14. On Wednesday, July 16, 2008, the Asheville Citizen Times (AC-T) ran an Associated Press (AP) article on page A2 titled, Guantanamo video offers glimpse of interrogations.
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| Source: AP |
The AP story reported that Omar Khadr, a sixteen-year old captured in Afghanistan in 2002, had been recently video taped sobbing for his "mommy."
AP obviously felt it had discovered military abuse, seeming to use this teenage terrorist as some kind of poster child with willing assistance from Khadr's own American lawyers and the AC-T's news editors.
Omar's lawyers had focused on alleged torture, releasing the tape to the media of their client's complaints, the AP article in the AC-T reported as a side item, "Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier during a 2002 firefight that left another soldier blinded in one eye."
We left a message with the AC-T publisher's secretary to advise him of the new information we had discovered, saying his AP story had left out the name of the U.S. soldier killed and that he was one of our own living in North Carolina.
The soldier's bro's had also reported the week, before Speer's death, that Speer had been a hero, saving the lives of several wounded Iraqi children that were caught walking into a minefield.
The AC-T publisher, as usual, did not respond that his Gannett-owned newspaper would be glad to advise its WNC readers of who Khadr had killed.
Therefore, the AP article printed by the AC-T continues to stand as the hero murdered simply being "a soldier." |
American Military Hero's Death Ignored By Local Newspaper While Terrorist Who Killed Him is Highlighted
A published Associated Press article recently whined about a Canadian teenage terrorist, Omar Khadr, who was being held in Guantanamo Bay. This terrorist was being used by opportunist lawyers that were running a media blitz. It was then picked up by the Asheville Citizens Times (AC-T) (July 16, 2008) along with probably other newspapers across America that had decided to run this story as the AC-T had printed it.*
The AP story, as published by the AC-T left out facts to remind us what this teenager had done, writing in its newspaper in 2002 that Khadr had simply killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier.
The ACT didn't seem to give a damn that "the soldier" had a name. He was medic Sergeant Christopher Speer, who never came home again to his family; wife Tabitha, or his two small children, Taryn and Tanner.
Omar Khadr was alleged to have also, at the same time, wounded another medic, blinding him in one eye. Yet this medic, who was still standing, went on to save Khadr's own life, who is now used six years later by the AP for a continued agenda against the military holding terrorists at Guantanamo, an outlet Rush Limbaugh has identified as part of the drive-by media.
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An honor page created for Sergeant Speer had more information the AP had totally left out, thereby missing from newspapers that had simply chosen to cut-and-paste without fact checking:
"Six days before he received the wounds that killed him, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher J. Speer walked into a minefield to rescue two wounded Afghan children."
Speer was reported to have lived in Village Chapel, Pinehurst, North Carolina, originally listed as from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was able to easily Google this and therefore called the AC-T's publisher to advise him of the AP story they had chosen to run, and that the Asheville Citizen Times should be on the forefront to set the record straight for at least one of our own from North Carolina.
But my phone call was never returned, not unusual for my experience with this socialist publisher. In this corrosive media environment, it's sad that so many in the media care to not remember those who have given their lives for this nation and the details of their heroism. such as Sergeant Speer had honorably accomplished in life while serving in the military overseas.
We hope someone will read this and contact their local American Veteran's Association or the Speer family to report the lack of interest of the arrogant and aloof AC-T, even when advised, refusing to honor a soldier living in North Carolina who had given his life for his country.
The details of Speer's heroism has also been stepped because the AC-T seems to continue an agenda against our military ignoring the Metal of Honor to Michael Murphy until brought up by the public. Even then its editor seem to laugh why his Metal of Honor would be of any interest to the people of the mountains.
You should know it was also the AC-T that ran a huge story in the fall of 2007 on the cover of its Sunday Forum Section, demanding that all U.S. cable providers should carry the Al Jazeera Network for their viewers to watch, the headline reading, " . . . and let's not quash it."
We had written a guest letter for the managing opinion editor, reminding her it was the Arab television networks that had run a video on the charred body of Air Force pilot Troy Gilbert, with his found ID on the screen with his body 10 months before the AC-T's article had run. The letter was never acknowledged, as usual, originally sent to the publisher so it would be noticed. It wasn't.
American citizens need to ask a simple question and then demand an answer from the mainstream media and newspapers like the AC-T: "What happened to our basic right to know?"
* Note: Welt Online did acknowledge Sergeant Christopher Speer as the one alleged to have been killed in the grenade attack by Omar Khadr while he was fighting with Al Qaeda. Welt Online is a German news organization.
In addition we also found other versions of AP that had at least mentioned Speer's name, the AC-T for whatever reason choosing to leave that information out when we had checked two AP stories side-by-side. The AC-T story, as printed on July 16, is available for a price via a search of the newspaper's archive. We have the original printed version that lacked Speer's name and his heroism in saving wounded Iraqi children.
This is at the heart of complaints by too many American citizens that the national media, and proven here also the local media, refuses to run stories available about the individual successes of those that serve us in the military. Too often they seem to follow CNN's news guidelines as reported by a military family last year after losing a loved one, "If it bleeds, it leads!"
(Note: This was written six years ago. Notice how vicious the mainstream media has become, no longer embarrassed to be called the spokesmen for the Democrat Party. Jews surviving the holocaust had warned us how fast it had happened to them. That was eighty years ago, a human cycle recognized in the book, The Fourth Turning.)
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