Editorial: Lies, Lies and More Lies
24 March 2003
Yesterday the US-led army invading Iraq - without UN approval, without international backing - woke up to the reality of ground combat.
They learned first-hand that the Iraqi people do not want to be "liberated" by them, and that the Iraqi Army is likely to fight to the very last.
Resistance continues in Umm Qasr, a small port city just inside Iraq which the US claimed to have taken days ago; and independent reports say that in Nassiriyah up to 20 American armored personnel carriers and tanks were taken out by the Iraqis.
What is not in doubt is that dozens of American soldiers may have been killed yesterday. More than a dozen were taken prisoner. The bodies of the dead were shown on Iraqi television. So were the frightened faces of Iraq's first prisoners of war.
Those who have been getting their news exclusively from US networks probably have not seen these images. Priority was given to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose denials slowly turned as the day progressed into grudging admissions.
Rumsfeld finally commanded the airwaves alone, after having bullied several major American networks - CNN, Fox and MSNBC - into not showing the images of the US prisoners of war and the dead.
He did this by referring to the Geneva Convention. Footage of the captured soldiers constituted "propaganda", Rumsfeld asserted.
At the same time, he managed to cast doubt on the fact that the captured were indeed American.
Rumsfeld's newfound affection for the Geneva Convention is remarkable, given that there were images broadcast continuously the day before on US news networks of long lines of Iraqi prisoners surrendering, in US President George W. Bush's words, "gleefully, enthusiastically".
The US does not believe that the prisoners now being held at Guantanamo Bay are prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. Pictures of the men there, shackled and living in cages, were distributed by the Bush administration to the world's media.
The US Army yesterday said that it considers the images of the US prisoners of war shown on Iraqi TV "disgusting." For those who have seen them, they invoke a complex mixture of emotions, including pity and surprise; but disgust is not among them.
Real war is an ugly business, and the US is now engaged in a real, complex war. All the signs are that the Iraqis do not want the Americans on their land, and are not going to give them as a present their vast oil reserves.
The war, it would appear, is going to be protracted, and things are going to get messier. The messier things get, the greater will be the need for clear, objective coverage from those who are covering it.
The US troops are fighting in the name of the US government. The US media, however, are not a paid-up, fully trained extra battalion of the US Army whose job it is to help the troops to victory. Rather, their job is to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth.
So far, they have told little but lies.
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