Expounding its ideology in a lengthy manifesto, the group “al Qaeda in Iraq” says the insurgency is stronger than the US admits and vows to “destroy the American empire.” The group says in an e-book which surfaced on the Internet… Read moreAl-Qaeda in Iraq vows to “destroy the American empire”
Henry Kissinger, a key architect of the US war in Vietnam told CNN‘s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” Aug. 28 that he has “a very uneasy feeling” that some of the same factors that damaged support for the war in… Read moreIraq: Kissinger “uneasy,” has Vietnam deja vu
AP Aug. 24 reports that Iraq’s southern marshlands—drained by Saddam Hussein—are showing signs of rebirth; former residents are returning, and hunting and fishing are reviving. A new U.N. report sums up the progress, saying satellite imagery shows the marshes have… Read moreIraq marshlands: tentative recovery
With the following pithy statement, the two monoliths of the anti-war movement in the US have agreed to cooperate on a joint demonstration in Washington next month: The two major antiwar coalitions that have initiated and organized for a massive… Read moreJoint anti-war rally called for Sept. 24; Iraq’s secular left betrayed
Cindy Sheehan‘s brave protest encampment down the road from the Bush ranch in Crawford, TX, where the commander-in-chief is vacationing as the corpses pile up in Iraq, has succeeded in grabbing national attention in a way that countless of unimaginative… Read moreCindy Sheehan: Mother Courage or “extremist”?
An Aug. 16 AFP account, online at TruthOut, reports the claims of former Iraqi prisoners claim on that evening’s BBC Newsnight that British troops abused and humiliated them in the aftermath of the US-led invasion in March 2003. Two brothers,… Read moreIraq detainees charge Brits with torture
The Abu Dubai-based Information & Technology Publishing‘s online magazine offers an Aug. 14 story by Rhys Jones, “Wronging Iraq’s rights,” that paints a dire picture of the kind of oppressive theocracy that could be enshrined by the new constitution. The… Read moreIraq: new constitution threatens women
The Committee to Defend Women’s Rights in the Middle East offers this commentary from Yanar Mohammed of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI): Yanar Mohammed: Condemn a constitution of de-humanizing women An era of post-occupation atrocities unfolded to… Read moreYanar Mohammed speaks on Iraq’s pending constitution
Saudi religious leaders, tribal chiefs and government officials gathered in Riyadh to formally declare their loyalty to the new monarch King Abdullah, on the heels of foreign dignitaries including French President Jacques Chirac, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, and Britain’s… Read moreKing Abdullah: family tie to Iraq
Part Two in an Unfortunately Continuing Series
by Michael I. Niman
Earlier this year the media reported on “The Salvador Option,” referring to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s stated intent to train and employ Salvadoran-style death squads to hunt down and kill or “disappear” suspected Iraqi resistance fighters and their alleged supporters. Such wholesale execution of political opponents resulted in approximately 70,000 deaths in El Salvador during Ronald Reagan’s reign in the White House.
Knight Ridder correspondent Yasser Salihee also covered this story. Unlike stateside journalists doing research online, Salihee was on the ground in Iraq, compiling primary data–including damning evidence about extra-judicial killings. Knight Ridder, on June 27, published Salihee’s preliminary findings. Working less than a week, Salihee and another Knight Ridder journalist turned up over 30 cases of suspected extra-judicial executions by U.S.-backed Iraqi death squads.
In the article, Salihee and his co-author document how victims show up at the morgue blindfolded, with their hands tied or cuffed behind their backs. Most showed signs of Abu Ghraib-style torture. Many were last seen in police custody. They were usually killed with a singe shot to the head.
On June 24, while Salihee’s article was in-press, a U.S. military sniper killed him, also with a single shot to the head. According to Knight Ridder, it was his day off. He was on his way to his neighborhood gas station to fuel up before a family trip to a swimming pool when he encountered a makeshift U.S. checkpoint unexpectedly set up blocks from his home. Witnesses say he was shot without warning and for no apparent reason. For the record, Knight Ridder says: “There’s no reason to think that the shooting had anything to do with his reporting work.” Such disclaimers seem to be a de facto mandate these days. When an investigative reporter is shot dead by a member of an organization he or she is investigating, there’s clear reason for suspicion.
Also earlier this year, CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan made his now famous retracted comment about U.S. forces in Iraq targeting journalists. Eason’s comment cost him his job–and no genuflecting to the god of disclaimers and apologies could save it. He resigned. The problem was that he was right. This was the conclusion of a Reporters Without Borders investigation into the deaths of two journalists killed by U.S. troops in Baghdad. U.S. military documentation of the killings of journalists by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Serbia indicate that many were in fact deliberately targeted.
Journalists are the outside world’s pipeline for documentation of atrocities in war zones. When military forces remove journalists from war zones–usually through terror and intimidation, if not outright murder–they’ve successfully removed the most credible witnesses working to document their crimes. Salihee certainly appears to be one of these witnesses–uncovering the smoking gun behind a series of what appear to be Rumsfeld-ordered war crimes. It’s the brave reporting by the few remaining unembedded journalists on the ground in Iraq that allow armchair columnists like myself to write about Iraq, citing sources such as Salihee, Robert Fisk and Dahr Jamal.
Salihee’s killing at the hands of a U.S. military sniper is not an isolated incident. Since his death, two more Iraqi journalists were also shot dead by U.S. forces. Maha Ibrahim, a TV news editor who publicly opposed the U.S. occupation, was shot to death by U.S. troops who opened fire on her car as she drove to work on June 26. On June 28 , al-Sharqiya TV program director Ahmad Wail Bakri was also shot to death by U.S. troops as he drove near an American military convoy in Baghdad. The International Federation of Journalists has called for investigations into all three murders. The Committee to Protect Journalists has also expresses alarm over the killings and is launching its own investigation.
If these journalists in fact were not targeted by U.S. forces, and were instead just killed as unintended victims of jittery soldiers shooting up Baghdad, these killings are evidence of a depraved indifference to human life–resulting from the stress of fighting a prolonged war against a civilian population, with no clear goals or exit strategy.
If any of these journalists were killed because of their work–and Yasser Salihee’s damning investigative work certainly raises that question–then what we are witnessing is not only a war against Iraq, but against the world’s right to know what is going on in Iraq as well. With Salihee dead, it will now be more difficult to document death squad activity in Iraq. When you kill the messenger you kill the truth.
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Dr. Michael I. Niman’s previous columns are archived at
http://www.mediastudy.com.
RESOURCES:
Reporters Without Borders investigation of the US Army’s firing at the Palestine Hotel, April 2003, at TruthOut:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022505A.shtml
See also:
“TRUTH DEATH AND MEDIA IN IRAQ, Pt. 1” by Michael I. Niman, WW4 REPORT #107
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
In an op-ed in the July 28 New York Times, “Oil and Blood,” Bob Herbert insists on looking at the glaringly obvious elephant in the room that so many on all sides of the Iraq debate are blinding themselves to:… Read moreBob Herbert: It’s the oil, stupid!
A US army mechanic, sentenced to 15 months in jail for refusing to return to Iraq with his Army unit, told the military judge in his case that he acted out of conscience, not a disregard for duty. “I am… Read moreConscientious objector Kevin Benderman gets 15 months
