have it that Arab news does not sheeply follow their commands regarding what can be said about the US heros. The US in general can’t have it that any media reports from a non pro-US standpoint.
(Let us not forget that closing a newspaper was what effectively gave power and influence to the Lunatic Al-Sadr)

Everyone must march in line or they say that you are “biased”.
You must come to thinking of the word I say. If I would only read Fox and CNN, I would believe that Bush really is my Good Father and would have watched his Great Monologue so deeply moved that I would have tears in my eyes.
Salaam. A

How Ironic.

I can see how you would have thought he apolgized, but, see other thread…

Al-jaz was frozen out with intent.

Which is pretty funny,
'caus personally, the second place I go after Juan Cole to get the straight skinny is Al Jaz. It’s an incredibly professional operation, they run pretty full wire feeds, and, plus, they are the only ones with guys in the field (when they can stay alive…) And frankly, whatever the prejudices of the Emir of Qatr, I already like him better than Rupert Murdoch .

I bacically concur with Aldebaran. It was a self-serving, sanctimonous, patronizing and disingenuous speech. As to al Jazeera- I think the Bushies see them as hostile and freezing them out was some kind of petty payback. Persoanlly, I don’t think AJ is as biased as the US media would have us believe. I suppose that the Bushistas were afraid that speaking to al Jazeera would make it seem as though Bush was granting the organization journalistic legitimacy and the Bushies can’t have that or else Americans might actually start paying attention to what they report. As it is, all the White House and their servile media stooges have to do is just wave their hands and say “propaganda” and the public, by and large buys it. You never hear the US media acknowledge it when al Jazeera is right about something.

I really don’t think that Bush’s response was truly meant for foreign consumption. It only went out on a couple of cable networks that don’t have much reach.

The true audience was the pro-war “rah-rah Bush” “Arabs-are-the-new-niggers” redneck assholes in the US. Even if they didn’t see or hear the broadcast. It allows them to say “Hey, Bush tried his best to explain things to them, but these mo-fos wouldn’t be placated. They still think that Bush is an asshole. They just don’t understand freedom. Nuke 'em”.

Ya know, I don’t think that folks that have this attitude know what the word ‘placate’ means.

Bush did not apologize.
Here’s thread where that failure is being discussed: Why go on Arab TV and foget to apologize??

I’ve come online only now… and yesterday I was wondering if I had read the news correctly when it said Bush “apologized” on Arab TV. That didn’t make much sense… and now that I’m back its all explained. Read some other news too.

Yep it seems Bush did it for internal consumption… and once more Al-Jazeera wasn’t given due attention (yep petty payback). Still he could have apologized even within the limited broadcast he did… silly kid.

I don't think Al-Jazeera does deserve full credibility, as they do put it heavily pro-Arab and violent images. (Even Good wars have bloody scenes... this Bad war just has more of them). Still they seem as fair and square as Arab networks come.

The public shouldn’t need the White House to realize that Al-Jazeera TV is propoganda. Anybody remember the Iraqi information minister being on that network, spouting lies and praising Allah for the Iraqi victory that will soon be at hand, without any journalists for the network disputing it?

But you hate him. Be honest, isn’t that how you would have described anything he might have said?

Well do you see journalists second guessing what Bush says ? I don’t think so. Anyway Baghdad Bob didn’t need disputing… he was obviously wrong. In the end I think the arabs that beleived him learned how much he was lying too. Not the best way to learn about media circus…

Still not giving any voice to the Iraqis is fair in the end ? Even if they blatantly lie ?  Keeping them totally out of the airwaves is censorship ?  Al Jazeera at least shows something of the other side... and hopefully they will adjust their style to be more balanced over time.

Not necessarily. If he were to actually admit some responsiblity for the mess in Iraq I would give him credit.

I get this all the time- “you just hate Bush”- as though we who don’t like him have just started with an arbitrary and a priori decision to hate him and thereafter have interpreted his every word and action in a manner that is consistent with that a priori and irrational hatred. I didn’t start off hating Bush. I disagreed with him politically, but I had no personal feelings one way or the other. I actually got some impression during the 2000 campaign that he might have really meant that “compassionate conservative” bullshit and that there was a chance he would govern as a moderate. I grew to loathe the man because of his ultra-right policies, his war-mongering, his religious sanctimony, his arrogance, his incompetence, etc. My contempt is subsequential not a priori.

By contrast, there are other conservatives that I at least respect or even like personally despite political disagreement. I like and respect John McCain. I liked and respected Bob Dole and I actually think he was probably the best, most effective Senate Majority Leader in recent memory. I even respected George Bush Sr. (though I didn’t particularly like him). I thought he was eminently qualified, competent and intelligent, and I though he had a real gift for foreign policy. I disagreed with him but I didn’t hate him.

GWB is different. There are reasons I detest the guy that go beyond simple partisanship. Anyone who thinks that God wants him to start wars is going to earn my undying contempt.

Due respect, there might be a *reason * that you get that all the time, “you just hate Bush”. It’s because you come across as really really hating him. I don’t know when I’ve seen any reference to him by you that wasn’t loaded with adjectives or word play that was, at the very least, unkind. That’s not to say that you’re wrong about him in this or any other case, but it is to say that the likelihood that you’ve reviewed the matter impartially before making a decision is practically nill. Is it at all possible for you to make any positive point about him without some offsetting negative qualification? If not, please consider that it is only natural that I read “self-serving, sanctimonous, patronizing and disingenuous speech” as nothing more than “speech by a man I hate”.

I was disappointed by his “interview” with Arab television. When I first heard he was going to do it I had a glimmer of hope that he would really cut open a vein and show some real remorse and accountability to the Arab people. Instead we just got more political baloney and some subtle intimations that the Arab world should just bow to his moral leadership rather than letting a little thing like this get in the way.

You want some positive impressions on how Bush has responded to this? I’ll say a few things in his defense.

  • I don’t believe he was aware of these abuses and I do believe he was genunely shocked and angered by them.

  • I was glad to read that he has (apparently) chewed Rumsfeld a new asshole over this and is not letting him off the hook.

  • I think that Rummy had been shining Bush on about abuse rumors, had downplayed them, had assured him that the prisons were being run according to the Geneva Convention and that Bush had taken Rummy’s word for it.

  • I don’t think that Bush is personally to blame for these abuses (other than his accountability for the war itself).

  • I don’t think that Condi Rice would have issued a public apology without authorization from Bush.
    Having said all that, I must reiterate that I was greatly disappointed by his address to Arab television. He could have done better. I never get the sense that he views the Arab world as being his moral equal. I always get a sense of patronization, as though he’s addressing children who don’t understand that he’s doing this for their own good. I don’t get the sense that he respects them. That’s what was missing from his monologue.

Frankly, I get that sense from him generally, but I think it has more to do with his dear-in-headlights camera personna than anything. You thought of more positive things than I did, and as a result, your post on balance seemed more convincing. Rhetorical momentum is an interesting thing, similar to momentum in martial arts.

Funny thing is, when I first saw the clips shown on the BBC and ITN here, I thought “Great, he’s coming over really well, actually looks like a world leader for once, sounds sincere - as if he understands the words he’s saying, and means them, this might do some good”
It was only later I learned he hadn’t actually apologized.

So the issue becomes:

Is Bush’s Honor and Pride of not apologizing worth the lives of a few more dead soldiers ? The position of POTUS demands the sacrifice of young men to keep the image clean ?

Of all things this would could have been an honest demonstration that Bush does care about Arab opinion… but it wasn’t. Its an never ending series of insults to Arabs. What do you expect from Bush after all he doesn’t remember making any mistakes.

Now he has said sorry!

For the record, Bush does seem to have given a public third person apology today: somebody was listening to our criticism I guess.

Anyway, I think the real problem is that Bush’s target audience is the American public, not Arabs. His language: “The Iraqi people must understand that…” is phrased in a way that would appeal to an American listener nodding over his determination to teach the Iraqis who we are, but to Arabs and Iraqis must simply sound condescending and arrogant. It came across as a lecture, which is not what they needed to hear.

And there’s another a real problem here that Bush needs to acknowledge.

He’s mentions almost every speech he gives on the Iraq war, he says something about rape rooms and torture chambers. He’s certianly right to do so: shutting those down was a major achievement of his foriegn policy.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2100014/

The problem is comes when he makes statements like this: “We’re facing supporters of the outlaw cleric, remnants of Saddam’s regime that are still bitter that they don’t have the position to run the torture chambers and rape rooms.” McClellan has made even stronger statements to this effect (the military uses even more Orwellian terms, inexplicably calling insurgents “anti-Iraqi forces”). Now, to American audiences, that might sound all well and good: those evil Iraqs all just want Saddam and his regime back (laughable).

But consider that Abu Ghraib was, before Fallujah, the most attacked place in Iraq. Consider that many of the insurgents say they were attacking it precisely because they had heard rumors of what the Americans were doing in there and were outraged and wanted to put a stop to it and the whole place.

That makes Bush’s statements about the insurgents seem deliously out of touch to Iraqis, who already are not particularly won over by unconvincing exagerrations about who the insurgents are and what they want. Consider how people might see that: the insurgents were attacking targets, INCLUDING a prison that turned out to have both torture and rape, in order to stop it. And yet here is a President saying things like “One thing is for certain: There won’t be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms.” and blaming insurgent IRAQIS for wanting to bring those back, when in fact the ball is in the U.S. court now. That’s not good.

In addition, if the U.S. is for transparency: why is the report in question still classified “Secret” (apparently in violation of federal law) and only available because of a leak? And why are Iraqis hearing pundits roundly criticizing 60 minutes for making the photos public in the U.S.? None of that looks very good at a time in which we need to look our very best.