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Departments War in Iraq Inconvenient journalists by Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services December 1, 2005 "Our goal . . . is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way." Dig up an old lie from one of George Bush's forgotten speeches and the stench is asphyxiating, as though it's coming from the rotting corpse of democracy itself. The words quoted above are from the president's inaugural address in January - the odor intensified by recent news that the president allegedly wanted to bomb the headquarters of al-Jazeera, the Arab-language TV station with 50 million viewers, during our first bloody assault on Fallujah a year and a half ago. If you aren't familiar with this outrageous little glimpse inside the war effort (and if you expose yourself only to mainstream American media, you probably aren't), here's a quick summation of the controversy, which is currently wreaking havoc on freedom of the press in Great Britain: In April 2004, the president told Prime Minister Tony Blair he was concerned about the reporting that al-Jazeera, known for its graphic, uncensored footage of the Iraq war, was doing from the city then being leveled. The station was "providing images of what the reality of war is," Nation correspondent Jeremy Scahill told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. "They were showing the piles of bodies in the streets. They were showing the blown-off limbs. They were showing that there was a domestic, not foreign, insurgency that was resisting the U.S. forces as they attempted to take the city." Furthermore, as we have recently learned, our troops were using white phosphorus, a chemical weapon that melts the skin (and possibly the napalm-like Mark-77, as well) on human targets - a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. So honest reporting was intolerable to the president whose professed highest aspiration was "to help others find their own voice," and he told Blair he wanted to bomb the station's headquarters in Qatar. Uhh, George . . . Blair, ever the straight man in this duo, reminded Bush that Qatar is a U.S. ally and was able to dissuade the president from that particular act of blatantly illegal, stupid, vengeful bellicosity. The account of the meeting is contained in a five-page memo, the contents of which were ultimately leaked to the British publication the Mirror. Last week the paper ran a story headlined "Bush Plot To Bomb His Ally." The day the article ran, the Mirror was contacted by Britain's attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, who invoked Britain's Official Secrets Act, threatening a High Court injunction unless the newspaper agreed not to publish further details. In addition, the two government officials responsible for the leak face criminal charges for violating the Act and appeared in court on Nov. 29. Phew! I can smell the burning newsprint from here. Great Britain, which has no equivalent of the First Amendment, is displaying to the world why it needs one, though the government's suppression of the memo is doing far more to publicize it than mere publication was likely to do. Global interest in Bush's comment has metastasized. Scahill said: "Nothing puts the lie to the Bush administration's absurd claim that it invaded Iraq to bring democracy to the Middle East more than its war against al-Jazeera. Perhaps no institution in that region has done more to promote free thinking, a free flow of ideas and dialogue, than al-Jazeera." The White House has called the controversy "outlandish," but guess what? While we may have spared al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, Qatar, we've bombed the station's bureau offices in Kabul, Basra and Baghdad. Oh, accidentally, of course. But in the Baghdad strike, on April 8, 2003, correspondent Tariq Ayoub lost his life. Later the same day, a U.S. tank shelled the Hotel Palestine, killing two more journalists. And the latest controversy comes amid news that the U.S. military has launched an "information offensive" inside Iraq. Turns out we have been paying Iraqi editors to publish propaganda written by U.S. troops extolling the occupation. The fact of the matter is, the cynically conceived "war on terror" is turning us into a rogue nation. We maintain a torture gulag, we bomb and gas civilians, we manage the information flow with a heavy hand and kill inconvenient journalists - just the sort of thing we accuse Saddam Hussein of doing. Even conservatives are getting it. "We now have allegations of such severity, against the U.S. president and his motives, that we need to clear them up," Boris Johnson, a prominent conservative British MP who supported the war, wrote in his publication, the Spectator. And he vowed he would publish the suppressed memo and risk a jail sentence if someone passed it to him. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant," he wrote. "If we suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for." --- Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com. © 2005 Tribune Media Services, Inc. Email this article to a friend |
Don't forget to check out articles from 2007 and 2008
"White phosphorous: the U.S. used it; the U.S. says it's illegal"
December 28, 2005
David Swanson
"Behind the steel curtain: the real face of the occupation"
December 20, 2005
Sabah Ali
"Waiting is the hardest part"
December 20, 2005
Greg Rollins, CPT
"Scotland: stop the war!"
December 10, 2005
David Swanson
"Not even to save our lives"
December 9, 2005
Mike Ferner
"Inconvenient journalists"
December 1, 2005
Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services
"How pre-war Iraq intel was cooked"
November 24, 2005
Jason Leopold
"Chalabi pushes Iran card in last ditch self-promotion offensive"
November 16, 2005
The Insitute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution
"Staying a wrong course"
October 17, 2005
Stephen Crockett
"US war photos"
October 16, 2005
Richard S. Ehrlich
"Banging at the gates of empire -- Washington, DC; September 24-26"
October 6, 2005
Peter Chabarek
"What Else Shall We Do?"
October 2, 2005
Mike Ferner
"Will we use the power we have on September 24?"
September 21, 2005
Mike Ferner
"The war in Iraq is increasingly unpopular and must end -- An interview with Dennis Kucinich"
September 8, 2005
Kevin Zeese, DemocracyRising.US
"What eating Cindy Sheehan?"
September 8, 2005
Jason Leopold
"Waiting for the outside world"
September 4, 2005
Mike Ferner
"Families ask that fallen soldiers be honored Sunday by a tolling of bells"
August 27, 2005
Faithful America, National Council of Churches
"Making the Iraq War and Occupation Personal"
August 25, 2005
Ralph Nader
"President Bush Knows the True Reasons He Started A War in Iraq, But He's Not Going to Tell"
August 25, 2005
Jason Leopold
"Armstrong bikes with president over Sheehan grave"
August 25, 2005
Greg Palast
"Sheehan breakthroughs, unbridgeable divides, and taboos unbroken"
August 22, 2005
David Swanson
"The people must demand peace: An interview with Tom Hayden"
August 22, 2005
Kevin Zeese
"Will celebrity-addicted America miss the point? "
August 18, 2005
Mike Ferner
"Jefferson would have stood with Cindy Sheehan "
August 16, 2005
Thom Hartmann
"Why is violence escalating in Iraq?"
August 1, 2005
Eric Straatsma, Peace Think Tank
"How the United States Marked the 3rd Anniversary of the Downing Street Memo"
July 23, 2005
David Swanson, www.afterdowningstreet.org
"Someone Tell Bush That Iraq Wasn’t Responsible for 9/11 Before another War Breaks Out"
June 21, 2005
Jason Leopold
"More damning than Downing Street"
June 21, 2005
Paul Rogat Loeb
"Messengers of Truth: Untangling a Knot of Lies"
June 18, 2005
Kevin Zeese
"How Much Proof Needed Before the Truth Comes Out? "
June 17, 2005
Kevin Zeese
"Silent Death in Iraq "
June 13, 2005
Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar
"Media Black Out Downing Street Minutes"
June 8, 2005
David Swanson, www.afterdowningstreet.org
"Getting Out of Iraq Will Be Tougher than Getting Out of Vietnam"
May 3, 2005
Kevin Zeese and Linda Schade
"No Troops, No Wars"
March 24, 2005
Yoshie Furuhashi
"Iraq’s Election Will Not Guarantee Democracy"
February 5, 2005
Gene C. Gerard
"The U.S. Supreme Court is AWOL on Iraq"
January 29, 2005
Gene C. Gerard
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