Veilng the truth

September 10 2004

Veiling the truth and hoping for best


THE Bush administration does not want the Americans to be told of the grim realities of Iraq. It has maintained a tight veil against media coverage of American soldiers being brought home in body bags . No journalist, photographer or television cameraman is allowed into any US military base when the body bags arrive. The recent exposure of dozens of American flag-draped coffins was an accident. A Pentagon employee cleared those images for release to the public without realising he was breaking a taboo. Sure enough, he was packed off to a faraway place where he posed no threat the media strategists of the Bush administration.

I bet not many Americans know that several thousand American soldiers are maimed for life in guerrilla attacks in Iraq. They will never be normal again.

Such details are not released by the US military. No major American newspaper has undertaken an effort to collect any statistics on them.

One would think that had there been a loophole in the freedom of information in the US, the administration would have clamped down totally on any confirmation of American soldiers' death in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would have banned every media outlet from reporting any development in Iraq that would cast a negative cloud on Washington's assertions of "progress" in bringing "democracy" to Iraq.

Recently, the US military has limited itself to terse sentences on American casualties in Iraq.

"One US marine, assigned to the First Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed on Wednesday while conducting security and stability operations in Najaf."

Not a word more. What was the soldier doing in Najaf? Of course, "security and stability" operations. What exactly do they mean? Patrolling the street and looking for the occasional burglar?

More details of how the soldier died fighting with the forces of Moqtada Sadr in a battle that is worsening the American quagmire in Iraq might get carried by a few "small-time" newspapers in the US. None of the majors would carry those details since they have more important things to report, like a $12 million contract signed for garbage collection in Baghdad that would create a few jobs, as Britan Coughley, a seasoned American commentator observes in an article titled "Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts."

Coughley writes: "In the unlikely event of a prominent newspaper or television company getting details of how this Marine was killed, they would spread it as an important story (except Fox, of course). But they don't know (or want to know?) what is going on, and, therefore, neither does the American public, because sure as eggs the Bush administration isn't going to tell them." (www.counterpunch.org).

Mind you, it is an American commentator's words and of an Arab or Muslim or even someone from the developing world.

No doubt, such comments would not appear in newspapers like the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Now, look at what is happening in the media scene in Iraq itself.

The interim government has closed down the offices of Qatar's Al Jazeera television for one month. Obviously, the US authorities approved the move.


What was Al Jazeera's fault?

Obviously, the US authorities and the interim government could not digest that Al Jazeera was beaming the realities on the ground in Iraq, including kidnappings, death threats and executions. These vivid images go a long way in letting the world know that the US military or the US-backed interim authority is not exactly having a picnic in post-war Iraq. Simply put, the US is steadily losing countrol of the country, and, as every day passes, the US and the interim government are making more enemies and creating more resistance guerrillas with the scorched-earth policy. That is the message contained in the real life footage from Iraq.

Forget Al Jazeera. Iraqi and Arab journalists working in Iraq have been told to tone down their criticism of the interim government or face prosecution (expulsion for non-Iraqis).

But then, isn't freedom of information — the right to know the truth and reality — an essential part of democracy? And isn't it democracy that the US says it wants to bring to Iraq?


Where is the problem then?

It is not simply that Washington has made a switch in its approach in the context of the war in Iraq. It goes much deeper than that to the point that the Bush administration does no longer care to respect the very founding principles of the US, whether democracy or the right of the people to know.

Bush's spin doctors want to limit media coverage of events in Iraq that tear the mask from the "business-as-usual" in Iraq image that they want to show the American public. That is all the more important in the run-up to the race for the White House in November.