Report Quashed

I'm beginning to see that criticizing articles from the likes of Reuters and AP could become my life's work, or at least put a really big dent in my day. Reuters has a report whose title, Pentagon Seeks to Quash Iraq Abuse Report, is so misleading I just had to post about it.

Now we Americans are generally familiar with the Pentagon's history of "quashing reports". Usually it's an internally commissioned report, the unexpected thrust of which is critical of the Pentagon and/or the US Government. Pentagon heads read the report, come to the conclusion that there's no way they'd ever release it to the public, or even to other government agencies or branches, and make it go away, except for that one copy that somehow ends up at the New York Times maybe for instance. There was a lot of this going on in the context of Vietnam, for example, or Nicaragua, or concerning some US Cold War excesses.

But the Reuters story isn't about that kind of thing at all. The "report" in question is actually a New Yorker article. Reuters doesn't get around to mentioning that the report is actually a magazine article until the fourth graph. And the "quashing" the Pentagon is seeking looks a lot more like disputing to me.

quash:

To put down or suppress forcibly and completely: quash a rebellion.

To beat down, or beat in pieces; to dash forcibly; to crush.

To crush; to subdue; to suppress or extinguish summarily and completely; as, to quash a rebellion.

What Reuters considers "quashing" is apparently the Pentagon spokesperson saying, "Assertions apparently being made in the latest New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees are outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture." And "This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of Defense."

Now it's clear that the Pentagon's response is a bit, well, emotional. But Reuters should reserve report-quashing charges for actual incidents of report-quashing. Like this, say:

In a soon to be released book -- "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures" (Miramax) -- by a former and two current U.N. employees, it is alleged that Annan played a significant role in the U.N.'s failure to stop the genocides in the African nations of Rwanda and Burundi in 1994.

It is believed that more than 800,000 people were slaughtered during tribal warfare in the two nations.

Kofi Annan directed the U.N.'s peacekeeping operations during the period.

The book contends that Annan personally prevented a report on the impending genocide by his field commander Gen. Romeo Dallaire (Canada) from reaching Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the U.N. Security Council.

Now that's report-quashing.