News Weekly: White House takes swipe at British press

White House takes swipe at British press
Monday, June 1, 2009

The White House has taken a swipe at the British press in an effort to fend off questions about photographs that reportedly show US soldiers in Iraq raping and sexually abusing prisoners.

At the daily White House press briefing, spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked to comment on a report in yesterday's Telegraph that quoted a retired American general describing shocking details of photographs from US detention facilities in Iraq, which President Barack Obama has declined to release to the public.

"If I wanted to read a write-up today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League cup, I might open up a British newspaper," Gibbs said. "If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not sure it would be the first stack of clips I picked up."

The Telegraph quoted retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, as saying that the unreleased photos "show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency" committed on prisoners in US custody.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Telegraph "completely mischaracterised the images", and said "none of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article".

Gibbs twice more criticised the British press. "I think if you do an even moderate Google search, you're not going to find many of these newspapers and truth within, say, 25 words of each other," he said, adding, "I hate to lend any more credibility to nonfactual reports."