The Daily Grasshopper

It's noon on Wednesday, April 9, 2003 and my hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe, has just issued a "Special Edition" with the giant headline "Regime collapses," and a front page photo of "jubilation in Saddam City, a poor neighborhood in northwest Baghdad." Special editions - where they re-issue the day's paper in response to an important development - are relatively rare in the newspaper world, although this is the second for the Globe in the past six months (they ran a special edition when Cardinal Bernard Law resigned due to the sexual abuse scandal).

Now, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but you shouldn't get overly excited about this development. Obviously, Iraqis who had been living in mortal fear of the Hussein regime have a right to be dancing in the streets of Baghdad today, even if they're doing it with frequent glances over their shoulders to see who might be watching. Night will fall on Baghdad as surely as the American troops did, however, and jubilation can easily turn to terror. In terms of premature calls, "Regime collapses" isn't exactly "Dewey Defeats Truman," but I don't think it warranted a "Special Edition," either.

There are rivers of blood that have yet to run in this tragedy, and by no means should we forget the words of Syria's Information Minister, who said recently "The day they defeat the Iraqi regime and take control is the day the disaster begins. In Baghdad, they will find themselves facing daggers drawn from every corner." The joy of liberation will likely turn to ashes in the mouths of the Iraqi people, as the "liberators" install a puppet government and impose a large occupation force to prop it up. Already reports of U.S.-backed paramilitarism are trickling in. Many of the wild cards are still in the deck, including the Kurds, the remnants of the Republican Guard, the fedayeen, and the thousands who came to Iraq to martyr themselves in what they see as a war against Islam. I'm sure there will be corks popping in Washington, D.C., tonight in celebration of today's events, and probably elsewhere. The boardroom of ExxonMobil comes to mind. I suspect, though, that the joy will be shortlived for those in Iraq, however, including the U.S./U.K. ground forces and Iraqi civilians, who will bear the brunt of what is to come.

U.S. officials are well aware of what is to come, which is why they very likely ordered a series of "pre-emptive strikes" on the non-"embedded" media in Iraq yesterday. The Pentagon wants absolute control of the images coming out of Baghdad, because they know quite well (if most Americans don't) the outrage that this invasion is creating throughout the world. Yesterday, in separate incidents, the Al-Jazeera office and the Palestine Hotel, where most foreign journalists stay in Baghdad, were attacked by U.S. forces.

The "Special Edition" of the Globe reports these developments on its front page in an article entitled "3 journalists die in attacks by Americans." The New York Times reports the story on page B2 of its "A Nation at War" section: "Deaths of Journalists Bring Accusations and Concerns." The Wall Street Journal downplays the attacks considerably, lumping them into a broader story about casualties among reporters: "Media Reassess Risks to Reporters in Iraq," on page B1 of the "Marketplace" section.

In foreign media reports, the assumption seems to be that by bombing Al-Jazeera and the Palestine Hotel, the Pentagon is sending the same message it sent back in February, when spokesman Bryan Whitman told a press briefing in Washington that "the battlefield's a dangerous place, and it's going to be a dangerous place even embedded with our forces. It will be even a more dangerous place, though, for reporters that are out there not in an embedded status." (WSJ, p. B10). In other words, be careful out there, especially if you're going to be reporting something that the U.S./U.K. don't want getting out of Iraq.

The Times gave substantial coverage to accusations that the journalists were being targeted by U.S. officials seeking to intimidate them, in an article entitled "Deaths of Journalists Bring Accusations and Concerns" (NYT, 4/9/03, p. B2). Here's the lead paragraph of their article:

"The deaths of three journalists in American air or artillery attacks in Baghdad yesterday prompted accusations that the United States military was deliberately aiming at journalists and led at least two countries to call for reporters to evacuate the Iraqi capital because of the increased danger."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/09/international/worldspecial/09MEDI.html

The Globe, too, reported on the concerns of foreign journalists and organizations that represent them:

"In both cases yesterday, US forces came under 'significant enemy fire' from the buildings involved and returned fire, said a statement issued by US Central Command. However, journalists on the ground said they had heard no enemy fire and had seen no signs that Iraqi fighters were in the buildings...

Arab journalists asked whether the United States was trying to frighten journalists, especially Arabs, out of covering civilian deaths in Iraq.

[al-Jazeera reporter Taraq] Ayoub's wife, Dima Tahboub, struck a different note in a telephone interview from Jordan, saying that her family, along with Palestinians and Iraqis, had been victimized 'by American forces, by the Israeli forces, by the British forces, in a war that was claimed to be clean.'

The US explanation did not satisfy other Al-Jazeera correspondents. 'It's disgusting,' said Omar al-Issawi, who covers Central Command. 'It's insulting to our intelligence.'"

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/099/nation/3_journalists_die_in_attacks_by_Americans+.shtml

The Journal avoids the unpleasant topic almost entirely, telling us only that "Al-Jazeera plans to investigate if the bombing was intentional and awaits the conclusion of the U.S.'s own investigation of the incident."

Others aren't so charitable. As the Times and Globe reported today, The Committee to Protect Journalists (http://www.cpj.org/), "dedicated to the global defense of press freedom," immediately sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which is posted on their website. In it they wrote:

"The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned by a series of U.S. military strikes against known media locations in Baghdad today that have left three journalists dead and several wounded. We believe these attacks violate the Geneva Conventions.

This morning, Baghdad time, U.S. air strikes severely damaged the Baghdad office of the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite network, killing journalist Taraq Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera cameraman Zouhair al-Iraqi was injured in the blast, according to the station. Moments later, another explosion damaged the nearby office of Abu Dhabi TV. Some 30 journalists are trapped in the station’s offices, said Abu Dhabi TV officials.

While we recognize that both stations, which are located near the Presidential Palace and the Information Ministry, were operating in an area where combat was occurring, the missile strike on the Al-Jazeera facility raises questions about whether the building was deliberately targeted.

The strike against these facilities is particularly troubling because both Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV have been openly operating from these locations in Baghdad for weeks, providing images of the war to the rest of the world."

http://www.cpj.org/protests/03ltrs/Iraq08apr03pl.html

Of course, "providing images of the war to the rest of the world," particularly images that aren't scrubbed free of the blood and guts of Iraqi civilians who are being butchered by the hundreds, is the likely explanation for the U.S. attack. Here's Roger Fisk, from today's edition of the Independent in London:

"First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff.

Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the right word for these killings - the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1 Abrams tank - was murder?"

Reporters Without Borders (http://www.rsf.org/), based in France, wasn't even posing the question rhetorically: "Reporters Without Borders accuses US military of deliberately firing at journalists" is the headline of their article, posted on the site today. Here's what they wrote:

"Reporters Without Borders called today on US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide evidence that the offices of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera and the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad were not deliberately fired at by US forces earlier in the day in attacks that killed three journalists.

'We are appalled at what happened because it was known that both places contained journalists,' said the organisation's secretary-general Robert Ménard. 'Film shot by the French TV station France 3 and descriptions by journalists show the neighbourhood was very quiet at that hour and that the US tank crew took their time, waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting its gun before opening fire.'

'This evidence does not match the US version of an attack in self-defence and we can only conclude that the US Army deliberately and without warning targeted journalists. US forces must prove that the incident was not a deliberate attack to dissuade or prevent journalists from continuing to report on what is happening in Baghdad,' he said.

'We are concerned at the US army's increasingly hostile attitude towards journalists, especially those non-embedded in its military units. Army officials have also remained deplorably silent and refused to give any details about what happened when a British ITN TV crew was fired on near Basra on 22 March, killing one journalist and leaving two others missing.

'Very many non-embedded journalists have complained about being refused entry to Iraq from Kuwait, threatened with withdrawal of accreditation and being held and interrogated for several hours. One group of non-embedded journalists was held in secret for two days and roughed up by US military police,' Ménard said."

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=5975

Give the Times credit for citing the RSF report, as well, although they didn't report the accusation. The Globe mentions RSF, but only in connection to a statistic that shows the percentage of reporters killed in Iraq is higher than that of soldiers.

More information and reaction can be found at the Common Dreams site:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0409-02.htm

The U.S. government under the Bush administration continues to make incredible political blunders, like targeting foreign journalists, that will have repercussions for this country far down the line. There's an old saying in politics: "Never pick a fight with a guy who buys ink by the barrel." Of course, George Bush doesn't worry too much about bad press here in the U.S. - most of the corporate media know that their role is limited to cheerleading the administration on, and carefully avoiding questions that might raise doubts about the course we're embarking on. But it's worth remembering on occasion that we make up roughly 6 percent of the world's population. The other 94 percent of people are seeing a much different war, and a much different picture of our elected officials, than we are.

Pentagon spokesman Whitman had this to say yesterday in defense of the U.S. military: "Not only are we not trying to silence their journalists, we're one of the few countries that have not expelled their journalists." I'm sure that every foreign journalist in Baghdad worth his or her salt understands the reliability of the source in question, and will take the necessary precautions.

PK
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