Sunday, November 29, 2009

Bin Laden was within US grip.

I read two articles that were both on the same subject but they had a totally different approach to the matter. This went well with the objective of this blog which is to try and analyse how the media we are typically exposed to shapes our opinion on certain issues. Also, to demonstrate the importance of gathering information from different sources.

According to BBC news, a senate report was written by the Foreign Relations Committee Democratic staff Osama bin Laden was allowed to walk unmolested into Pakistani territory because calls for reinforcement were rejected. It laid the blame on the Bush administration as a whole but was not very critical and accusing.It was sympathetic towards the then US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and said that he expressed concern at the time that a large US troop presence in the area could provoke a backlash and also mentioned that he said the evidence about Bin Laden's location was not conclusive.

Another article on guardian.co.uk made it very clear that it was former secretary of defense Donald Ramesfeld who let Bin Laden escape in 2001. Its interpretation of the report is that Ramsfeld had the chance to ensure that Bin Laden was either captured or killed but instead he let him slip away.According to the article, the report lays blame for the July 2005 Underground bombings in London on a failure to kill the al-Qaida leaders at Tora Bora.
It also went into detailing the evidence in the report that proves Bin Laden was indeed in Tora Bora, how many men he had, why he was there and how exactly the US failed to capture him. It was critical of Republicans and assumed that most Republicans would dismiss the report as partisan.

Reading from the two articles gives two very different perspectives of the Bush Administration and the report itself. It fascinates me how one report can be interpreted by two news outlets so that at the end of the day, you may not be able to tell whether or not it was the same report in the first place. The best and most responsible thing for a citizen who wants to be well informed is to find the report and read it, but in our busy and always on the move days, how many people would rather get the condensed version from whichever news source they trust the most?

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