WHO CAME UP WITH THIS STORY ASSIGNMENT?

In March of this year two young American television reporters from Al Gore’s website Current TV were arrested for illegally crossing into North Korea from China. Our airwaves were swamped with sympathetic stories voicing grave concerns about their safety while incarcerated since their March 17th arrest and subsequent sentence to 12 years of hard labor.

First of all my ears perked up wondering just why they were in this isolated section of China, and what was the significance of the story they were supposedly investigating. Current TV says they were reporting a story about the plight of North Koreans who have fled to China to escape poverty and repression. It is believed that particular focus was on North Korean women and children. Anyone who has read anything about Asia knows that women have been mistreated and abused in the Orient for centuries.

Al Gore’s ultra-liberal Current TV is at best an insignificant operation with virtually little or no interest on the national or international scene. One wonders just why Gore or any organization would send two naive reporters to this dangerous location with inadequate security.

There is an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal that provides some insight, but also raised the questions that I am addressing:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125186269001778477.html

Having read this article and an AOL report (9/3/09) that indicates the journalists do not feel they can discuss the full details of their experience at this time raises my further suspicions. Do you suppose that some damn fool actually sent these reporters on a mission expecting or planning for them to be captured? Oh, and a book deal in the works?

Frankly, I am beginning to believe that they thought they would get publicity for their sponsoring organization (Al Gore's Current TV), and that the American government would get them out quickly. If that is true, and I cannot prove it, they were certainly fooled and had the hell scared out of themselves.

At best, the story was a minor one considering all the things going on in this troubled world. Someone endangered these reporters, and caused the American government to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them released. I suspect that my cost estimate is far short of the true number, but ex-President Bill Clinton came riding in on his white charger, and pulled them back to safety. Al Gore was waiting on the airport tarmac with a supercilious grin on his face to welcome his simpletons back to civilization. Our country was again made to look foolish, and don’t think for one minute that North Korea didn’t get something of significance for the return of the sentenced American prisoners.

This story has much more to be disclosed, and we may never really learn the true answers to my suspicions. I do believe that Laura Ling and Euna Lee were pawns. Was this entire fiasco worth it? Al Gore, and Current TV should be billed by the American government for every single cent this embarrassing fool-hardy mission cost the taxpayers. Some investigative agency should get the true facts and somebody should be held accountable, but as is all too frequent these days do not hold your breath for any action.

Ling and Lee could have been killed, and the crazed government of North Korea could have manipulated this incident into a major catastrophe. Does anyone wonder why our main-stream media has dropped this story completely after heaping praise on one of their favorite liberal sons, ex-President Bill Clinton? Who ever sent these journalists on this dangerous assignment should be identified and held accountable.

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