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News :: Peace |
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Photos From Baghdad Are False Representations Of Reality |
Current rating: 0 |
by NYC
(No verified email address) |
09 Apr 2003
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photos from baghdad seem to show thousands and thousands of Iraqis tearing down the statue of Saddam. However, BBC photos reveal that there were at most only a couple hundred peopel there and that includes US troops! |
Friends,
I am appalled by the propaganda coming out of Iraq right now. The photos and news stories make it seem as if millions of Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad to welcome US and UK troops.
This is not the case. Here is a link to a photo, a photo taken form a roof top which show how few people were actually there to "dance" on top of that statue.
This propaganda (half truths) makes me sick. Spread this link far and wide please. The anti-war marches must go on. This photo is from the BBC. this is truly appalling that the US government is comparing these dozens of people to the Berlin Wall and the peaceful demise of that government by thousands and thousands of people.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=55268&group=webcast
Again, spread this far and wide. Resist propaganda.
Peace,
NYC |
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The Images They Choose, And Choose To Ignore |
by Robert Jensen
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
09 Apr 2003
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It was the picture of the day -- the toppling of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad -- and may end up being the picture of the war, the single image that comes to define the conflict. The message will be clear: The U.S. liberated the Iraqi people; the U.S. invasion of Iraq was just.
On Wednesday morning television networks kept cameras trained on the statue near the Palestine Hotel. Iraqis threw ropes over the head and tried to pull it down before attacking the base with a sledgehammer. Finally a U.S. armored vehicle pulled it down, to the cheers of the crowd.
It was an inspiring moment of celebration at the apparent end of a brutal dictator's reign. But as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has pointed out at other times, no one image tells the whole story. Questions arise about what is, and isn't, shown.
One obvious question: During live coverage, viewers saw a U.S. soldier drape over the face of Hussein a U.S. flag, which was quickly removed and replaced with an Iraqi flag. Commanders know that the displaying the U.S. flag suggests occupation and domination, not liberation. NBC's Tom Brokaw reported that the Arab network Al Jazeera was "making a big deal" out of the incident with the American flag, implying that U.S. television would -- and should -- downplay that part of the scene. Which choice tells the more complete truth?
Another difference between television in the U.S. and elsewhere has been coverage of Iraqi casualties. Despite constant discussion of "precision bombing," the U.S. invasion has produced so many dead and wounded that Iraqi hospitals stopped trying to count. Red Cross officials have labeled the level of casualties "incredible," describing "dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children" delivered by truck to hospitals. Cluster bombs, one of the most indiscriminate weapons in the modern arsenal, have been used by U.S. and U.K. forces, with the British defense minister explaining that mothers of Iraqi children killed would one day thank Britain for their use.
U.S. viewers see little of these consequences of war, which are common on television around the world and widely available to anyone with Internet access. Why does U.S. television have a different standard? CNN's Aaron Brown said the decisions are not based on politics. He acknowledged that such images accurately show the violence of war, but defended decisions to not air them; it's a matter of "taste," he said. Again, which choice tells the more complete truth?
Finally, just as important as decisions about what images to use are questions about what facts and analysis -- for which there may be no dramatic pictures available -- to broadcast to help people understand the pictures. The presence of U.S. troops in the streets of Baghdad means the end of the shooting war is near, for which virtually everyone in Iraq will be grateful. It also means the end of a dozen years of harsh U.S.-led economic sanctions that have impoverished the majority of Iraqis and killed as many as a half million children, according to U.N. studies, another reason for Iraqi celebration. And no doubt the vast majority of Iraqis are glad to be rid of Hussein, even if they remember that it was U.S. support for Hussein throughout the 1980s that allowed his regime to consolidate power despite a disastrous invasion of Iran.
But that does not mean all Iraqis will be happy about the ongoing presence of U.S. troops. Perhaps they are aware of how little the U.S. government has cared about democracy or the welfare of Iraqis in the past. Perhaps they watch Afghanistan and see how quickly U.S. policymakers abandoned the commitment to "not walk away" from the suffering of the Afghan people. Perhaps we should be cautious about what we infer from the pictures of celebration that we are seeing; joy over the removal of Hussein does not mean joy over an American occupation.
There is no simple way to get dramatic video of these complex political realities. But they remain realities, whether or not U.S. viewers find a full discussion of them on television.
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of "Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream."
http://www.commondreams.org/ |
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Re: Photos From Baghdad Are False Representations Of Reality |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 1
09 Apr 2003
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Dear Robert,
What you saw was the spontaneous celebration of Freedom. You failed to mention the sign that said " Go Home You Human Shields". This was a direct request by the newly free Iraqis to you and the other protesters to stop supporting and protecting the hopefully, newest member of hell Saddam Hussein.
The celebrations, despite still being under sniper fire, prove the point that the US action was right after all. Did you see the children being freed from Saddam's torture chamber? That was compliments of the US Military and the members of the coalition.
Although this war is not yet over, if you protest now, you protest against victory and the peaceful future of Iraq. Keep trying, someday you guys may be right about something.
Jack |
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Re: Photos From Baghdad Are False Representations Of Reality |
by Mink!
mink (nospam) tcp.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 5
11 Apr 2003
Modified: 09:05:53 AM |
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Photos of Iraqis celebrating the removal of Saddam Hussein do not equate to a moral validation of this war. Of course they're glad to see him gone, but a violent attack in which we killed and injured lots of innocent people was not the only way to remove ONE MAN from power. We had no desire to seriously try other methods, naturally, as a demonstration war is needed for other objectives.
The problem with inflating the size of the crowd in photos like this one is not that Iraqi people are celebrating. Of course they are. Saddam is gone. The problem is that the news felt the need to run what are essentially "psy-ops" operations on their own audience, judging that without the impression of a huge crowd, they would not be able to digest what has happened. That's quite patronizing. The idea that this war was waged in order to "liberate" the people of Iraq was pasted on very late in the operation, after the WMD failed to be found and the supposed links to Al Qaeda didn't pan out. To ram the new justification home, they needed a nice photo opportunity, and so they staged one - or perhaps more precisely, they carefully cropped the photos taken of the event. No one is disputing the people running around, the cheering, the looting going on at the same time - but this isn't the fall of the Berlin wall. Saddam is gone - that's great - but the precedents this entire thing is setting are very disturbing. This isn't just about Iraq, and it certainly isn't about liberation.
Incidentally, there's still no sign of any verified WMD.
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