an open letter to cnn

Dear Sirs and Madams.
An article on your CNN website today quoted sundry interesting statements from a certain Mr Omar Ahmed Hassan Al Bashir, the President of the Arab Islamic Republic of Sudan.
You quoted Mr Al Bashir as being strongly offended by a recently released short film, which focusses on instances of terrorism committed by Muslims.
You articulated for the whole world Mr Al Bashir's absolute rejection of any link between Islam and violence.
What you failed to do was to even vaguely contextualise for your readers and viewers the sort of person Mr Omar Ahmed Hassan Al Bashir is.
His viewpoint was presented uncritically as though he were just another Head of State weighing in on just another issue of public concern.
You failed CNN to furnish even the scantest details of Mr Al Bashir's background beyond the fact that he is President of Sudan.
Here is the news.
Mr Omar Ahmed Hassan Al Bashir has presided over Sudan for more than two decades, in which time he has authorised the murder of three million people in Southern Sudan.
The people he has had murdered were Christians and followers of traditional African religions.
It must be distressing for a non violent Muslim to have to murder such people to create his ideal non violent Muslim Sudan.
But there we are.
None of the rest of us will get too distressed about it as long as CNN fails to even mention it.
More recently Mr Omar Ahmed Hassan Al Bashir has extended his policy of government by mass murder to include the western province of Sudan, a region known as Darfur.
Mr Omar Ahmed Hassan Al Bashir has authorised the murder of at least two hundred thousand people in Darfur using government soldiers and an Arab militia called the Janjaweed.
The death toll I cite is a United Nations estimate so it's probably on the low side.
The United Nations only issues inflated death tolls for countries recently liberated by America.
But I digress.
Mr Omar Ahmed Hassan Al Bashir has killed two hundred thousand human beings in Darfur in the past two years and has caused another two and a half million people to flee Darfur taking refuge in the neighbouring country of Chad.
Nor has this level of mayhem exhausted Mr Omar Ahmed Hassan Al Bashir's penchant and originality for finding new opportunities to wage aggressive pan Arabist warfare.
In February this year, on the eve of a United Nations deployment to Chad, Mr Omar Ahmed Hassan Al Bashir sponsored an invasion of Chad from Sudan by an army he claimed consisted of Chadian rebels.
They created merry hell in Chad before melting back into Sudan.
I don't have the exact figures for the numbers they killed but a news network like CNN could get them if it was interested.
In the light of the above, the manner in which you presented Omar Ahmed Hassan Al Bashir is incomprehensible.
It is worse than incomprehensible.
It is misleading, mendacious and malign.
CNN by your incompetence and your duplicity in reports such as today's, you are enabling the worst thugs of Africa and Arabia to pose as statesmen.
Do you really think the Jihadis will thank you for it?
Whatever next?
A Man Of The Year award for Robert Mugabe?
Yours fondly.
James Healy.