U.S. Military Attacks Foreign Journalists

[Guest evenflowDDT]

MEDIA ADVISORY:

Is Killing Part of Pentagon Press Policy?

 

April 10, 2003

 

The Pentagon has held up its practice of "embedding" journalists with military units as proof of a new media-friendly policy. On April 8, however, U.S. military forces launched what appeared to be deliberate attacks on independent journalists covering the war, killing three and injuring four others.

 

In one incident, a U.S. tank fired an explosive shell at the Palestine Hotel, where most non-embedded international reporters in Baghdad are based. Two journalists, Taras Protsyuk of the British news agency Reuters and Jose Couso of the Spanish network Telecino, were killed; three other journalists were injured. The tank, which was parked nearby, appeared to carefully select its target, according to journalists in the hotel, raising and aiming its gun turret some two minutes before firing a single shell.

 

Journalists who witnessed the attack unequivocally rejected Pentagon claims that the tank had been fired on from the hotel. "I never heard a single shot coming from any of the area around here, certainly not from the hotel," David Chater of British Sky TV told Reuters (4/8/03). Footage shot by French TV recorded quiet in the area immediately before the attack (London Independent, 4/9/03).

 

Earlier in the day, the U.S. launched separate but near-simultaneous attacks on the Baghdad offices of Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, two Arabic-language news networks that have been broadcasting graphic footage of the human cost of the war. Both outlets had informed the Pentagon of their exact locations, according to a statement from the Committee to Protect Journalists. As with the hotel attack, Pentagon officials claimed that U.S. forces had come under fire from the press offices, charges that were rejected by the targeted reporters.

 

The airstrike against Al Jazeera killed one of the channel's main correspondents in Iraq, Tareq Ayoub, and injured another journalist, prompting Al Jazeera to try to pull its remaining reporters out of Baghdad for fear of their safety (BBC, 4/9/03). Personnel at Abu Dhabi TV escaped injury from an attack with small-arms fire.

 

Al Jazeera, which the Bush administration has criticized for airing footage of American POWs, has been attacked several times by U.S. and British forces during the war in Iraq. Its offices in Basra were shelled on April 2, and its camera crew in that city fired on by British tanks on March 29. A car clearly marked as belonging to Al Jazeera was shot at by U.S. soldiers on April 7 (Reporters Without Borders, 4/8/03).

 

International journalists and press freedom groups condemned the U.S. attacks on the press corps in Baghdad. "We can only conclude that the U.S. Army deliberately and without warning targeted journalists," Reporters Without Borders declared (4/8/03). "We believe these attacks violate the Geneva Conventions," wrote the Committee to Protect Journalists in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (4/8/03), referring to the protection journalists receive under the laws of war. The attacks on journalists "look very much like murder," Robert Fisk of the London Independent reported (4/9/03).

 

But the Pentagon, while expressing regret over the loss of life, rejected the idea that its forces did anything wrong, and appeared to place blame on the press corps for being in Baghdad in the first place: "We've had conversations over the last couple of days, news organizations eager to get their people unilaterally into Baghdad," said Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke (Associated Press, 4/9/03). "We are saying it is not a safe place; you should not be there."

 

Kate Adie, a British war correspondent during the 1991 Gulf War, told Irish radio prior to the war (RTE Radio1, 3/9/03; GuluFuture.com, 3/10/03) that she had received an even more direct threat from the U.S. military: "I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks-- that is, the television signals out of... Baghdad, for example-- were detected by any planes...of the military above Baghdad... they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists.... He said: ' Well...they know this.... They've been warned.' This is threatening freedom of information, before you even get to a war."

 

Clarke's claim that "we go out of our way to help and protect journalists" is belied by the U.S.'s pattern of deliberately targeting "enemy" broadcast operations. In the Kosovo War, the U.S. attacked the offices of state-owned Radio-Television Serbia, in what Amnesty International called a "direct attack on a civilian object" which "therefore constitutes a war crime." On March 25, the U.S. began airstrikes on government-run Iraqi TV, in what the International Federation of Journalists (Reuters, 3/26/03) suggested might also be a Geneva Convention violation, since it the U.S. was "targeting a television network simply because they don't like the message it gives out."

 

Al Jazeera has also been targeted prior to the Iraq War. During the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Al Jazeera's Kabul offices were destroyed by a U.S. missile. In a report by the BBC's Nik Gowing (4/8/02), Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, the U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary for public affairs, claimed that the compound was being used by Al Qaeda-- a charge the news outlet strongly denied-- and that this made it a "legitimate target." The U.S.'s evidence? Al Jazeera's use of a satellite uplink and its regular contacts with Taliban officials-- perfectly normal activities for a news outlet.

 

Quigley also made the improbable claim that the U.S. had not known the compound was Al Jazeera's office, and asserted that in any case, such information was "not relevant" to the decision to destroy it. "The U.S. military," concluded Gowing, "makes no effort to distinguish between legitimate satellite uplinks for broadcast news communications and the identifiable radio or satellite communications belonging to 'the enemy.'"

 

Whether the U.S. is deliberately targeting independent media, or is simply not taking care to avoid attacking obvious media targets, the failure to respect the protection afforded journalists under the Geneva Conventions is deeply troubling. Unfettered reporting from the battlefield is essential to bear witness to the realities of war.

 

Source: FAIR

 

The attacks on Al Jazeera are kinda sketchy, because I don't know that much about them (are they the ones that "premiere" all these terrorist tapes? I can't remember), but the Reuters and Telecino attacks are totally uncalled for. If this is true, so much for freedom of the press...

[Guest NoCalMike]

I will tell you what, if there is any speck of truth to this, we are living in SCARY times.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

I'm glad we have NCM around to tell us, in capital letters, exactly what the implications of every unsubstantiated, hysterical, and utterly improbable charge are. It makes evenflowDDT's incoherent, whiny, meandering vagaries so much more helpful.

[Guest Spicy McHaggis]

I'd say it's pretty obvious the Iraqis used these "innocent" sites to attempt to gain an advantage. While these journalists may claim they didn't hear any shots being fired, I doubt it. If I was an evil dictator running a war, the first thing I would do is set up shop in press buildings, and Hussein did this in every civilian building imaginable.

 

And why is "FAIR" using anecdotal information from non-military trained people?

 

The tank, which was parked nearby, appeared to carefully select its target, according to journalists in the hotel, raising and aiming its gun turret some two minutes before firing a single shell.

The real irony here is the journalists offer an account which, to me, shows our military's effort to minimize casualties. The tank was fired on, it deliberately selected its target, and fired ONE shell. If I'm in that tank, regardless of what building shots were fired from, I'd shoot all my guns and shell the shit out of that building. Because one lucky RPG shot and I'm dead. However, in this case, the men in that tank risked further injury by deliberately finding its target and then firing. All because they probably knew it was a press building and they'd have morons like FAIR all over them for trying to preserve their own lives.

 

Fair argues for unfettered reporting. That's exactly what these people were allowed. And these examples are exactly what happens when you set up camp in the middle of a warzone. They wanted detailed accounts of real war, they got 'em. People die, innocent people die. Despite what Al-Jazeera and Fair think, war is not a sporting event. If you set up camp in the middle of it, the combatants aren't just gonna avoid you at all costs. The U.S. had a war to run, they allowed the press unprecedented access. With that comes costs.

[Guest DrTom]

The tank, which was parked nearby, appeared to carefully select its target, according to journalists in the hotel, raising and aiming its gun turret some two minutes before firing a single shell.

Could someone tell me why, since they obviously saw this happen, the reporters never fucking left the hotel? Hello? If you see a tank getting ready to fire on a building you're in, and you don't want to die, you LEAVE. There was obviously some reason for the tank to fire on that building, and the reporters had two minutes to get out.

[Guest NoCalMike]

I'm glad we have NCM around to tell us, in capital letters, exactly what the implications of every unsubstantiated, hysterical, and utterly improbable charge are. It makes evenflowDDT's incoherent, whiny, meandering vagaries so much more helpful.

Glad, Marney is back to collect even more cheap heat~!

[Guest evenflowDDT]

I'm glad we have NCM around to tell us, in capital letters, exactly what the implications of every unsubstantiated, hysterical, and utterly improbable charge are. It makes evenflowDDT's incoherent, whiny, meandering vagaries so much more helpful.

I love you Marney.

 

What's NCM?

[Guest NoCalMike]

I'm glad we have NCM around to tell us, in capital letters, exactly what the implications of every unsubstantiated, hysterical, and utterly improbable charge are. It makes evenflowDDT's incoherent, whiny, meandering vagaries so much more helpful.

I love you Marney.

 

What's NCM?

NCM = NoCalMike abbreviated.

[Guest evenflowDDT]

I'm glad we have NCM around to tell us, in capital letters, exactly what the implications of every unsubstantiated, hysterical, and utterly improbable charge are. It makes evenflowDDT's incoherent, whiny, meandering vagaries so much more helpful.

I love you Marney.

 

What's NCM?

NCM = NoCalMike abbreviated.

Ahh, OK. I thought it was like National Conservative Media or something else like that that I'm sheltered from in my woodside apartment.

[Guest Vyce]

Goddamn there's a lot of chicken littles on this board.

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

Perhaps they realize it's pointless to argue with people who deny everything anyway.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Deny what, exactly? Anecdotal accounts of farfetched scenarios and inane declarations that "if there is any speck of truth to this, we are living in SCARY times?" Then further postulations of the original supposition as fact and derivative arguments based on its unquestioned reality?

 

Why would anyone bother to deny such insubstantial bullshit? What's the point?

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

I think it'd be unwise to simply dismiss such things as hogwash without proper investigation, but whatever you say.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Fine. Go do the investigation, come back with verified eyewitness accounts, and submit them for review, along with reasons why we should find the eyewitnesses credible.

 

Essentially this entire thread seems to rest on one anecdote which a bunch of whiny liberals believe vindicates their previously held position that the United States military is evil. They don't question it, they gleefully accept it, and then shriek loudly for an accounting. Reminds me of the Jenin "massacre." The only thing that was massacred there was the truth, and I think that's the case here as well.

[Guest MrRant]

I would agree with Tom. I see tank point gun at me. I run. Fast.

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

Obviously, a piddly little college student couldn't go to investigate a military crime, and therefore, it carries as much weight as the time that I suggested you enlist in the military.

[Guest Powerplay]

Just to ask, what military crime, Tyler? I mean really, what in God's name does the military have to hide that requires killing reporters in plain sight of other witnesses and in a few cases, even cameras? Seriously, the idea that they were somehow covering something up by doing this type of stuff is bull. A cover up is where you want as little attention as possible, not as much. The reporters were in warzones. They aren't bulletproof. Accidents happen.

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

And when you kill innocents in most lines of work (e.g. police, etc.), there is often an investigation to determine whether or not the killing was an accident. I'd assume the same is the case in the military.

[Guest Spicy McHaggis]

What do YOU think happened Tyler?

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

Based on the lack of information provided by that article, I haven't the slightest clue and I'd be interested in what a neutral investigatory committee could find.

[Guest SP-1]

Yes, but you can't say, "WHOA! HOLD ON, FREEZE THE WAR! Some shit happened and we've got to investigate~!"

 

No. You can't. It's a war. Life doesn't go on after one death with the time to bring in the CSI crew and piece together what happened. You get fired on, you aim, you shell the shit out of them, you move on. Reporters want in, they're in. This is war.

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

The war is over.

[Guest SP-1]

Is there still violence going on over there?

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

My apologies, I just read about a clash with Iraqis on CNN.

 

However, these are isolated incidents and since we can go on a mad search for WMDs, I'm sure they can investigate some accidental deaths as well.

[Guest SP-1]

Deaths which are the norm in a place like this. I can understand why the search would take more importance. Plus, has this come out of any other news agencies?

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

Eh, whatever. People die, who cares?

[Guest SP-1]

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the reporters wanted the ultimate Reality show? They got it. They need to be prepared to get shot at and not be ready to attack the military at their earliest opportunity. Soldiers go over their, a buddy gets shot down beside them, they've got to move on. You go into a warzone, this is expected, and I don't think the reporters should have thought it would be any different.

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

It is somewhat reasonable to expect that you won't be shelled when you alert the belligerants as to your position, however.

 

Again, it doesn't matter I guess. People die, these ones just happened to die a bit younger than most.

[Guest Powerplay]

It is somewhat reasonable to expect that you won't be shelled when you alert the belligerants as to your position, however.

Of course, if people start firing on you from that position, what do you do?

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

Which is why I said we should withhold judgement until an investigation is carried out, but apparently an investigation is too much to ask for.