Steyn, today: [1]
How do you feel about the American hostages in Iran?
No, not the guys back in the Seventies, the ones being held right now.
What? You haven’t heard about them?
Odd that, isn’t it? But they’re there. For example, for two months now, Haleh Esfandiari has been detained in Evin prison in Tehran. Esfandiari is a U.S. citizen and had traveled to Iran to visit her sick mother. She is the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, which is the kind of gig that would impress your fellow guests at a Washington dinner party. Unfortunately, the mullahs say it’s an obvious cover for a Bush spy.
Among the other Zionist-neocon agents currently held in Iranian jails are an American journalist, an American sociologist for a George Soros-funded leftie group, and an American peace activist from Irvine, Ali Shakeri, whose capture became known shortly after the United States and Iran held their first direct talks since the original hostage crisis.
Two months in an Iranian jail is no fun. Four years ago, a Montreal photo-journalist, Zahra Kazemi, was arrested by police in Tehran, taken to Evin prison, and wound up getting questioned to death. Upon her capture, the Canadian government had done as the State Department is apparently doing – kept things discreet, low-key, cards close to the chest, quiet word in the right ears. By the time Zahra Kazemi’s son, frustrated by his government’s ineffable equanimity, got the story out, it was too late for his mother.
Still, upon hearing of her death, then-Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham expressed his “sadness” and “regret,” which are pretty strong words. But then, as Reuters put it, this sad regrettable incident had “marred previously harmonious relations between Iran and Canada.” In his public pronouncements, Graham tended to give the impression that what he chiefly regretted and was sad about was that one of his compatriots had had the poor taste to get tortured and murdered onto the front pages of the newspapers.
With an apparently straight face, Graham passed on to reporters the official Iranian line that her death in jail was merely an “accident.” The following year, Shahram Azam, a physician who’d examined Kazemi’s body, fled Iran and said that she had broken fingers, a broken nose, a crushed toe, a skull fracture, severe abdominal bruising, and internal damage consistent with various forms of rape. Quite an accident.
The longer American prisoners are held in Evin, the more likely it is they’ll meet with a similar accident. It would be nice to think the press has ignored these hostages out of concerns that they might inflame the situation. (To date, only National Review, Bill Bennett on his radio show and various doughty Internet wallahs have made any fuss.) Or maybe the media figure that showing American prisoners on TV will only drive Bush’s ratings back up from the grave to the rude health of intensive care. Or maybe they just don’t care about U.S. hostages, not compared to real news like Senate sleepovers to block unblocking a motion to vote for voting against a cloture motion on the best way to surrender in Iraq.
Here, my friends, we have yet another example of how the press in this country will invariably spin to the left.
Back when Jimmy Carter was in office, we had and 400 some odd days of headlines out of Iran, whipping Americans into a frenzy because Iran had taken hostages. there was widespread support for Carter taking military action, which of course he screwed up. The invasion failed. Largely, because of the planning stages that occurred within the White House then held by the Democratic party.
Today, because it might give the Republican President Bush, some leverage in the war on terror that Jimmy Carter, in his idiocy, arranged for [2], the press says nothing whatever about it. Iran, for their part, of course is and has been hoping for precisely that response. And, of course, we see the one note samba coming out of Congress not responding to the rainy and situation and all. All they’re interested in is a political victory over the president so that they can arrange for our surrender in Iraq. I guess it should surprise nobody that this is the same party, that gave us that selfsame Jimmy Carter.
Give Steyn credit for mentioning all this. I doubt many others within the mainstream will.