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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck who wrote (22944)	4/27/2003 10:13:07 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27666

Darren, truth hurts. Read the foreign press to get to the truth. Don't call me names when I am the one who forms my opinions after listening to all sides of the story. After all isn't doing so a basic tenet of democracy? Here goes another one from a foreign press (the informatiion revolution). I suggest you hit the URL at the end of this post and read it directly at the newspaper's web site. WAR WITHIN A WAR In an age of hi-tech information, there is no dearth of information but it has never been more evident than during the invasion of Iraq that in war the first casualty is truth By SAJEDA MOMIN The military outcome of the Iraq war was decided the day the Americans emptied their arsenals on Baghdad. When a superpower decides to throw its full might against a tiny state, denuded of its military strength by an earlier war, ten years of sanctions and the demands of UN weapons inspectors, the outcome is predetermined. The unequal but heroic defence put up by Iraqis excites admiration. US soldiers can return home boasting of military prowess but the real heroes are the Iraqis who surprised the coalition forces with their grit and determination. The British, being more intelligent and subtle than the Americans, pointed out from the moment they realised that Iraqis were not waiting with flowers and rice to welcome them as liberators, that the real war would be psychological — to win “hearts and minds’’. While the British may have meant the hearts and minds of Iraqis, invading forces also had to win the hearts and minds of their domestic public. For the first time since the Vietnam War, the world saw massive anti-war protests in almost all capitals which dubbed the forced “regime change’’ as illegal and immoral. Though there may be little love lost for Saddam Hussein, there is a growing hatred for America among all sovereign states because of its complete disregard for international law, the sanctity of the UN and its brazen use of military might to get what it wants – in this case, Iraqi oil. The prime weapons for the “war within a war’’ were television and newspapers. In the new age of satellite TV, managing the images going into people’s home was more important than finding Saddam or the even more illusive weapons of mass destruction. There is a saying that “in war the first casualty is truth” and this has never been more evident than during the Iraq war. In the age of hi-tech communications, there was no dearth of information. But the real job was to get at the truth. The gullible were swayed, but if you watched and read with a critical mind then you got to the truth, though not always the whole truth. The major players in the media war were also the USA represented by CNN and Fox News, the British which had the BBC covering every nook and cranny of the war theatre, and the fledgling Al Jazeera which saw the war from the Arab and Third World perspective. Al Jazeera came into world prominence during the last televised bombing by the US — Afghanistan, when the Arab channel aired messages by Osama bin Laden. While Al Jazeera is a welcome addition to media particularly as it breaks the monopoly of the west, its handicap is that its service is in Arabic. An English channel from that house would have really given the big two a run for their money. There were of course others in the fray, including Indian, but they paled in front of the money power and access of these three. In fact Indian journalists did not even make it into Iraq till after Saddam’s statue was pulled down with the aid of an American tank. Blow-by-blow accounts of the war were provided by the phenomenal use of what is known as “embeds” — reporters or camera crew who move around with a particular unit of the coalition forces. Operation reasons make this an utterly unsatisfactory method from the point of view of the credibility of the media ready to be imbedded. The bias begins to show at once. Ninety per cent of the over 560 ‘embeds’ were journalists from either American or British institutions. Preference was given to television over newspapers with over 60 per cent ‘embeds’ being TV journalists. The coalition wanted to ensure that ‘correct’ images were portrayed around the world. Other ‘friendly’ countries were given a token presence, but countries like France and Germany who openly opposed the war were ignored. It was reported that the Command’s policy was that journalists would have “as much access as they have contributed troops on the ground”. Reporting in war is very different even in terms of pure logistics. There is an attempt to control by all sides. The Iraqis deputed ‘minders’ with every journalist team in Baghdad monitoring where they went, what they saw and what they wrote. The coalition controlled journalists in a more sophisticated manner. “Embeds” lived and worked with the coalition forces. When one is dependent on a particular unit for survival self-censorship and sympathy is inevitable. And at an official level complete control of journalists copy is enforced by military bosses for operational reasons. As Kate Adie, a veteran war correspondent with the BBC pointed out in an interview “embedded’ means the military has the right to vet your copy and prevent you from transmitting it if they so desire”. Objectivity and the search for truth go out of the window. News is from a particular perspective and with the US and Britain dominating the worlds media, the war was generally seen from the coalition’s perspective. If one watched CNN or Fox News this was a war without civilian casualties. US soldiers were indulging in “heroic” acts to “liberate” the Iraqis, and were received by civilians chanting “thank you”. The BBC was more restrained in its jingoism, but it did not linger over wounded and dead Iraqi civilians. And when it did use footage too dramatic to ignore it relied on pictures from Al Jazeera. Even then the British government was not “happy” with its coverage and claimed that it was giving a distorted impression of ‘allied bombing’. Rageh Omaar, the BBC’s outstanding man in Baghdad was dubbed an ‘Iraqi stooge’ by British tabloids for highlighting the human devastation caused by the war, even if ever so briefly. The coalition has never allowed a single realistic assessment of civilian casualties. The images of the fall of the Saddam statute in Baghdad were compared to the fall of the Berlin wall by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when similarities existed only in his imagination. Berlin saw people turning out on the streets in their thousands, whereas the show in Baghdad’s Firdaus Square was tailor-made by the US military especially for the media. Anyone who has seen a TV taping knows that tight camera angles exaggerate crowd sizes. Even a cursory look at the statue-toppling revealed that no more than 200-300 Iraqis gathered to watch American Marines operate tanks for purposes not intended. Al Jazeera’s Iraq war was very different. It did not hide images of the dead and injured, both civilians and soldiers. Its reporters inside Basra quickly told the world there was no uprising of the Shias as reported by US and British media. It also rebutted the news that the Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had issued a “fatwa” urging the Shias to support US forces. The coalition was desperate to show that the Shias oppressed by Saddam were supporting them, but that support has never existed. Even now thousands of Shias in “free Iraq” are coming out on the streets and demanding that the “US go home”. That the coalition lost the media war was obvious from the manner in which a precision Cruise missile destroyed the offices of the Al Jazeera network in Baghdad killing a correspondent and wounding others. The network must have been doing something right as it was attacked by both sides. Iraqis too banned their functioning in the capital for some time. Foreign journalists staying at the Palestine Hotel also came under attack when a US tank paused and deliberately targeted the hotel. It was common knowledge that this was mainly inhabited by the world’s press. The Pentagon claimed it was responding to enemy fire, but eyewitnesses say they saw no such fire, only a camera pointed at the tank. Thirteen journalists were killed in this war and many were seriously injured and all of it was not accidental. The president of the International Federation of Journalists, Christopher Warren justifiably wonders whether journalists are being targeted. He has demanded an independent war crimes investigation to determine the truth. The coalition may have beaten Iraq and Saddam but they have lost the war to win “hearts and minds”. thestatesman.net