A Christian Parable for the Associated Press

I can’t quote the specific scripture, but you know the one where Jesus admonishes someone for looking at the mote in another person’s eye instead of the beam in one’s own?

So according to Desmond Butler and Pauline Jelinek of the Associated Press, we have congressional investigators Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn) looking into Saddam’s abuses of the oil-for-food program. “That humanitarian program was corrupted and exploited . . . for the most horrible and aggressive purpose”, said the latter.


I can’t quote the specific scripture, but you know the one where Jesus admonishes someone for looking at the mote in another person’s eye instead of the beam in one’s own?

So according to Desmond Butler and Pauline Jelinek of the Associated Press, we have congressional investigators Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn) looking into Saddam’s abuses of the oil-for-food program. “That humanitarian program was corrupted and exploited . . . for the most horrible and aggressive purpose”, said the latter.

Such concern for the plight of the Iraqi people is touching, no? Especially coming from those who imposed the sanctions.

Even better though is Edward Harris’s Associated Press story on what the US Marines have encountered in Fallujah now that they have ‘taken’ it.

“U.S. Marines have found beheading chambers, bomb-making factories, the body of a Western woman and even one Iraqi hostage as they swept through Falluja — turning up hard evidence of the city’s role in the insurgent campaign to drive American forces from Iraq.”

The “hard evidence” includes:

“AK-47 rifles, improvised bombs, fake identification cards and shoulder-fired missiles that could down an airliner. Beneath it were tunnels running under the northern Jolan neighbourhood.

“Marines said weapons depots were strategically placed throughout Jolan and the Shuhada district. Insurgents marked many of the caches with a piece of brick or rock, suspended from the buildings by a piece of string or wire.”

They also found evidence of car bombs:

“Yesterday, a hollowed-out plastic foam container about the size of two shoeboxes lay in the bomb lab, packed with plastic explosives and wires. The foam box was covered in cloth to disguise it as an innocuous package.

“Scattered on the ground nearby — cellphones, walkie-talkies, handheld radios, all used as detonators — lay tangled in coils of wire. There was a computer without a hard drive and a box full of professional explosives-triggering.”

Sounds like a tremendous amount of evidence of terrorist activity unearthed by intrepid reporter Edward Harris. Weapons, computer systems, bombs, rifles. Was Harris actually in Fallujah, talking to the Marines? Did he check out what they were wearing? Was he looking hard enough for “hard evidence” of crimes? If so, how about the blowing up of a mosque, the blowing up of a hospital, the occupation of a hospital, bombing of residential neighbourhoods, a siege that forced a parent to bury his 9-year old son in his backyard…

Whatever else you can say about the Associated Press, today they have established themselves as very bad Christians.

Author: Justin Podur

Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction. Teach at York U's FES. Author. Writer at ZNet, TeleSUR, AlterNet, Ricochet, and the Independent Media Institute.

One thought on “A Christian Parable for the Associated Press”

  1. Matthew 7:3,4,5 (also in
    Matthew 7:3,4,5 (also in Luke). Here’s the King James version:

    3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
    4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
    5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

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