Biased Impartiality

Posted on March 23, 2003 in War

This photo appeared in an MSNBC slide show (it is image number 6) with the caption: “An Iraqi man in southern Iraqi city of Basra gently transfers an injured child, allegedly hurt in the attack of U.S. and British forces.” (Emphasis mine.)

Allegedly, eh? Do they suspect that the father beat the child and then blamed it on the attack? Or that Iraqi soldiers shelled their own town to make the U.S. attack look more awful than it already was?

The proper and correct caption should be: ““An Iraqi man in southern Iraqi city of Basra gently transfers an injured child, hurt in the attack of U.S. and British forces.”

Here are some other captions from various slide shows at MSNBC with the word “allegedly” inserted:

• The U.S.-led forces were within 100 miles of Baghdad, but had allegedly encountered some areas of stiff resistance from Iraqi troops.
  
• A U.S. Marine from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit discards a portrait of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He allegedly removed it from the command office of the southern Iraqi naval base in Az Zubayar.
  
• A British Royal Marine from 42 Commando fires a Milan wire-guided missile at an alleged Iraqi position on the Al Faw peninsula in southern Iraq on Friday.
  
• Skies over Iraq were darkened Sunday by smoke allegedly from burning oil fields, visible from an airbase in Kuwait.

• Shell casings fall from a U.S. AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter as it fires on alleged Iraqi positions in Umm Qasr, in southern Iraq, on March 22.
• British soldiers survey damage at an Iraqi position March 22 as the bodies of two Iraqi soldiers lay in a trench next to a white flag after the alleged British assault on the Al-Faw peninsula in southern Iraq.
  
• An Iraqi family huddles inside a shelter in their home in Baghdad on Friday as large explosions rock the city during an alleged night of blistering U.S.-led air strikes.

I leave it to my readers to come up with similar quotes.

Let’s just deny the U.S./British attacks entirely! They’re not happening and no one is dying in Iraq! There is no Saddam Hussein, there is no Iraq! Therefore there can be no attacks taking place and the smoke, the blood, the fires, and the explosions that we see are due to something else!

More seriously: It’s time for the media to cut the BS and make it clear to the United States and British High Commands that they don’t work as their propaganda officers: their job is to report the news, no matter who looks bad in it. If this is to be a “just war” (as if such a thing were possible), the United States has to ensure that civilian casualties don’t occur. The point here is that if you don’t want to look bad, don’t do bad things.

As I noted earlier this weekend, the people of Iraq didn’t volunteer to be in this little action flick: they were born in the wrong place. It is George W. Bush and Rumsfeld who deserve the least of our pity: they created this situation, out of sheer hubris.