Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Blames Israel for Torture Scandal

[JAT]

On the May 4 broadcast of CBC TV's National News, correspondent Neil Macdonald (pictured) delivered the lead story from Washington -- political fallout from the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse pictures. He said that "the occupation of Iraq and George Bush's unprecedented alliance with the right wing government of Israel has placed Americans overseas in danger."

Macdonald then focuses the camera on a retired US diplomat, Eugene Bird, who commented that the Mossad may have been behind the tortures. Bird said, "We know that the Israeli intelligence was operating in Baghdad after the war was over. The question should be: Were there any foreign interrogators among those that were recommending very, very bad treatment for the prisoners?"

Eugene Bird is president of the Council for the National Interest, a lobby group whose mission statement is to restore a political environment in America in which voters and their elected officials are free from the undue influence and pressure of a foreign country, namely Israel. Bird also writes regularly for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a journal known for its independence. Last month he called upon Americans to write to their congressmen and the President 'and urge them to adopt an Israel Accountability and Security Act.'

Bird's words were echoed in a similar report, 'Israeli Lessons for the US in Iraq', printed in an Arab newspaper, quoting a Palestinian Authority official who believes that what the Americans are doing to the Iraqis amounts to a 'carbon copy' of what the Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians.

"I am inclined to think that the Americans copied the Israeli techniques. I can't prove it in an objective manner, but the striking similarities are overwhelming," the official said.

http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=2868

[Cherry]

Neil Macdonald was CBC's reporter in Israel for a number of years so I would definetely accept his opinion as valid. He may or may not be correct but he for sure has the contacts and perspective to report on it.

He is a highly respected journalist.