The Difference in the Treatment Accorded by the MSM to Strongmen Aligned with the US and Despots Opposed to the US

We are against the death penalty. It is a shameful abomination (and a disaster and a catastrophe)!

We are against the war in Iraq. It is a shameful abomination (and a disaster and a catastrophe)!

We are against capitalism. It is a shameful abomination (and a disaster and a catastrophe)!

How about Saddam Hussein?

Well… yeah… y'know, that too… but, y'know…

it is hard to draw a portrait of Saddam Hussein. The man, like numerous dictators [like Castro, like Deng, like Kim Il Sung, but not like Pinochet (!)] presents numerous sides. His paranoia does not make the task easier…

Whereas the MSM had called unequivocably for moving heaven and earth to go after Pinochet while depicting Chile's former head as nothing but a monster, they have taken to referring to the environment in which Warsaw's Stanislaw Wojciech Wielgus met his fate as "Eastern Europe's widening witch hunt for former Communist secret police informers".

To go after Pinochet (as well as his henchmen and people such as the officers forming the 1970s junta of Argentina) is necessary, even heroic, but to go after the leaders of communist states (or their henchmen) amounts to nothing but a "witch hunt"?!

Read Brent Bozell's Dying dictators and double standards (written two to three weeks before Saddam's execution). He hits the nail straight on the head:

The New York Times headline noted Pinochet was a "Dictator Who Ruled by Terror in Chile." The Times began by describing him as "the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption." He was "never brought to trial." Both the Post and the Times used post-Pinochet government estimates that more than 3,000 people were executed or disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship.

But the same liberal press that despises right-wing autocrats cannot bring that same vigorous denunciation to bear when a communist dictator dies. When Chinese dictator Deng Xiaoping died in 1997, the Post mentioned the "bloody crackdown" in Tiananmen Square in 1989, but the words "dictator" or "dark legacy" did not appear in the headline, which simply recited the fact of death: "China's Deng Xiaoping, Dead at 92." The Post reporter did not attempt to enumerate the thousands or millions killed on Deng's watch, or wonder why he was never put on trial.

The Post presented Deng as a great liberalizer, to a point. "Deng had guided the country out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, flung open China's doors to the outside world and loosened the grip of central economic planning," while, ahem, "insisting that the Communist Party's monopoly on power go unchallenged."

Some communist leaders couldn't even be accused of liberalizing tendencies. When Korean despot Kim Il Sung died in 1994, The New York Times couldn't call him a dictator in their headlines, let along mention ruling by terror. The second story on the death was headlined, "Kim Il Sung, Enigmatic 'Great Leader' of North Korea for 5 Decades, Dies at 82." (…)

So let's review. A right-wing ruler responsible for the deaths of 3,000 -- but also responsible for an economic miracle of free enterprise, and who allowed the democratic process which forced him from power: "dictator." But communist despots who controlled their citizens with iron fists until the day they died, preventing all manner of political, economic and religious freedoms, and who caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions: "leaders."

The more things change, the more they stay the same. While conservatives still seek to defend both democracy and American interests, liberals are still fawning over communist and terrorist thugs.