See the sign. Get too close and they shoot.
The Natives Remain Restless
Having decorated their huts with Mark Whitaker's shrunken head, and
having confined Michael Isikoff in a little cage so that the tribal
children can poke him with sticks, the rightie tribe has moved on--to
the Newspaper Guild and Editor & Publisher.
The Rectitudinous Righties are not worked up
over anything published as news by the evil "MSM," however. A week ago
Linda Foley, national president of The Newspaper Guild, made some
comments at a National Conference for Media Reform that put her on the
tribal hit list. At the conference in St. Louis, Foley said of U.S.
forces in Iraq:
Journalists are not just being
targeted verbally or politically. They are also being targeted for real
in places like Iraq. And what outrages me as a representative of
journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number and the
brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the
killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it's just a scandal.
It's not just U.S. journalists either, by
the way. They target and kill journalists from other countries,
particularly Arab countries, at news services like Al Jazeera, for
example. They actually target them and blow up their studios, with
impunity. This is all part of the culture that it is OK to blame the
individual journalists, and it just takes the heat off of these media
conglomerates that are part of the problem.
Like it or not, Ms. Foley is not pulling these charges out of her butt.
Jeanne d'Arc
has documented incidents that look suspiciously like journalist
targeting. Please follow the link and read what she says. It is clear
that either these journalists were deliberately targeted, or the troops
involved were being unusually careless even by war zone standards.
Certainly, it bears outrage. Investigation also seems in order. And
proper investigation was what Ms. Foley requested; last month Ms. Foley
sent a letter to President Bush critical of the "investigation" into
these incidents so far.
I think Foley
missed the point. I don't think the US is murdering reporters as part
of a campaign in Iraq. If that were the case, Robert Fisk would have
long joined the angels.
What I think no one wants to come to grips with
is that the US has a shoot first, ask no questions later. They don't
just shoot reporters, they shoot
everyone
this way, store owners, drivers, kids who look at them funny, families.
There is a great deal of individual discretion, but the crime comes in
when commanders want to cover their asses and never investigate
incidents which need honest investigation. In a zero-defect military,
it can kill careers to admit American soldiers are shooting at anything
they can. So they do these perfunctory investigations, maybe charge a
few EM's and NCO's, and move on. Because no one is going to risk their
career by admitting error.
The fact is that Americans kill with impunity in
Iraq. The US doesn't investigate anything where the US will be found at
fault. And the commanders clearly have an anti-press message they give
to the troops. But what people do not want to believe, even on the
left, is that the US military is incredibly sloppy. Giuliana Sgrena
wasn't shot in a conspiracy, but by a lone National Guard patrol.
Which happens every day.
When the US kills the wrong people, they hand out some money and that's the end of it.
The reason the press keeps getting hammered for this is that they don't talk about the real issue: fire discipline.
The US has miserable fire discipline and few sanctions for violating
it. If a kid gets a hair up his ass and decides he wants to blow a hole
in the Palestine Hotel, who would stop him? Do you think his commander
would investigate that breakdown in command and lose his chance at
commanding a brigade? The system works against the honest. The soldiers
know that the reporters rely on them for their very survival. They
can't move around in Iraq unless they look Iraqi or have a phalanx of
bodyguards. The risk of kidnapping is just that severe. They know they
can push them around and they do.
The Army's method of training soldiers to shoot
is the unwritten scandal of the Iraq war. Time and again, fire
discipline has broken down and no one wants to see it, no one wants to
address it. They want to deal with anything else, conspiracy theories,
whatever, and not the fact that US soldiers, both Army and Marines,
shoot first, second and third and do not ask questions. They shoot up
hospitals, they shoot bird sellers, they shoot handicapped men and
their families, they shoot children, they shoot cars. They shoot when
they feel any threat,
any.
Journalists are just one more group of people they shoot with abandon.
The fact that so many Guardsmen and reservists are serving in front
line units, makes this worse. NG officers are often regarded as second
rate political hacks. Reservists are often officers who couldn't hack
the Regular Army. And reservists shoot. They're already pissed at being
taken from their civilian lives. They have no plans of dying in Iraq.
And if they have to shoot every twig to go home, they will. And the
reality is that their training is less than it should be. They don't
have the intensive training of the regular units and their officers are
not always the best and the brightest. Some are looking to kiss up to
their bosses or keep their political masters at home, happy. And the RA
will gladly throw reservists and Guardsmen to the wolves of a general
court martial.
This is the effect of a zero defect military. No
one wants to admit error, no one wants to admit that their unit screwed
up. So if there is a sea of Iraqi bodies, and a few journalists tossed
in, as long as the battalion commander makes brigade commander, all is
right with the world.
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