Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Free Jack Idema Blogburst: 1/24/2007

One of the strangest aspects of the story of illegally-imprisoned US Special Forces soldier Jack Idema is his bizarre treatment at the hands of MSM.

Indeed, for anyone currently searching internet archives for information on this case, the 'Idema' presented to them will, invariably, be this one
The colourful Idema - sunglasses on in court as always - insisted again he was on an anti-terrorist mission approved by the Pentagon and the Afghan government.
[...]
But there will be many in both governments who will be breathing a sigh of relief that for the moment, the case is over - and out of the public eye. It has proved embarrassing for them, because of a drip feed of revelations.
What we have here, then, is Jack as 'colourful' rogue, Jack as fantasist, Jack as crook. Almost without exception, such unfair and derogatory descriptions of Idema are the only ones available from mainstream outlets. And, almost without exception, all mention of Idema starts with his arrest in July 2004. Looking at this material, a person could, in fact, be forgiven for thinking that no journalist had ever heard of Jack until that point.

This just isn't true.

In reality, Jack and his team's activities received extensive coverage in the media from September 2001 onwards. Here's a sample of this, which is archived (along with many, many others) over at SuperPatriots:
On the rocky hilltops overlooking the earthquake-battered villages there were hundreds still hoping for help, still praying, and still untreated days after the powerful earthquake levelled the area.

Untreated, that is, until Jack showed up.

Coalition Forces may not be able to reach the injured, and German military forces had to turn back at the base of one mountain due to security concerns, but this American doesn't seem to have a problem.

On Saturday, wearing a khaki-and-brown, U.S. flag patch on his shoulder, sporting a beard and carrying an assault rifle and pistols, Jack continued his own one-man mission to help those hurt in the quake that struck this area of northern Afghanistan a week ago - and in particular find all of its neglected victims: women and children.
This story originally appeared after the Nahrin earthquake, on April 2nd, 2002, and is interesting because it shows how Jack and his team were presented in a heroic light by MSM when it suited their purpose to do so.

Only, here's the thing: Jack and Brent's arrest in 2004 presented the media with an opportunity to repeat Taliban-manufactured lies about how Jack had kidnapped and tortured Afghan prisoners by hanging them from the walls of his (non-existent) basement -- For the average lefty-journalist this story must have been very tempting indeed.

Except. What to do about all those other stories, the ones which truthfully portrayed Idema as the kind of hero who hunts terrorists and saves women and children under fire? After all, MSM's post-2004 'version' of Jack Idema clearly wouldn't stand up to scrutiny if all those earlier stories were around to contradict it.

It's at this point that the media should have just done their jobs, asking serious questions about the truthfulness of the allegations against Jack and his team, and helping to clear their names. Instead, the media elected to erase virtually all pre-2004 stories about Idema from their servers, pretend they were unaware of his presence in Afghanistan prior to his arrest, then run the (to them) far more attractive story of the US 'torturer' put on trial by those he'd tormented.

To see how effective (and systematic) this 'scrubbing out' of the truth about Jack actually is, simply try clicking any of the links to pre-2004 Idema stories on the SuperPatriots In almost all instances, the result is the same as this from
Britain's href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-1626829,00.html">Guardian
Go to 'Everyone in the dock' in Kabul trial, because the other link is not working.
It's in this way that the truth about a decent man has been buried in order to promote the lies that keep him imprisoned to this day.

So what can we do? Well, anyone reading this with their own blog can sign up for the weekly Free Jack Idema Blogburst by emailing Cao or Rottweiler Puppy for details. I'd urge everyone to do this, as we're still terribly short on takers. If you want to know more about the story, Cao's Blog has a large section devoted to Jack Idema. There's also a timeline here, and, of course, a huge amount of information is available over at SuperPatriots, without whose work none of us would have learned about Jack's story.

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used with WRITTEN COPYRIGHT PERMISSION and any use by any third party is subject to legal action by SuperPatriots.US.

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The Free Jack Idema Blogroll:
The Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill, The Lone Voice, Kender's Musings, Irate Nate, The Devil's Kitchen, Cao's Blog, Big Dog's Weblog, Theodore's World, NIF, Rottweiler Puppy, Right For Scotland, Freedom Folks, The City Troll, Sacramento Boxing, Causes of Interest, Concatenation of Events, Hyscience, Stuck On Stupid, The Daily Blogster, You Don't Know Jack, Right Wing Nation, Ron's Musings, Right Voices, 7.62mm Justice and Special/Blown-It.

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