Word: rice
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...poor, doomed Afghanistan. They came in waves, one after another, trying to hit their targets and dodge antiaircraft fire. But there was more than just bombs falling from the sky. Air Force C-17 cargo planes began dropping pouches of food, thousands upon thousands of "culturally neutral," vitamin-fortified rice cakes, each stamped with the American flag and the words: THIS FOOD IS A GIFT FROM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA...
...network news heads dutifully talked this week with Condoleezza Rice, who urged them to examine any future videotape from bin Laden or his followers before airing it. The network chiefs agreed - clearly the right decision. Now, they will probably err in a new direction, and only show still images of bin Laden or others. They were rightly skeptical, however, about the idea that bin Laden was sending hidden messages to his followers. (Question: where's the hidden message in his straightforward urging of Muslims to rise up and kill Americans? Nothing hidden about that...
Well, maybe this isn’t so preposterous, but the reasons that National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice brought to the network executives were. Rice told them not only that the bin Laden broadcasts might contain hidden signals to terrorists already in the country (messages that they couldn’t get on the web or by phone?), but that they might provoke further violence against Americans. The latter claim makes even less sense knowing that bin Laden’s statements are already being broadcast worldwide in Arabic. Those who would be incited by his words are hearing them...
...Middle East. These Americans might be so blinded that they would see every Muslim as involved in this jihad, resulting in the kind of attacks on Arab-Americans that we saw in the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks. This would be a tragedy, but hardly what Rice had in mind when she asked the networks to curb their coverage...
Where we can agree with Rice is that the American media does have a special responsibility in this crisis. Their sensationalistic, O.J.-Simpson-like coverage is not appropriate for today’s situation. That type of reporting could, indeed, threaten the nation’s security by provoking hysteria or hatred. The wall-to-wall coverage of Osama bin Laden is neither productive nor, after a certain saturation point, informative...