More Dissent,
More Censorship
By Dahr Jamail
28 September, 2005
Dahrjamailiraq.com
A
quarter of a million people jammed the streets of the capital this past
weekend, as Mr. Bush conveniently found himself visiting the US Northern
Commands HQ in Colorado Springs.
While veterans from
the current debacle in Iraq and scores of military families who oppose
the Bush Junta joined the throngs of protestors in Washington DC to
express their dissent, there were other goings-on related to Iraq while
Bush had his photo-op in Colorado.
A contractor I know
working in Iraq wrote me recently. He gives me periodic updates about
how life is on the base where he works in support of the military. He
wrote:
Another convoy
hit hard-3 drivers killed and many others wounded- I dont know
if its my friends yet. They dont like to advertise these
kinds of things much around here because they cause the exit planes
to fill up - the only problem is, there are more plane loads waiting
in Houston [to come here]. The gullible waiting for their chance at
the tarnished brass ring. [Me and my friends] agree this countries
policies of oil have led us down the path of Armageddon.
At least 1,917 US
soldiers have died in Iraq now, 16 just in the last week. At least 10
times that number have been wounded for life, both physically and psychologically.
Thus, it shouldnt
come as a surprise that so many people marched in the capital this weekend,
nor that so many of them are veterans and family members who have simply
had enough of this. The people I spoke with at the demonstration expressed
feelings of anger and impatience towards this so-called administration.
So it shouldnt
have been a surprise, either, to have seen a sign in the demo with a
little pretzel drawn on it which read, Give the pretzel another
chance!
The recent news
of a few brave soldiers from the 82nd Airborne speaking out (on condition
of anonymity in a Human Rights Watch report) about how they vented
their frustration by systematically torturing Iraqi detainees from 2003
into 2004, hitting them with baseball bats and dousing them with chemicals
may have shocked some people here in the US. However, it isnt
news to soldiers in Iraq, of course, or for Iraqis for that matter.
A soldier currently
in Iraq who works as a medic wrote me a few days ago:
I do sick-call
for the detainees. Right now, I think they have mechanics guarding the
detainees. Ive talked to them a couple of times and theyve
made comments like if they were detained, they are probably bad
A couple of times Ive pointed out that: 1) they might very well
be innocent and 2) that they are still human. The guards seemed to really
acknowledge that. But its almost like everyone knows the emperor
is naked, but are trying to cling to the idea that he is wearing new
clothes. When someone points out that he might be naked, it gives them
the freedom to acknowledge that as well. The real travesty, I think,
is the American people. With no exposure to Iraqis, all they see on
the news is that we are killing the bad guys, and they dont see
the refugee camps, or how we trash cities (collateral damage seems a
nice phrase, because its not their homes which are being destroyed.
Not the sons and daughters of their friends who are being killed.) They
dont see the casual way most soldiers feel about destroying property.
All they see is what they are told, and unless its stamped with
a corporations seal, it lacks legitimacy in their eyes and it gets relegated
to an extremist position.
My friends
opinion of the misleading of the American people by the corporate media
about the horrific reality in Iraq applies in other countries as well.
Bush Administration pressure on the media is not limited to within the
US.
In a previous weblog,
I wrote about how a newspaper in Turkey had been pressured by the US
Embassy to run fewer news stories about Iraq from journalists like myself,
Robert Fisk and Naomi Klein.
Last night, here
in DC, I spoke with Stelios Kouloglou, a journalist with Hellenic Broadcasting
Corporation in Greece. His program on the public television station
has won several awards for investigative journalism and remains extremely
popular in his country.
On the one year
anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, April of 2004, his station broadcast
a documentary he produced entitled, 25 Lies to Sell the War,
a title which needs no explanation to anyone who is not fully encapsulated
in denial.
I found out
through a leak that the US embassy in Greece was applying political
pressure to our government in order for them to pressure my television
station for running my documentary, he told me at his hotel.
It became
clear, after your election in 04 when Bush stayed in office, that
his administration became much more aggressive, he explained.
The US embassy began asking for our program to be discontinued.
They were telling this not just to our program spokesperson, but directly
to our government! Their protest took a much more official character,
and they did not even attempt to conceal this.
Being a journalist
for 25 years and having covered the war in Yugoslavia as well as having
worked in Moscow during Perestroika, he said this type of overt political
pressure to be a first for him.
Ive
never experienced political pressure like this, not even in Russia when
I was being critical of Gorbachev, nor in Yugoslavia when I was being
extremely critical of Milosevic, he added.
More recently and
a bit closer to home here in the US, Doug Ireland writes:
The internationally
renowned correspondent for The Independent - the great British journalist
[and citizen] Robert Fisk - has been banned from entering the United
States. Fisk has been covering war zones for decades, but is above all
known for his incisive reporting from the Middle East for more than
20 years. His critical coverage of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq,
and the continuing occupation that has followed it, has repeatedly exposed
US and British government disinformation campaigns. He also has exposed
how the bulk of the press reports from Iraq have been hotel journalism
- a phrase Fisk coined.
He continues:
The daily
New Mexican reports that U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday
[20 September] to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent
for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto
to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance
in the Lannan Foundations readings-and-conversations series on
Wednesday night. According to Christie Mazuera Davis, a Lannan program
officer, Fisk was told that his papers were not in order. Davis made
last-minute arrangements Wednesday for Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica
Radios daily news show, Democracy Now!, to interview Fisk via satellite
from a television station in Toronto..." A recording of this satellite
interview will soon be available on the Lannan Foundations website.
As we prepared to
leave his hotel last night, my colleague Stelios Kouloglou half-jokingly
offered, You can come visit Greece anytime, whether for vacation
or for political asylum.
I only half-laughed
as I shook his hand.