See You at Gitmo (10/25/06)
by Dean Hartwell
Journalists sometimes distinguish themselves by breaking big stories. Bob Woodward, for example, had a major breakthrough by revealing the inside story of the Watergate break-in with help from "Deep Throat," now identified as Mark Felt.
But other journalists stay with an issue and over time become spokespersons for a group of people or a cause. Ed Murrow focused upon the recklessness of Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s when few others dared. With his ability to take his case straight to the public on CBS television, Murrow is now a standard-bearer of influential journalism.
One of his protégés has inherited his mantle. With no other journalist with the courage to call the Bush Administration on endangering our security and our rights more than terrorists ever could, Keith Olbermann has recently risen to the zenith of modern journalism.
He recently delivered a scathing editorial blasting President Bush for signing the Military Commissions Act, which allows him and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to detain U.S. citizens without charges, counsel or trial, a first in U.S. history. Said Olbermann of the new law: "One bit of truth that caught [my] eye was the elimination of habeas corpus, which apparently used to be the right of anyone who's tossed in prison to appear in court and say, 'Hey, why am I in prison?'" [1]
He has scolded Rumsfeld for a speech he gave in which the Defense Secretary compared those opposed to the Iraq War to Nazis and war appeasers. Rumsfeld's rebuke of those who disagree with him and his war policies was so stern that Olbermann commented that Rumsfeld "could stand up in public and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the emperor's new clothes." [2]
Olbermann has criticized a new GOP commercial which has several images of Osama bin Laden and which says, "These are the stakes" as scare tactics unbecoming of an incumbent party. He dared to ask why the Administration chooses to scare us with the possibility of terrorism while at the same time reminding us that there have been no attacks in the United States since 9/11. Olbermann calls this the same as saying, "We're safe but not safe enough."
But Olbermann knows the price he may pay for his dissent. When he spoke with constitutional expert Jonathan Turley about civil liberty abuses by the Bush Administration, he ended the conversation by saying, "See you at Gitmo [Guantanamo Bay]." Unfortunately, that may be the most fitting tribute that concerned citizens can now say to one another.
Notes:
[1] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15220450/
[2] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14601135/