The dangers of reporting the 'war on terror'

[The Northerner]

Rarely does the Listening Post dedicate a whole show to the story of a single journalist. But when that story speaks so eloquently of how world history is being written, or erased, we decided it was something we just could not ignore.

In December 2009, Yemen's air force claimed it had killed 30 suspected al-Qaeda operatives during an airstrike on a training camp in the southern Abyan province.

This version of events was circulated around the world but when Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye managed to get to the scene, the remains of the missiles he found were clearly marked 'Made in the USA'. And among the dead were 14 women and 21 children.

Shaye's subsequent report incriminated the US in a military operation in which they had been so keen to deny any involvement. Yemen dismissed the report and the US refused to comment - and Shaye became a marked man. He was accused of being an al-Qaeda operative and has been behind bars ever since.

Last month, the Yemeni government pardoned Shaye and was about to release him. But it took just one phone call from the US president urging them to reconsider, and the government backtracked.

Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2012/03/2012323201744332607.html

[sad sally]

1. Isn't this one more example of the Obama presidency that doesn't just mirror the

Bush/Cheney one, but takes it a notch further up the pole of stomping out journalists and/or whistleblowers who might be telling an unpleasant truth?

And once more, silent acceptance by Democrats. After all, our President is just protecting us from potential al-Qaeda terrorists. He's certainly not asking a foreign leader to keep a journalist locked up for years in one of our favored nation's prisons where he's beaten and tortured because the journalist is telling the truth. Oh no, this journalist is a liar and possibly an al-Qaeda terrorist mouthpiece.

Or is this the truth? "Abdulelah Haider Shaye [is] a brave journalist. He just happened to be on the wrong side of history in the eyes of the U.S.," Scahill says. "His crime seems to be interviewing the wrong people and having the audacity to publish another side of the story."