News About Iraq Goes Through The Filter
By Dahr Jamail - Seattle Post-Intelligencer - 19 February 2005
BAGHDAD - How is it that more than 40 percent of Americans still
believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction even though President
Bush personally has admitted there are none?
How is it possible that millions of Americans believe the recent
election in Iraq showed that Iraqis are in favor of the ongoing
occupation of their country?
In reality, the determination displayed by the roughly 59 percent
of registered voters who participated in the election did so because
they felt it would bring about an end to the U.S. occupation.
How do so many Americans wonder why more Iraqis each day are supporting
both violent and non-violent movements of resistance to the occupation
when after the U.S. government promised to help rebuild Iraq, a
mere 2 percent of reconstruction contracts were awarded to Iraqi
concerns and the infrastructure lies in shambles?
It's because overall, mainstream media reportage in the United States
about the occupation in Iraq is being censured, distorted, threatened
by the military and controlled by corporations that own the outlets.
Recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Eason
Jordan, a CNN executive, told a panel that the U.S. military deliberately
targeted journalists in Iraq. He said he "knew of about 12
journalists who had not only been killed by American troops, but
had been targeted as a matter of policy," said Rep. Barney
Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts who was on the panel with Jordan.
When we hear this statement with the knowledge that 63 journalists
have been killed in Iraq, in addition to the fact that in a 14-month-period,
more journalists were killed in Iraq than during the entire Vietnam
War, one begins to get the feeling that the military clampdown on
the media is more than a myth or a conspiracy theory.
(Editor's note: Jordan has since resigned from CNN, telling fellow
CNN staffers: "I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with
ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and
I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise.")
I've personally witnessed photographers in Baghdad who have had
their cameras either confiscated or smashed by soldiers, who were,
of course, acting on orders from their superiors.
And no, the journalists weren't trying to photograph something that
would jeopardize the security of the soldiers.
Even Christiane Amanpour, CNN's top war correspondent, announced
on
national television that her own network was censuring her journalism.
Most Americans don't know that on any given day, an average of three
U.S. soldiers die in Iraq as a result of 75 attacks every single
day on U.S. forces or that Iraqi civilian deaths average 10 times
that amount.
Most Americans also don't know there are four permanent U.S. military
bases in Iraq, with the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and
Root diligently constructing 10 others.
Most Americans don't know overall troop morale in Iraq resembles
that of the Vietnam War, with tours being extended and stop-loss
orders imposed.
Nor do most folks know where billions of their tax dollars have
been spent that were supposed to be used in the reconstruction of
Iraq.
But who can blame Americans when the military and mainstream media
continue, day in and day out, to distort, deny and destroy the truth
before it reaches the audience back home?
An international peoples' initiative called the World Tribunal on
Iraq met in Rome to focus on media complicity in the crimes committed
against the people of Iraq as well as U.S. citizens who are paying
with their blood and tax dollars to maintain the occupation.
The tribunal found Western mainstream media outlets guilty of incitement
to violence and the deliberate misleading of people into the war
and ongoing occupation of Iraq.
Makes you wonder what else Americans aren't being told about Iraq.
After spending eight of the past 14 months reporting from Iraq,
I can tell you the points made here are just the tip of the iceberg.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/212320_jamail17.html |
