Truth of news coverage so far - a review

There's a variety of reasons for all this lying. As long as you don't formulate opinions on what you read, see or hear you should survive the war okay.

BTW: The missile that shook a Kuwaiti shopping Centre on Friday was American (unless the Chinese or Russians are writing in English on their exported missiles now).

Actually, this one was entirely the media's invention. Every time an official source said anything, they were very careful to say that they only suspected it, and they were sending in a team to try to confirm it.

BG

These stories were over-eagerly reported by US and UK media. I've watched almost every single military briefing, and not one of the stories was ever confirmed in these sessions.

Realize that when the US military sees an Iraqi division moving, the enemy's goals and objectives can only be speculated. At a given moment, they may appear to be headed towards US/UK positions. <report comes out> There is no law that states that an enemy cannot reverse or alter course.

Your complaint should lie with an overzealous media.

It's all due to the nature of the '24 hour rolling news' we now have of the War. The tinyest report can get blown up out of all proportion.
Gardian article about 'unconfirmed' stories being reported as 'facts'.

here is a really good article (from the Gardian earlier in the week) about 24 hour news coverage of the War in the UK.
(USA readers) Were no backwater we have the US 'big 3' (Fox, M$NBC & CNN) plus our own 3 (BBC News 24, ITV news channel/ITN & Sky News, who shares reporters with Fox)

What about the overwhelming number of press claims that AREN'T proven otherwise later? Will you report those too?

Give it a rest.

burden of proof lies with those who make the claims or in this case make it up. the media is not entirely to blame of course..... it's governments on both sides as well.

From what i can remember the most rediculios piece of propaganda is todo with Baghdad. from day 1 the government and media have been reporting that Allied troops were around the city....and yet fighting only seems to be taking place in the south(Najaf, etc), and more recently on the Kurdish border. but apart for the airal bombings, there dont seem to be any troops around Baghdad.

The thing about the miscile in Kuwait City, you gotta be kidding me, right ? lol... is there an article on it somewhere.

Also...hehe...worth pointing out that allied missiles have been landing in Turkey, some 300 miles/kilometers(not exactly sure, but i think it was kms) from their intended Targets in Baghdad....now that's precision for you. laser/satellite guided thing-a-ma-jiggers with an error radius of about 300 kms.

Hehe it sure is interesting to watch this unfold. The Iraqi "minisry of information' uses the media to talk about all the civilian casualties, while supposily sending secret orders to their troops. The American breifings spread their own FUD about how the Iraqis don't have a chance. They also spread disinformation to the Iraqis.

Of course this all makes sense, Saddam probably gets most of his recon from CNN, BBC, ect

And Saudi Arabia as well. But the explanation seems to be that the missiles failed at some point during their launch sequence before the guidance system took over.

And no complaints about the anti-war argument of "thousands - maybe HUNDREDS of thousands" of "innocent civilian deaths."

So far, what are there, <100? That's IF the two market bombings weren't due to Iraqi error.

1 civilian death is too many. Lets be honest. Rationalize it as much as you want, with nice euphemisms like 'collateral damage,' but this is a reality of war. You don't have to be pro- or anti- anything to at least value innocent lives.

You must value innocent lives. However once we start doing that calculus we have to consider deaths if we do nothing versus if we act. Further our speculation about future events is just that - speculation and guess work. Clearly the administration expected more surrenders and thus fewer casualties. However they also recognize that doing nothing may result in many casualties as well - both Iraqi due to Sadaam's regime, and possible American casualties from future terrorism.

Thus applying the calculus is difficult. Further people will disagree on how it ought to be calculated.

I didn't say that civilian deaths were "OK", and for you to paint me as if I have no value for life is asinine.

The reality is that war sucks. However, the reality is also that the coalition is not TARGETING civilians. Which is a hell of a lot different than the Iraqis. There are verified incidents of Iraqis firing on their own people, INTENTIONALLY.

It seems to me that my position that the people of Iraq will be safer and better off with Saddam forced out is being shown. And that will SAVE innocent lives. So, I would say that I do value life.

What I find asinine is discounting the anti-war movement because they may have exaggerated a statistic. Civilian deaths are horrible whether it's 500 or 5000, and I think that's their point. It seems perfectly legitimate to me, and I by no means would place myself within the anti-war camp.

Lets be honest though, it seems quite possible that we've only scratched the surface as far as civilian deaths go, seeing as how we aren't even to Baghdad yet and are just starting operations in northern Iraq. Not to mention that the war may drag on for weeks or months, worsening humanitarian concerns.

I'm no military expert, but considering the above facts I'd have to admit that civilian casualties so far are much higher than I hoped they would be. After all, weren't we supposed to be in Baghdad by now? The key to toppling the regime is in Baghdad, not Najaf or Nasiriya or Basra.

Lots more than 100

Both sides have an interest in propaganda as both a tactical and a public relations tool and will naturally put a positive spin on developments. I've noticed Tommy Franks making oddly frequent references to terrorism - I get the queasy feeling that the administration has requested that he reinforce a link to 9/11 in the public's mind. But as much as I distrust the U.S. government, I would still trust it a lot farther than I would the Iraqi government. You just have to keep everything in perspective.

When you add the fog of war to the official spin, and then add an overly eager press to the equation, you've got the makings of a lot of dubious stories and speculation. Everybody needs to take a deep breath.

I don't need to dismiss the anti-war movement because of their exagerations. They do a good enough job discrediting themselves (many of them, not all.)

If they truly believed that just ONE civilian death was too many, then a) they wouldn't have sent in "human shields" and b) they wouldn't have readied the world for "thousands" of deaths. Or were they just exagerating for dramatic effect. Or was that dramatic effect like yelling "the sky is falling."




However, it is MHO that any civilian deaths can be directly blamed on Saddam Hussein. Had he cooperated with the UN or left the country when Bush gave him the 48 hour ultimatum.

Keep in mind, as well, that Saddam has already killed as many as 1.5 million of his own people through methods ranging from plastic shredders to chemical weapons to just an everyday pistol. Not to mention blowing the oil for food money on palaces and starving his people.



I don't remember seeing anything saying we'd be IN Baghdad in 12 days.

However, the hyperbole I read was always that we were going to carpet bomb the entire country killing thousands and thousands of Iraqis. That was patently false.

The targets have all been of military significance. No attempt has been made to purposefully kill civilians. At least not by the coalition.

I agree that we're not targetting civilians, but the distinction hardly matters on many occassions. If my family member was killed in a bombing raid, I don't think it would make much difference to me whether it was accidental or not.

What is disturbing is that coalition forces have been forced to fight urban street battles, in which it seems nearly impossible to avoid piling up civilian casualties. This is the sort of fighting that, as I understand it, most of the American public (not to mention military planners) hoped would be avoided.

The plan may not have been to be in Baghdad in 12 days, but getting to Baghdad was certainly a focal point of the entire effort. I'm not sure that's still the case. Getting to Baghdad and defeating Saddam is what will end this war, waging street battles in southern towns while Saddam is still in power will only breed hostility and opposition. Clearly, there was some sort of miscalculation in the war plans.

What about US self censorship?:

Britain's Mirror Hires Fired Veteran Arnett

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Daily Mirror said on Tuesday it had hired veteran U.S reporter Peter Arnett, sacked by American TV network NBC after he told Iraqi television the U.S, war plan against Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had failed.

"I report the truth of what is happening in Baghdad and will not apologize for it," he told the tabloid newspaper, one of the most prominent opponents of Britain's involvement in the war.

Arnett, 68, who as a CNN reporter in 1991 was one of the few western journalists reporting from Baghdad during the previous Gulf War (news - web sites), said in an interview on Sunday with state-owned Iraqi TV that the U.S. military would need to rewrite its war plan.

"I am still in shock and awe at being fired," New Zealand-born Arnett -- who won a Pulitzer prize for his Vietnam War coverage -- wrote under the banner headline "This war's NOT working."

It's one thing to criticize coalition war plans, it's entirely another to do it on government-controlled Iraqi TV.

BTW, National Geographic also fired him. Ouch!

True, he did say it was a big mistake to say what he said... but the question is, was he fired because he was right?

The problem you're facing is that there isn't any one authoritative leader of the anti-war movement whose missteps you can claim discredit the entire movement. Whereas it's easy for antiwar folks to find authorities who've irresponsibly exaggerated or lied. (E.g., VP Cheney said that the Iraqi regime would collapse like "a house of cards.")

Arnett was fired because he had the audacity to tell the truth to the enemy.

Had Arnette said what it said on MSNBC or even Al Jazeera I don't think anyone would have cared that much. Yeah a lot would have wondered about him - many people were already wondering why Iraq was so nice to him while Newsweek reporters are "missing" in Bagdad and most others have been kicked out. However lets be honest. Most of what he said you've heard ad naseum the past week on most American media outlets. He was basically aping the New York Times' position.

The problem was where and how he said those things. He said them in a government run media outlet which many feel is also being used for command and control. He didn't add the usual caveats to the report. Further he should have known how the Iraqi government would have used the report.

That was irresponsible.

Not to mention that the interviewer was, apparently, wearing an Iraqi Army uniform.

Some allegations that the UK and US are trying to control/censor news from the front lines. (By hampering the work of independent journalists, in favour of 'embedded' journalists who, supposedly, are easier to control.)

Independent

He was fired because what he did was inapropriate.

This is an interesting read in today's London Telegraph.

It's an op-ed by John Keegan, probably the world's formost military historian. He looks at the military situation in Iraq by judging the favorable and unfavorable developments, and draws some conclusions from the balance. Worth a look.

It's kind of funny that the american press talks about "killed civilians" to keep it neutral. Well, those "killed civilians" were mostly women and children and little babies. The babies corps were so bad deformed that they didnt even show them in the European press.

So this is again part of the american war history:

It's kind of funny that the american press talks about "killed civilians" to keep it neutral.

Personally I find all this concern with language a little silly. For instance someone was attacking Fox for huge US bias because they sometimes say, "our troops" rather than "US Troops."

Anyway, I went to Google News (which indexes just news sites) Searching for "killed civilians" found that the vast majority were using "killed" as an active verb and not a passive adjective. i.e. It was almost always "US troops killed civilians." Indeed while I only went through about 60 examples, I couldn't find one example of of the adjective form you suggest was common in the American press.

May I suggest those claiming such things first check Google News before making such claims?

As for the second charge, that of the composition of the civilian deaths. What is your source? Further just because someone who dies is a woman that does not imply she is not a combatant. (Something many people have been asserting) Beyond the rather distasteful sexism inherent in such comments one need only point out that a significant portion of our own troops (including POWs) are women. Further there have been many reports of women acting as scouts and combatants. In some cases these women have reportedly even taken their children.

Yes that is horrible. Terrible.

Further you seem to suggest in your comments that a civilian death is somehow OK if it is a man but not if it is a woman. What a horrible thing to assert. Are you seriously saying that a male non-combatant is somehow less deserving of life than a woman? How horrible, not to mention sexist.