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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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January 20th,
2007 - Washing War Crimes at the Washington Post |
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Washing War Crimes at the
Washington Post By Ahmed Amr The Palestine Chronicle January 20th, 2007 What exactly do you call a
‘journalist’ who shrugs his shoulders at the scene of a war crime? By the
time you finish White’s apologia – you would think he was reporting on a
reckless driver inadvertently killing a stray dog. You can read all about the
nasty business of washing war crimes at the Washington Post. They start with
fixing the headline. “Death in Haditha”
- not ‘mass murder in Haditha’ or ‘Another American Atrocity in Iraq.’
Next, forget the damning details, screw the truth and give the perpetrators
all the room in the world to blame their conduct on ‘mistakes’ made in the
heat of battle amidst the fog of war. There never was any mystery
about what happened in Haditha. Four of the victims were students and the
fifth was a taxi driver giving them a lift back from school. One of the
Marines involved in the executions later urinated on the bodies. The same
company of marines continued their killing spree by butchering twenty other
civilians, including women and children. As usual, the Pentagon managed to
cover up the story for a few months. Fortunately, in this instance, the
survivors got to tell their story. Remember the name of the
rotten excuse of a journalist who covered the story for the Washington Post –
Josh White. After giving an obligatory sanitized version of the facts, he
speculates that “the accounts provide evidence that as the Marines came under
attack, they responded in ways that are difficult to reconcile with their
rules of engagement.” Really! Is that it? Maybe we should throw the book at
this death squad attired in Marine uniforms for the crime of “breaching the rules of engagement.” That
should at least qualify as a misdemeanor of some sort. As it turns out, the
accounts provided no such ‘evidence.’ In fact, the Associated Press
explicitly contradicted Josh White. It noted that “U.S. criminal
investigators found no evidence to support the claim of Marines charged in
the deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians that five were shot after trying to
flee the scene of a roadside bombing that killed one Marine. Investigators
determined that all five Iraqis were shot within arm's length of each other
and no more than 18 feet from the white taxi they were ordered to exit by
members of a Marine squad in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.” It’s a matter of historical
record that the Post was instrumental in marketing the war of choice in
Mesapotamia. Its reporters and neo-con commentators were among the elite
shock troops that conspired with the Office of Special Plans to perpetrate
the WMD hoax against the American public. Spreading the canard that the
pre-meditated murders in Haditha took place in the heat of battle - as “the
Marines came under attack” - is exactly the kind of coverage one should
expect from the likes of Josh White. Haditha is a carbon copy of
the slaughter at My Lai. And just like
My Lai – it is but a representative sample of hundreds of war crimes that
have been committed by the American occupation army against the Iraqi people.
The policy of dismissing civilian casualties as ‘collateral damage’ has
become nothing more than a grant of immunity to each and every ‘coalition’
combatant. Do the rules of engagement
that govern the behavior of troops in Iraq encourage this kind of
atrocity? Were Rumsfeld’s rules legal?
Do they comply with international law governing the conduct of an occupation
army? Is Haditha really an exception? How many Haditha type incidents took
place in the sieges of Fallujah, Tel Afar or Ramadi? Is the conduct of our
troops part of the reason for the insurgency? The Haditha story stayed buried
for two months. How high up did the cover-up go? These are just some of the
questions that any responsible journalist should have examined in a feature
article on Haditha. But that’s not the kind of scribe they retain at the
Washington Post. The Post, after all, is the paper of Charles Krauthammer and
like-minded Likudnik warmongers. And
this is precisely the kind of reporting favored by the chairman of this war
mongering rag, Donald Graham. Together
with Murdoch and Sulzberger and an assortment of lesser media titans, Graham
is one of the major players responsible for enabling Bush to launch an
illegal war of choice on the strength of a pack of lies. The marines who committed
this massacre are no better – and a few years older - than the mass murderers
responsible for the mayhem at Columbine. What journalist worthy of the name
would have dared accord the perpetrators of the Columbine atrocity the luxury
of twisting the truth to manufacture ‘plausible rationales?’ What exactly do you call a
‘journalist’ who shrugs his shoulders at the scene of a war crime? By the
time you finish White’s apologia – you would think he was reporting on a
reckless driver inadvertently killing a stray dog. Is the man a psychopath? Is
he capable of committing the same kind of crime and coming up with the same
kind of excuses as Marine Colonel Stephen W. Davis – one of the officers who
stands accused of burying the Haditha massacre. Davis is quoted in the article
as saying “There was nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, including
the number of civilian dead, that would have triggered anything in my mind
that was out of the norm. There is nothing about this incident that jumped
out at any point to us." Maybe we shouldn’t come down
too hard on Josh White. Because when you consider the long trail of canards
at the Washington Post, "there was nothing out of the ordinary about any
of this.” Ahmed Amr is the editor of
NileMedia.com External link: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-012007204925.htm |