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Recent
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April
7, 2003
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April 8,
2003
Here Come the
Fat Cats
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis
Ask "Why?"
By LINDA HEARD
Iraq is being 'liberated' while truth is incarcerated.
Former BBC reporter Kate Adie warned that non-embedded journalists
in Iraq could be Pentagon targets before the war began. She was
right. Today, an American tank shell was fired at Baghdad's Palestine
Hotel--temporary home of international reporters and film crews--causing
casualties among those who bravely stayed in a war zone so that
we could know.
Sky's David Chater said he saw the tank
turn towards the hotel and spew out its deadly load. He wonders
how independent reporters (as opposed to embeds) can continue
to do their jobs when such danger emanates from their own side.
Not from the Iraqi side but from 'our boys'.
That's the whole idea. Those people who
are giving the orders to fire upon journalists want them to flee
in terror. We must not see the criminal acts yet to be perpetrated
against the civilians of Baghdad. We have seen too much already.
The Baghdad office of Al Jazeera, housed
in a residential district, was hit too, reminiscent of Kabul.
This time a journalist and a cameraman lost their lives. Al Jazeera's
mistake was to have given the Pentagon its coordinates.
A further 'accident' on the same day
resulted in a Reuters' vehicle being attacked, and another 'stray'
bomb or missile 'coincidentally' destroyed the office of Abu
Dhabi television causing severe injuries.
Early on in this war, ITV's Terry Lloyd
was allegedly killed by a U.S. bullet while two of his colleagues
went missing following the same incident. The Pentagon tells
us that it is still investigating, yet, even while their own
employees fall, the Western television networks refuse to condemn
this assault on the truth, making excuse after excuse about the
'fog of war'.
In a 'blue on blue' incident a 25-year-old
BBC translator was killed in northern Iraq and a cameraman wounded
in the head when a convoy of Kurdish fighters and American special
forces was bombed.
But veteran BBC reporter John Simpson,
who was slightly injured during the attack, calmly commented
that such things happen during conflict, and thanked the Americans
travelling with them for their first aid capabilities. How polite!
"Your chappie who is probably rattling with 'go-pills' (amphetamines)
has just killed my friend but, hey, such things happen. Thanks
for the bandages, by the way."
From the point of view of the Coalition
of two and a bit, who repeat over and over again that 'every
effort is being made to protect civilians', what shouldn't we
know?
We should not have learned about soldiers
who shoot first and ask questions later, as seven Iraqi women
and children found to their cost as well as the drivers and passengers
of numerous vehicles, erroneously mistaken for suicide bombers.
We should not be appraised that the Coalition's
boys and girls are dropping cluster bombs and firing Depleted
uranium tank shells, without any thought to how much misery these
weapons of mass destruction will certainly cause in the future.
We should not have seen the British marines,
who when arresting a middle-aged suspect, forced him to the ground
and repeatedly yanked off his kuffiyeh (Arab headdress). This
was an appalling insult to that man's dignity and his heritage,
done without any respect to the traditions of the people Bush
and Blair claim to befriend.
We should not have born witness to the
way that prisoners were handcuffed and hooded by this "liberating
army". There is a photograph doing the rounds of one of
a hooded man cuddling his terrified infant behind coils of barbed
wire. One can only wonder what that boy will think of his "liberators"
when he grows up.
In Najaf, American soldiers headed towards
the golden-domed Imam Ali Mosque, one of the most sacred Shiite
sites, and were kept back by sheer people power. Hundreds of
unarmed men steadfastly marched towards those armoured servants
of the U.S. military machine shaking their fists in a rare display
of courage.
The confused soldiers were ordered to
step back... and smile. We were not told by our media of the
bravery of those men defending an icon of their religion, only
of the diplomacy of the American troops in retreating.
In Nassiriyah, an enraged middle-aged
resident shouted 'they are molesting our women' with reference
to body searches being undertaken at checkpoints, and called
Bush, Hussein and all Arab leaders "Liars". He then
sobbed tears of frustration and humiliation. This emotive scene,
which has caused outrage in the Moslem world, was courtesy of
Al Jazeera, Pentagon bad boy number one.
CNN, Fox News, NBC, the BBC and Sky News
are trying to sell us an antiseptic war, one in which there are
no torn and bleeding victims. In their war the enemy is destroyed
in its thousands while the coalition suffers only those losses
inescapably witnessed by the cameras of independent journalists.
A BBC spokesman, when asked why the British
network was portraying such a sterile conflict, said that people
with children wouldn't like to see such gory images coming into
their living rooms. In other words, it's fine for those sensitive
souls to support their nation's finest, but not to see the obscene
results of their handiwork.
The Anglo-American media hasn't shrunk
from distorting the truth and putting out disinformation in its
scrambling to prove which one of its outlets can serve as the
most effective propaganda arm.
If the media comes across some bottles
of liquid, these are painted as possible chemical weapons. Boxes
of white powder are turned into anthrax. A meat hook hangs from
a ceiling and that room must have been a torture chamber. The
finding of some 200 decomposed bodies in southern Iraq is touted
as a sinister find.
Late on Saturday night, a Sky News anchor
interviewed one of the inevitable "experts" about the
discovery of the makeshift morgue. "How can we know who
these people are?" she asked. The pathologist said that
samples of DNA would have to be taken and dental records sought.
Did he imagine that these unfortunates
were discovered near Harley Street instead of in the middle of
a desert? Dental records indeed! We saw a British soldier flicking
through a file on which was written "Iran" in Arabic
and inside were photographs and names of the victims. Despite
this evidence, Sky's southern Iraq-based reporter hinted darkly
that this discovery could only mean one thing.
What it did, in fact, mean was that Iran
and Iraq had been in the process of exchanging corpses of soldiers
who lost their lives during the Iran-Iraq war--now confirmed
by state-run Tehran Radio. Murdoch's Sky News once again proved
that the unrelenting vilification of the Iraqi regime is part
of its agenda with the facts not being allowed to get in the
way of a good story.
Have you noticed that even when the truth
does come to light, the media rarely issues a retraction, leaving
its audience forever in the dark, its views tainted by false
facts and incriminating innuendo?
Meanwhile, Britain's Sun newspaper--a
Murdoch-owned tabloid rag--puts the photograph of a dissenting
British Member of Parliament on its front cover with the word
'Traitor' emblazoned on the page. It even went as far as publishing
his email and telephone number inciting its ignorant readership
to tell the MP their thoughts. The result was a barrage of insults
and death threats forcing the paper's victim to surround himself
with bodyguards.
Al Jazeera has been accused of following
an agenda too and this is why it has been evicted from the New
York stock exchange, the victim of professional hackers, and
has had to look for a new server for its website.
While it is true that Al Jazeera is certainly
playing to the bias of its Arab audience, it does show graphic
videos, worth more than a million words. It didn't concoct those
images of ashen-faced, lifeless babies, victims of carpet bombs
in Al Hilla or those heartrending scenes of the victims of man's
inhumanity to man, filling the beds and covering the floors of
Iraqi hospitals.
Iraqi television has an agenda too. It's
called showing your side of the story against all odds. It made
the mistake of screening a downed Apache helicopter and was bombed.
It later ran images of captured American service personnel and
dead British pilots and the Ministry of Information was promptly
targeted.
Broadcasting out of the Palestine Hotel--temporary
home of foreign journalists--Iraqi television still won't do
as it's told. After it showed footage of a burning American vehicle,
the coalition promptly unleashed a warning bomb just 100 yards
from the hotel. According to a coalition spokesman pressure is
being put on those companies, which sell satellite time to Iraqi
TV to desist.
As I write, the stubborn Baghdadi people
have yet to welcome the liberating armies, with the exception
of around 20 waving to U.S. tanks in front of a backdrop of scorched
and half-demolished homes and shops on the outskirts of their
city. Great photo-op!
Another gem of Pentagon propaganda was
the so-called 'rescue' of one of its female soldiers, the now
famous Jessica. They made it look like a re-run of Entebbe. The
helicopter landed, the troops rushed out and after creating a
diversion rushed into Jessica's hospital room before carrying
her off to safety.
During their press briefings they made
no mention of the Iraqi doctor who had told them where she was.
They did not say that the hospital had not been guarded and that
Jessica had been well treated and they did not dampen the rumours
that she had been shot several times. It took her father to do
that. It would probably have suited the US administration better
had she been tortured and raped.
And how the British press lapped up those
photographs of U.S. servicemen lounging around one of Saddam's
many palaces taken by embedded reporters who ensured we knew
that the Iraqi leader had gold taps on his bidet while his people
starved. Couldn't we say the same about Buckingham Palace while
children sleep in the doorways of nearby Regent Street, or the
White House while bag ladies doss out in cardboard boxes?
In Basra, the people have already been
liberated and are celebrating their freedom by looting and stealing
while British commanders look on saying that there is nothing
they can do about such lawlessness. (I do hope Athens will be
freed soon. There's a gold bracelet in the window of a jewellery
store at the end of my street, which would look great on my wrist).
Iraq's new interim rulers--led by Viceroy-Designate
pro-Likud former U.S. General Jay Garner with links to SY Coleman,
a company specialising in weapons guidance systems--are patiently
awaiting their glorious destiny in a luxury Kuwaiti beach resort.
Fat-cat Iraqi exiles hope for some crumbs.
Like Hamid Karzai before him, the normally well turned out Ahmed
Chalabi head of the Iraqi National Congress has donned a uniform
and headed off to northern Iraq to make his victorious entry
into Baghdad like Hannibal without the elephant.
American oil companies wait for this
war to receive a stamp of legality from the United Nations before
they can draw up lucrative contracts. U.S. companies look forward
to being recipients of bounty from Iraq's reconstruction and
the Israelis hope for a long-awaited oil pipeline from northern
Iraq to Haifa.
Evangelical Messianic Christians circle
like soul-scalping vulture in Jordan until they can make their
vainglorious entry into Baghdad bearing bread and Bibles.
And the Iraqis? What do they get? Why!
Liberation, of course. The Saddam regime is coming to an end.
The pro-Israel American neo-cons are about to take its place,
while the Arab world shakes its collective head with dismay,
and the media buries its dead.
Linda S. Heard
is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. The writer can
be contacted at questioningmedia@yahoo.co.uk
Yesterday's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
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