Janice Stein Why are you on television?

Janice Stein Letter 01 21-Mar-2003 Why are you on television?

"Rather than revising your position, however, or explaining or justifying it, you merely reiterated it � because a Saddam Hussein meeting this small was unprecedented, it must have taken place prior to the commencement of the bombing." � Lubomyr Prytulak

21 March 2003

Janice Stein, Director
Munk Centre for International Studies
1 Devonshire Place
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 3K7

PH: (416) 946-8900
FX: (416) 946-8915
[email protected]

Janice Stein:

On the evening of 20-Mar-2003, CBC television showed you telling Chief Correspondent Peter Mansbridge that Saddam Hussein typically meets with twice the number of military staff that he was shown meeting with in the videotape whose authenticity is being questioned, and that the reduced size of the meeting in the video indicates that it had been made not after the first United States bombing (as claimed by Iraq), but before (as believed by you).

Your statement must have puzzled CBC viewers because it left the reduced size of the Saddam Hussein meeting in the video without explanation, whereas if the video had been made after the first bombing, then the meeting's reduced size could be explained by some of the military staff having been killed or injured in the bombing, or by their being deployed to their field assignments which they could not abandon to attend the meeting now that the American attack had begun. In other words, if the small size of this meeting was unprecedented, then some remarkable event must have caused its shrinkage, and the only remarkable event at hand was the American bombing.

Apparently following a line of thought resembling my own, Peter Mansbridge suggested to you that a diminished meeting would more logically be placed after the first American bombing. Rather than revising your position, however, or explaining or justifying it, you merely reiterated it � because a Saddam Hussein meeting this small was unprecedented, it must have taken place prior to the commencement of the bombing.

The question left in the minds of some CBC viewers must have been how someone with reasoning powers as limited as your own has managed to become an almost-nightly fixture on CBC television.

Lubomyr Prytulak

Hard copies to:
Peter Mansbridge, Chief Correspondent • CBC Television News • PO Box 500, Stn. "A" •Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6
Robert Rabinovich, President • CBC • 250 Lanark Avenue • P.O. Box 3220, Station "C" • Ottawa, Ontario K1Y 1E4

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