SORRY, NO APOLOGY INTENDED

The dummy in the White House told the world he feels really, really sorry about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. How sorry? So sorry that he vowed to keep his boy Rummy on the job. And we all know that Rummy, who runs the U.S. military, feels really, really sorry, too. That's what < FONT color=#003399>he's about to tell the Congress. Watch him squirm in two separate Capitol Hill hearings to be broadcast on C-Span on the Web, beginning at 11:30 a.m. ET and at 3 p.m. ET. (Let's see if he avoids the T-word the way the dummy does.)

A friend writes that comments by major media figures in 2001 "might help us understand why Americans ended up torturing and murdering prisoners." When you look at what leading figures in the media have said, the abuse at Abu Ghraib "does not appear to be just an anomaly committed by some girl from West Virginia. Note especially the comment encouraging torture by Jonathan Alter that was published in Newsweek."

Alter's comment was cited by the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2001, an awards competition administered by syndicated columnist and author Norman Solomon with Jeff Cohen of the media watch group FAIR. Solomon created the P.U.-litzers Prizes more than a decade ago "to give recognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year."

Here are some of the most relevant awards given that year:

WILD ABOUT THAT MADMAN AWARD -- Thomas Friedman of The New York Times
"I was a critic of Rumsfeld before, but there's one thing ... that I do like about Rumsfeld," columnist Friedman declared on Oct. 13 during a CNBC appearance. "He's just a little bit crazy, OK? He's just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on being able to out-crazy us, and I'm glad we got some guy on our bench that our quarterback -- who's just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you never know what that guy's going to do, and I say that's my guy."

TORTUOUS PUNDITRY PRIZE -- Jonathan Alter of Newsweek
In the Nov. 5 edition, under the headline "Time to Think About Torture," Newsweek's Alter wrote: "In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to ... torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States, but something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history.... Some people still argue that we needn't rethink any of our old assumptions about law enforcement, but they're hopelessly 'Sept. 10' -- living in a country that no longer exists."

PROTECTING VIEWERS FROM THE NEWS PRIZE -- CNN Chair Walter Isaacson
"It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan," said Isaacson, in a memo ordering his staff to accompany any images of Afghan civilian suffering with rhetoric that U.S. bombing is retaliation for the Taliban harboring terrorists. As if the American public may be too feeble-minded to remember Sept. 11, the CNN chief explained: "You want to make sure that when they see civilian suffering there, it's in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States."

PROTECTING READERS FROM THE NEWS PRIZE -- Panama City News Herald
An October internal memo from the daily in Panama City, Florida, warned its editors: "DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. Our sister paper ... has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening e-mails... DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. They should be mentioned further down in the story. If the story needs rewriting to play down the civilian casualties, DO IT."

BEST EMBRACE OF TERRORIST MINDSET AWARD -- columnist Ann Coulter
This category had many candidates -- pundits apparently trying to sound as fanatical as the terrorists they were denouncing -- but it was won by Coulter, who wrote in September: "We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Runner-up: Thomas Woodrow and The Washington Times, for a column headlined "Time to Use the Nuclear Option," which asserted: "At a bare minimum, tactical nuclear capabilities should be used against the bin Laden camps in the desert of Afghanistan. To do less would be rightly seen by the poisoned minds that orchestrated these attacks as cowardice."

HISTORY IS FOR WIMPS PRIZE -- Newsweek
When Newsweek published a Dec. 3 cover story on George W. and Laura Bush, it was a paean to "the First Team" more akin to worship than journalism. Along the way, the magazine explained that the president doesn't read many books: "He's busy making history, but doesn't look back at his own, or the world's.... Bush would rather look forward than backward. It's the way he's built, and the result is a president who operates without evident remorse or second-guessing."

Go to the site (click the link) for descriptions of the other 2001 P.U.-litzers:

+LOVE A MAN IN A UNIFORM AWARD -- Cokie Roberts of ABC News "This Week"
+ BLAME CERTAIN AMERICANS FIRST PRIZE -- televangelist/pundits Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson
+ AMERICA UNITED EXCEPT FOR THOSE DECADENT TRAITORS AWARD -- Andrew Sullivan of The New Republic and Sunday Times of London
+ SHEER O'REILLYNESS AWARD -- Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly and Catherine Seipp of MediaWeek
+ CHILD WARNOGRAPHY AWARD -- Bob Edwards, NPR News

Remember our May 3 item < FONT color=#003399>Bad to Worse, citing William Osborne's idea that the military is conducting a cultural war on its own people? Have a look at these two awards from the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2003, which offer more proofs of that:

CLEAR IT WITH THE PENTAGON AWARD -- CNN
A month after the invasion of Iraq began, CNN executive Eason Jordan admitted on his network's "Reliable Sources" show (April 20) that CNN had allowed U.S. military officials to help screen its on-air analysts: "I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance -- 'At CNN, here are the generals we're thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war' -- and we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important."

ANCHORS AWAY TO WAR PRIZE -- Fox News Channel and PBS "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" (Tie)
On March 24, about an hour before the first NATO missiles struck Yugoslavia, viewers heard a Fox News Channel anchor make an understandable slip: "Let's bring in our Pentagon spokesman -- excuse me, our Pentagon correspondent." A more scripted demonstration of journalistic independence came later in the war, when "NewsHour" anchor Margaret Warner introduced a panel: "We get four perspectives now on NATO's mission and options from four retired military leaders."