2. Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the
Civilian Deathtoll
PART 1: Fallujah-War Crimes Go Unreported
Sources:
Peacework, December 2004-January 2005, Title: "The Invasion of
Fallujah: A Study in the Subversion of Truth," Authors: Mary Trotochaud
and Rick McDowell; World Socialist Web Site, November 17, 2004, Title:
"U.S. Media Applauds Destruction of Fallujah," Author: David
Walsh; The NewStandard, December 3, 2004, Title: "Fallujah Refugees
Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone," Author: Dahr Jamail
Faculty Evaluators: Bill Crowley, Ph. D., Sherril Jaffe, Ph.
D.
Student Researcher: Brian K. Lanphear
Over the past two years,
the United States has conducted two major sieges against Fallujah, a city in Iraq.
The first attempted siege of Fallujah (a city of 300,000 people) resulted in a
defeat for Coalition forces. As a result, the United States gave the citizens
of Fallujah two choices prior to the second siege: leave the city or risk dying
as enemy insurgents. Faced with this ultimatum, approximately 250,000 citizens,
or 83 percent of the population of Fallujah, fled the city. The people had nowhere
to flee and ended up as refugees. Many families were forced to survive in fields,
vacant lots, and abandoned buildings without access to shelter, water, electricity,
food or medical care. The 50,000 citizens who either chose to remain in the city
or who were unable to leave were trapped by Coalition forces and were cut off
from food, water and medical supplies. The United States military claimed that
there were a few thousand enemy insurgents remaining among those who stayed in
the city and conducted the invasion as if all the people remaining were enemy
combatants.
Burhan Fasa'a, an Iraqi journalist, said Americans grew easily
frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English. "Americans did not have
interpreters with them, so they entered houses and killed people because they
didn't speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and shot
people because [the people] didn't obey [the soldiers'] orders, even just because
the people couldn't understand a word of English." Abu Hammad, a resident
of Fallujah, told the Inter Press Service that he saw people attempt to swim across
the Euphrates to escape the siege. "The Americans shot them with rifles from
the shore. Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over
their head to show they are not fighters, they were all shot." Furthermore,
"even the wound[ed] people were killed. The Americans made announcements
for people to come to one mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the
people who went there carrying white flags were killed." Former residents
of Fallujah recall other tragic methods of killing the wounded. "I watched
them [U.S. Forces] roll over wounded people in the street with tanks… …This
happened so many times."
Preliminary estimates as of December of 2004
revealed that at least 6,000 Iraqi citizens in Fallujah had been killed, and one-third
of the city had been destroyed.
Journalists Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell
assert that the continuous slaughter in Fallujah is greatly contributing to escalating
violence in other regions of the country such as Mosul, Baquba, Hilla, and Baghdad.
The violence prompted by the U.S. invasion has resulted in the assassinations
of at least 338 Iraqi's who were associated with Iraq's "new" government.
The
U.S. invasion of Iraq, and more specifically Fallujah, is causing an incredible
humanitarian disaster among those who have no specific involvement with the war.
The International Committee for the Red Cross reported on December 23, 2004 that
three of the city's water purification plants had been destroyed and the fourth
badly damaged. Civilians are running short on food and are unable to receive help
from those who are willing to make a positive difference. Aid organizations have
been repeatedly denied access to the city, hospitals, and refugee populations
in the surrounding areas.
Abdel Hamid Salim, spokesman for the Iraqi Red
Crescent in Baghdad, told Inter Press Service that none of their relief teams
had been allowed into Fallujah three weeks after the invasion. Salim declared
that "there is still heavy fighting in Fallujah. And the Americans won't
let us in so we can help people."
The UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights Louise Arbour voiced a deep concern for the civilians caught up in the
fighting. Louise Arbour emphasized that all those guilty of violations of international
humanitarian and human rights laws must be brought to justice. Arbour claimed
that all violations of these laws should be investigated, including "the
deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks,
the killing of injured persons and the use of human shields."
Marjorie
Cohn, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative
to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists, has noted that
the U.S. invasion of Fallujah is a violation of international law that the U.S.
had specifically ratified: "They [U.S. Forces] stormed and occupied the Fallujah
General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances to go inside
the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva
Conventions."
According to David Walsh, the American media also seems
to contribute to the subversion of truth in Fallujah. Although, in many cases,
journalists are prevented from entering the city and are denied access to the
wounded, corporate media showed little concern regarding their denied access.
There has been little or no mention of the immorality or legality of the attacks
the United States has waged against Iraq. With few independent journalists reporting
on the carnage, the international humanitarian community in exile, and the Red
Cross and Red Crescent prevented from entering the besieged city, the world is
forced to rely on reporting from journalists embedded with U.S. forces. In the
U.S. press, we see casualties reported for Fallujah as follows: number of U.S.
soldiers dead, number of Iraqi soldiers dead, number of "guerillas"
or "insurgents" dead. Nowhere were the civilian casualties reported
in the first weeks of the invasion. An accurate count of civilian casualties to
date has yet to be published in the mainstream media.
__________________________________________________________
PART
2: Civilian Death Toll Is Ignored
Sources:
The Lancet, October 29, 2004, Title: "Mortality Before and After
the 2003 Invasion of Iraq," Authors: Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta,
Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi and Gilbert Burnham; The Lancet, October
29, 2004, Title: "The War in Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political
Responsibilities," Author: Richard Horton; The Chronicle of Higher
Education, February 4, 2005, Title: "Lost Count," Author:
Lila Guterman; FAIR, April 15, 2004, Title: "CNN to Al Jazeera:
Why Report Civilian Deaths?," Author: Julie Hollar
Faculty Evaluator: Sherril Jaffe, Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Melissa Waybright
In late October, 2004, a peer reviewed study
was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, concluding that at least
100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq since it was invaded by a United States-led
coalition in March 2003. Previously, the number of Iraqis that had died, due to
conflict or sanctions since the 1991 Gulf War, had been uncertain. Claims ranging
from denial of increased mortality to millions of excess deaths have been made.
In the absence of any surveys, however, they relied on Ministry of Health records.
Morgue-based surveillance data indicate the post-invasion homicide rate is many
times higher than the pre-invasion rate.
In the present setting of insecurity
and limited availability of health information, researchers, headed by Dr. Les
Roberts of Johns Hopkins University, undertook a national survey to estimate mortality
during the 14.6 months before the invasion (Jan 1, 2002, to March 18, 2003) and
to compare it with the period from March 19, 2003, to the date of the interview,
between Sept 8 and 20, 2004. Iraqi households were informed about the purpose
of the survey, assured that their name would not be recorded, and told that there
would be no benefits or penalties for refusing or agreeing to participate.
The
survey indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation
of Iraq is in reality about 100,000 people, and may be much higher. The major
public health problem in Iraq has been identified as violence. However, despite
widespread Iraqi casualties, household interview data do not show evidence of
widespread wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers on the ground. Ninety-five
percent of reported killings (all attributed to U.S. forces by interviewees) were
caused by helicopter gunships, rockets, or other forms of aerial weaponry.
The
study was released on the eve of a contentious presidential election-fought in
part over U.S. policy on Iraq. Many American newspapers and television news programs
ignored the study or buried reports about it far from the top headlines. "What
went wrong this time? Perhaps the rush by researchers and The Lancet to put the
study in front of American voters before the election accomplished precisely the
opposite result, drowning out a valuable study in the clamor of the presidential
campaign." (Lila Guterman, Chronicle of Higher Education)
The study's
results promptly flooded though the worldwide media-everywhere except the United
States, where there was barely a whisper about the study, followed by stark silence.
"The Lancet released the paper on October 29, the Friday before the election,
when many reporters were busy with political stories. That day the Los Angeles
Times and the Chicago Tribune each dedicated only about 400 words to the study
and placed the stories inside their front section, on pages A4 and A11, respectively.
(The news media in Europe gave the study much more play; many newspapers put articles
about it on their front pages.)
In a short article about the study on page
A8, the New York Times noted that the Iraqi Body Count, a project to tally civilian
deaths reported in the news media, had put the maximum death count at around 17,000.
The new study, the article said, "is certain to generate intense controversy."
But the Times has not published any further news articles about the paper. The
Washington Post, perhaps most damagingly to the study's reputation, quoted Marc
E. Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, as saying, "These
numbers seem to be inflated." Mr. Garlasco says now that he hadn't read the
paper at the time and calls his quote in the Post "really unfortunate."
(Lila Guterman, Chronicle of Higher Education).
Even so, nobody else in
American corporate media bothered to pick up the story and inform our citizens
how many Iraqi citizens are being killed at the hands of a coalition led by our
government. The study was never mentioned on television news, and the truth remains
unheard by those who may need to hear it most. The U.S. government had no comment
at the time and remains silent about Iraqi civilian deaths. "The only thing
we keep track of is casualties for U.S. troops and civilians," a Defense
Department spokesman told The Chronicle.
When CNN anchor Daryn Kagan did
have the opportunity to interview the Al Jazeera network editor-in-chief Ahmed
Al-Sheik-a rare opportunity to get independent information about events in Fallujah-she
used the occasion to badger Al-Sheik about whether the civilian deaths were really
"the story" in Fallujah. CNN's argument was that a bigger story than
civilian deaths is "what the Iraqi insurgents are doing" to provoke
a U.S. "response" is startling. "When reports from the ground are
describing hundreds of civilians being killed by U.S. forces, CNN should be looking
to Al Jazeera's footage to see if it corroborates those accounts-not badgering
Al Jazeera's editor about why he doesn't suppress that footage." (MediaWatch,
Asheville Global Report)
Study researchers concluded that several limitations
exist with this study, predominantly because the quality of data received is dependent
on the accuracy of the interviews. However, interviewers believed that certain
essential charcteristics of Iraqi culture make it unlikely that respondents would
have fabricated their reports of the deaths. The Geneva Conventions have clear
guidance about the responsibilities of occupying armies to the civilian population
they control. "With the admitted benefit of hindsight and from a purely public
health perspective, it is clear that whatever planning did take place was grievously
in error. The invasion of Iraq, the displacement of a cruel dictator, and an attempt
to impose a liberal democracy by force have, by themselves, been insufficient
to bring peace and security to the civilian population.
The illegal, heavy
handed tactics practiced by the U.S. military in Iraq evident in these news stories
have become what appears to be their standard operating procedure in occupied
Iraq. Countless violations of international law and crimes against humanity occurred
in Fallujah during the November massacre.
Evidenced by the mass slaughtering
of Iraqis and the use of illegal weapons such as cluster bombs, napalm, uranium
munitions and chemical weapons during the November siege of Fallujah when the
entire city was declared a "free fire zone" by military leaders, the
brutality of the U.S. military has only increased throughout Iraq as the occupation
drags on.
According to Iraqis inside the city, at least 60 percent of Fallujah
went on to be totally destroyed in the siege, and eight months after the siege
entire districts of the city remained without electricity or water. Israeli style
checkpoints were set up in the city, prohibiting anyone from entering who did
not live inside the city. Of course non-embedded media were not allowed in the
city.
UPDATE: Since these stories were published, countless other
incidents of illegal weapons and tactics being used by the U.S. military
in Iraq have occurred.
During "Operation Spear" on June 17th, 2005, U.S.-led forces
attacked the small cities of Al-Qa'im and Karabla near the Syrian border. U.S.
warplanes dropped 2,000 pound bombs in residential areas and claimed to have killed
scores of "militants" while locals and doctors claimed that only civilians
were killed.
As in Fallujah, residents were denied access to the city in
order to obtain medical aid, while those left inside the city claimed Iraqi civilians
were being regularly targeted by U.S. snipers.
According to an IRIN news
report, Firdos al-Abadi from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society stated that 7,000
people from Karabla were camped in the desert outside the city, suffering from
lack of food and medical aid while 150 homes were totally destroyed by the U.S.
military.
An Iraqi doctor reported on the same day that he witnessed, "crimes
in the west area of the country…the American troops destroyed one of our
hospitals, they burned the whole store of medication, they killed the patient
in the ward…they prevented us from helping the people in Qa'im."
Also
like Fallujah, a doctor at the General Hospital of al-Qa'im stated that entire
families remained buried under the rubble of their homes, yet medical personnel
were unable to reach them due to American snipers.
Iraqi civilians in Haditha
had similar experiences during "Operation Open Market" when they claimed
U.S. snipers shot anyone in the streets for days on end, and U.S. and Iraqi forces
raided homes detaining any man inside.
Corporate media reported on the "liberation"
of Fallujah, as well as quoting military sources on the number of "militants"
killed. Any mention of civilian casualties, heavy-handed tactics or illegal munitions
was either brief or non-existent, and continues to be as of June 2005.
For additional information:
For those interested in following these stories, it is possible to
obtain information by visiting the English Al-Jazeera website at http://english.aljazeera.
net/HomePage, my website at www.dahrjamailiraq.com,
The World Tribunal on Iraq at www.worldtribunal.org,
Peacework Magazine at www.afsc.org/pwork/0412/041204.htm
, and other alternative/independent news websites.