Redstate

By streiff Posted in War — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Eason Jordan, CNN news honcho and journalistic integrity guru made news at Davos with his incredible assertion that US forces in Iraq had not only killed journalists but that those journalists had been targeted for assassination. According to Rony Abowitz who is blogging Davos at Forumblog.org:

During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.

Strong stuff to be sure. Placing US troops on the same level as the armed thuggery of a banana republic is quite an allegation, if true. Or is it just the hyperbole of an executive from a rapidly tubing media company?

Read on.

The US military has a long and fractious history with the press. During the Civil War McClellan and Grant complained of newspapers reporting their movements before their own troops got the orders. During WW II, Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin, both beloved of soldiers and the folks back home, were constantly in trouble with the military. Bill Mauldin was banned from Sicily by Patton. Vietnam was the nadir of press-military relationships. It is commonly believed within the military today that a disloyal and adversarial press was the direct cause of the loss of that war. Mind you this is thirty years after the last Huey pulled pitch off the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon.

Contrary to what many believe, the relationship between the military and the press did not improve during Desert Storm. If anything, that relationship reinforced the perception in the military that the press was firmly ensconced in paragraph 1a of the operations order: Enemy Forces. For the part of the media, they probably had all their worst conceits about the military confirmed.

Despite all the ballyhoo and angst about reporter embedding, the relationship between the media and the military during OIF was not a love fest. Needless to say, it certainly has not been one over the past year.

The generic problem stems from the simple fact that the military is reluctant to provide any information outside a need-to-know basis for reason of operations security (or cynically to cover up blunders and miscalculations). The media want full access to everything in the name of keeping the public informed (or cynically to sell papers or garner ratings). The problem is probably insoluble though not for a lack of analysis.

Given that history, the wonder would not be that twelve journalists have been killed but given the nature of the war that were journalists targeted that only twelve have been killed. Hence my initial gut level disbelief.

Other bloggers [ Roger Simon | Hugh Hewitt | Jim Geraghty | Captain Ed | LGF] have handled the outrage. What are the facts?

The Committee to Protect Journalists website lists all journalists killed world wide. What follows is culled from their list of journalists killed in 2003 and 2004.

Of the 36 journalists who have been killed in Iraq 23 have been killed either by the Iraqi army or insurgents. Ten have been unambiguously killed by US forces. Four have died either in accidents (Michael Kelly) or could have been killed by either side.

For Eason to arrive at his number of 12 he 1) has to assert that all 10 journalists killed by US forces were “targeted” by them and 2) has to claim he knows how at least two of the three others died. All of which is poppycock. There have been two celebrated instances during this war where there have been allegations that journalists were targeted.

The first was the incident at the Palestine Hotel on April 8, 2003, that resulted in the deaths of Jose Couso and Taras Protsyuk. David Zucchino explores this story in detail in Thunder Run (simply THE best book on the Iraq War to date). Clearly it was not a deliberate targeting of journalists but he points out the high risk nature of using a camera in a hotel window during a gunbattle.

The second incident occurred was when Mazen al-Tumeizi was killed on September 12, 2004 while covering a crowd dancing the Macarena on a disabled American vehicle.

In short, Eason’s statement is nothing less than a pathetic libel against the men and women serving in Iraq and nothing more that what could be reasonably expected given the man’s history. There is not a shred of evidence that a single journalist was targeted because of his occupation. Two or three became targets because they had chosen to embed with the wrong side, an unfortunate and unavoidable side effect of being a war correspondent.

While it would be churlish to say “screw them” to people following their chosen profession and trying to put food on the table, it is also unreasonable to expect that a young soldier or Marine to hazard himself or his comrades in combat or at a roadblock or checkpoint.

Journalists, but more importantly those who pay them good money to go to dangerous places, need to climb down off their high horse of pseudo-neutrality and come to grips with the fact that this is an information war they are de facto combatants. Every story the file either helps us or it helps the enemy and the idea that they can rummage about the battlefield in safety is a non-starter.

2003 Score -- 13: Killed by Iraqis, 8; Killed by US, 4; Died in accident, 1

Terry Lloyd, ITV News, March 22, 2003, near Al-Zubayr
[D]isappeared after coming under fire while driving to the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

Paul Moran, freelance, March 22, 2003, Gerdigo
[K]illed in a suicide bombing when a man detonated a car at a checkpoint in northeastern Iraq.

Kaveh Golestan, freelance, April 2, 2003, Kifri
[K]illed in northern Iraq after stepping on a land mine.

Michael Kelly,, Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Post, April 3, 2003, outside of Baghdad
[K]illed while traveling with the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division just south of the Baghdad airport.

Christian Liebig, Focus, April 7, 2003, outside Baghdad
[D]ied in an Iraqi missile attack while accompanying the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

Julio Anguita Parrado, El Mundo, April 7, 2003, outside Baghdad
[D]ied in an Iraqi missile attack while accompanying the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

Tareq Ayyoub, Al-Jazeera, April 8, 2003, Baghdad
[K]illed when a U.S. missile struck the [Al-Jazeera] Baghdad bureau.

José Couso, Telecinco, and Taras Protsyuk, Reuters, April 8, 2003, Baghdad
[D]ied after a U.S. tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

Richard Wild, freelance, July 5, 2003, Baghdad
[D]ied after an unidentified assailant approached him and shot him in the head at close range.

Jeremy Little, NBC News, July 6, 2003, Fallujah
[Fatally I]njured in a grenade attack in the Iraqi town of Fallujah on June 29 while embedded with U.S. troops.

Mazen Dana, Reuters, August 17, 2003, outside Baghdad
[K]illed by machine gun fire from a U.S. tank near the capital…The soldier in the tank who fired on Dana did so without warning, while the journalist filmed the vehicle approaching him from about 55 yards (50 meters).

Ahmed Shawkat, Bilah Ittijah, October 28, 2003, Mosul
[Shot] and killed by one or more gunmen at his office in Mosul.

2004 Score -- 23: Killed by Iraqis, 15; Killed by US, 6; Died in accident, 3

Duraid Isa Mohammed, CNN, January 27, 2004, outside Baghdad
A single gunman with an AK-47…opened fire on one of the vehicles.

Safir Nader, Qulan TV; Haymin Mohamed Salih, Qulan TV; Ayoub Mohamed, Kurdistan TV; Gharib Mohamed Salih, Kurdistan TV; Semko Karim Mohyideen, and Abdel Sattar Abdel Karim, Al Ta’akhy, February 1, 2004, Arbil
[K]illed when the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) were attacked in twin suicide bombings.

Nadia Nasrat, Iraq Media Network/Diyala TV, March 18, 2004, Baqouba
The bus was transporting employees to the media center when a car carrying three men approached … The assailants opened fire before fleeing the scene.

Ali Abdel Aziz, Al-Arabiya and Ali al-Khatib, Al-Arabiya, March 19, 2004, Baghdad
Cameraman Abdel Aziz and reporter al-Khatib of the United Arab Emiratesbased news channel Al-Arabiya were shot dead near a U.S. military checkpoint in Baghdad.

Burhan Mohamed Mazhour, ABC, March 26, 2004, Fallujah
According to ABC News, Mazhour was struck in the head by a single bullet and later died in a hospital.

Asaad Kadhim, Al-Iraqiya TV, April 19, 2004, near Samara
According to media reports, Kimmitt said that coalition forces at the checkpoint warned the journalists’ vehicle to stop by firing several warning shots. When the vehicle ignored those shots, Kimmitt said, forces fired at the car.

Waldemar Milewicz, TVP, May 7, 2004, Mahmoudiya and Mounir Bouamrane, TVP, May 7, 2004, Mahmoudiya
[S]hot by armed gunmen, presumably Iraqi insurgents, while riding in their car.

Rashid Hamid Wali, Al-Jazeera, May 21, 2004, Karbala
[K]illed by a single gunshot to the head when he peered over the edge of the rooftop of the Khaddam Al-Hussein Hotel, where an Al-Jazeera news team was covering fighting between U.S. troops and members the Mehdi Army.

Shinsuke Hashida, freelance and Kotaro Ogawa, freelance, May 27, 2004, near Mahmoudiya
[K]illed along with their translator when their car came under attack by Iraqi gunmen.

Mahmoud Hamid Abbas, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, August 15, 2004, Fallujah
[K]illed on assignment in Fallujah.

Enzo Baldoni, freelance, August 26, 2004, near Najaf
[M]urdered by kidnappers from a militant group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq.

Mazen al-Tumeizi, Al-Arabiya, September 12, 2004, Baghdad
[K]illed after a U.S. helicopter fired missiles and machine guns to destroy a disabled American vehicle.

Karam Hussein, European Pressphoto Agency, October 14, 2004, Mosul
[K]illed by a group of gunmen in front of his home.

Dina Mohammed Hassan, Al-Hurriya, October 14, 2004 Baghdad
[K]illed in a drive-by shooting in front of her Baghdad.

Dhia Najim, freelance, November 1, 2004, Ramadi
“‘We did kill him,” an unnamed military official told The Times. “‘He was out with the bad guys. He was there with them, they attacked, and we fired back and hit him.”