Years ago when the U.S. first attacked Iraq, in 1991, a courageous reporter named Peter Arnett was working for CNN and reporting from the Al-Rashid Hotel hotel in Baghdad. Arnett, with Vietnam credentials under his belt, was a lingering reminder of a time when journalists went to battle scenes and reported back to us on what happened there. CNN at that time was the only news outlet capable of relaying pictures to the outside world of the effects of the U.S. attack. There were forty others in the hotel, but all left, leaving Arnett by himself.
The CIA approached Arnett and asked him to leave the hotel, as they intended to destroy it. He refused. It was Alexander Cockburn who connected the dots, who realized that the reason for the need to destroy the hotel was due to the pictures and reports by Arnett. Cameras are considered weapons, honest reporters enemy combatants.
These days we all have phones that take pictures and the Pentagon allows journalists to be embedded with American troops. And yet … we see fewer images, and there is less honest reporting of our aggression than ever before. Those that do roam free often end up like Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, two Reuters employees shown in the video above: Dead. The pair was murdered in cold blood by U.S. troops from an attack helicopter high above. Their apparent crime was assembly in an open square, and their weapons were cameras.
About a dozen people were killed that day, and two children seriously wounded. The soldiers who committed the crime blamed the “insurgents” for the wounded children, saying that they were at fault for bringing kids to a battle zone. (The kids were inside the minivan that was attempting to rescue a wounded man trying to crawl to safety.)
No doubt the Pentagon is investigating this event. The want to know who leaked it. There will be blood.
This is not for the faint-of-heart. This is no video game. This is murder.
Piece of Mindful 
Courageous or stupid?
Hey Peter, this is a Baby Milk Plant.
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Michelle Malkin is not fit to tie Peter Arnett’s shoes. Get real.
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So Michelle photoshopped the picture?
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No – it is simply that Michelle was the one who was sucked in.
Listen – the attack on Iraq in 1991 was barbaric, and if Peter Arnett says it was a baby milk factory, that’s probably what it was. He’s a credible man with a distinguished career. Malkin is not credible, but rather a right wing hack.
This much we know – if it was not a baby milk factory, whatever it was, it was not dangerous or toxic. Nothing toxic came out of that even except the residue of bombs.
You don’t know a lot of stuff. It’s kind of annoying for you to come here armed with a little tidbit of information, ignorant of just about everything else, and to say that you have the hard truth. The baby milk incident is widely known, and the only credible information to be gathered on it supports the contention that this is what it was. In this country, we only have Pentagon denials, which seem enough for you.
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So Michelle is a hack and Peter’s mainstream?
Give you your opinion about Gen. Powell, he stated there was a need to destroy the hotel, is he a hack?
If reporters were asked to leave, why didn’t they? To my knowledge we must be the only country who asks someone to leave, goes the extra mile to protect the innocent.
If the two victims were warned ahead of time and hung around for the fireworks they deserved their fate.
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My judgment on Peter is based on his 50 year career in which he worked in SE Asia, Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, and Iraq. He is an on-the-ground reporter. He was never embedded.
You don’t know who he is. Do you.
Blowing up 40 reporters would be bad form, even for the US, and hard to cover up. They were not being altruistic, and their objective was not to kill anyone (not that they cared) but rather to destroy the equipment that was being used to send pictures to the rest of the world of what was going on there.
General Schwartrzkopf was in charge of operations at that time. The decisions made, such as blowing up a hotel or the Turkey Shoot massacre or the massacre of Kurds and Iraqi Shiites in rebellion are cold and calculated.
The infant formula factory was a small part of a very large bombing campaign designed to destroy the civilian infrastructure that included dams, schools, hospitals, crops, cattle, power plants and water facilities.
None of the twelve killed deserved their fate, as they were just randomly murdered. They were all unarmed, minding their business. The two kids were in a van that was attempting to rescue an unarmed man who had been shot.
You are bordering on sociopathic.
You didn’t watch the YouTube. Did you.
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I’ve watched Peter make an ass of himself, many times.
Funny how he can’t seem to keep a job, the scourge of being a truth teller, right Mark?
This is war and war is hell. If someone tells you to clear out you better get your ass moving. If you want pictures, stories, flash bangs of explosions better get a telephoto.
Random killing, I think not.
Stupidly ignoring clear out orders, yes.
Nothing will become of this, dream on.
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Yes, courageous journalists are often fired. You’re not totally dense.
It is not that you are clueless -that is common here in the land of the brave. It is that you go to great effort to remain so.
That nothing will come of it? Until we start prosecuting ourselves for war crimes, it probably won’t be done. Right?
But they should, if they are serious about going after countries that harbor terrorists, attack Washington, DC.
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Dense? I’m not so sure.
Looks like an unedited version of the attack is out showing AK-47’s in the hands of the victims.
Blame it on my density.
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/04/confirmed-medias-military-hating-america-bashing-allegations-proven-false-inaccurate-video/
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I so have a bridge I want to sell you!
What you see was in the original, was not edited out, and is not an AK47. Might be a camera stand.
But here’s a larger point, if you can embrace it: We commit open aggression against a country that posed no threat to us in any way. As the aggressor, we are responsible for all that follows. Everything, because the truth is that if we had not attacked them, none of this would be happening.
That’s point one.
Point two, the ease with which you write off the murder of 9-12 adults and severe wounding of two children due to what you think is one weapon is chilling. Do you have family, Swede? Children? Mind if I murder them? I’m feeling self-justified today.
Also, the original video is 38 minutes long, and in it they shoot rockets through the roofs of two apartment complexes, killing families inside. It’s barbarism.
And finally, you still haven’t watched the video. Have you.
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Here’s a better view of the AK-47 and the camera and a RPG.
Maybe the photo journalist was using the machine gun as a stand?
I’ll repeat, lies have a hard time getting traction.
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You still haven’t watched it. Have you.
I do think you should, and then come back here and tell me that it was not cold-blooded murder.
And what on God’s earth gives you the idea that we have the right to kill people who we assume to be “insurgents?” Should not your brave soldiers at least call in others to face them, inspect them, and then kill them in a fair fight? The idea that murder can be committed on high by people who bear no responsibility is grotesque barbarism.
You ignored everything I wrote above Swede. It is my opinion that you got nuthin’.
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What a turn of events.
In past postings you’ve complained about the influence of media on the uninformed. The uninformed who take one source and shallow hook line sinker-followed by the pole.
And another thing, the kids in the van should have been going to school, the zoo or the park, not traveling in a hot battlefield when vehicles have been known to be suicide instruments.
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Your ignorance knows no depths, your callousness no bounds. You are on display here. If you like, I will delete your comments to spare you further embarrassment.
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Leave ’em up.
Inaction will be my vindication.
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ABC News Trapper interview with Gates.
TAPPER: Secretary Gates, WikiLeaks recently released a video that
showed U.S. troops killing some civilians in Iraq. I understand the
fog of war, and I understand that — that this was a very difficult situation.
Does the release of that video, and the fact that that happened damage the image
of the U.S. in the world?
GATES: I don’t think so. They’re — they’re in a combat
situation. The video doesn’t show the broader picture of the — of the
firing that was going on at American troops. It’s obviously a hard
thing to see. It’s painful to see, especially when you learn after the
fact what was going on. But you — you talked about the fog of war.
These people were operating in split second situations.
And, you know, we — we’ve investigated it very thoroughly. And
it’s — it’s unfortunate. It’s clearly not helpful. But by the same
token, I think — think it should not have any lasting consequences.
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Swede -this is neither thoughtful or intelligent on your part. You are merely accepting the words of a public official as assurance because it validates your own untested views.
You still haven’t watched the video, have you.
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With South Korea, China, India and Brazil constructing capitalist systems to maintain their growing populations, with the populations of other capitalist states increasing, the choice for each is clear. To compete they must sell ever greater quantities of shirts, shoes, suits, plates, pots and pans, hand tools, refrigerators and blenders, TVs, cars and motorcycles, etc.
The problem this poses for nonindustrialized states is that when capitalist countries buy their labor-non-intensive mineral/agricultural products and pour in ever-larger quantities of shoes, shirts, pots and pans, they cut the throats of millions of poor Saudis, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghanis, Indonesians, Algerians, Moroccans, Egyptians and Filipinos who survive by hand-making shoes and sandals, shirts, turbans and other items of native attire, or by hammering out pots and pans, or, by forming and firing pottery and plates.
And it’s not only the poor whose lives are ravaged. Capitalism’s aggressive economic penetration of nonindustrialized countries with TVs, CDs, DVDs and movies, is also devastating middle-class artists and actors, replacing their nations’ traditional tastes with those of Japan and the industrial West, while providing them, like the poor, with nothing in the way of alternative occupations.
Even highly educated children of Mid Eastern elites, doctors, dentists, architects, chemists and engineers, are finding the virulent capitalist invasion leaves no place for them. The poor can’t afford doctors and dentists. There aren’t enough people in the middle class to pay for their professional services. And the elites fly to New York, London or Paris for their own medical/dental procedures. When Mid Eastern oil Sheikhs have palaces and shopping malls constructed in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, when they build airports, seaports, luxury hotels, theaters, fantasy playlands and skyscrapers in Dubai, or a massive water pipeline in the United Arab Emirates, they contract with global corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel, Fluor, Parsons, Kajima and Taisei. Those companies have their own architects and engineers. They don’t hire local professionals. They also bring in low-paid, semi-slave workers from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, who toil 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, doing the menial labor.
With no less painful option left for maintaining their social existences, or that of their nations’ middle class and poor, some educated sons and daughters of Mid Eastern and Asian feudal elites begin formulating plans for expropriating Western interests, along with their countries’ Western-oriented elites, and establishing structures which can, at least momentarily, sustain them all; structures which, e.g. post-Khomeini Iran, are in some ways terribly reactionary, in others, progressive.
Ergo, the material origins of the ”muslim terrorist” challenge confronting capitalist states. It’s not mere chance that Osama bin Laden, whose father was the billionaire owner of a construction company, studied Business Administration and Engineering; that Ayman al-Zawahiri was a pediatric surgeon, his father a pharmacologist; or that Abu Hafisa, the Moroccan who directed the 2004 Madrid train bombing, is a psychiatrist.
Nor is it only chance that Mohamed Atta’s university degree was in architecture, while ”terrorist” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s was in mechanical engineering. So, too, with ”terrorist” Palestinian leaders whose peoples’ lives Israel is currently destroying. Fathi Abd Al-Aziz, the founder of Islamic Jihad, was a physician. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas, is a surgeon, as was the late Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi.
In short, capitalist states, the U.S., England, France, Russia, et al. are confronted with either slaughtering the restive populations whose socio-economic survival they can’t accomodate, or, developing a “we’re all in this together” world view and moving beyond the capitalist productive-distributive order. To date, it has been less disruptive of our own lives, and far more profitable, to tell ourselves we’re engaged in spreading democracy and freedom as we elect to do the first.
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Old Ted’s got you in spades, Mark.
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Did you even read what he wrote? He’s trying to analyze behavior – ours and theirs. He’s not justifying our behavior, in fact, his last paragraph makes clear what our choices are.
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A couple of problems with this analysis: One, Iraq specifically was a prosperous country up until the time that the US attacked it in 1991, and so does not fit the mold. I’d be very surprised if there is much of a common thread among any of the countries you mention.
Second, the violence appears to be reactionary – that is,
there was never a suicide bombing in Afghanistan until the arrival of Americans, and we did an unprovoked war of aggression on then. Such behavior, far from being sociologically, psychologically or economically rooted, is simply the way humans react when attacked.
Your last paragraph is very good.
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