- 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
-
- www.dahrjamailiraq.com
|
