The greatest causality of the Iraqi war is press freedom
(republishing, copying, no restrictions)
By: Father Shay Cullen
The horrifying death toll of Iraqi civilians is in the hundreds of thousands, they are literally being blown to pieces daily by suicide bombers, seven hundred alone in April and May and there are more than 2000 US troops dead and thousands wounded seriously. Many of these soldiers are only 17 and 18 years old teenagers and in other counties and conflicts they are considered "child soldiers".
The madness and mayhem continues as the intensity of the insurgency takes to more vicious terrorist attacks against civilians, like all wars it is brutal, bloody and one of the most serious causalities is the reputation and honor of America.
The wanton destruction of Falluja with the death of 600 civilians and a claimed 2000 insurgents left a city in ruins with 36,000 homes, 8,400 shops, 60 nurseries and schools and 65 religious sites utterly destroyed.
A huge refugee camp still holds most of the residents. Refugees reported that residents waving white flags were shot dead and US tanks drove around with dead bodies tied to them as war trophies according to a well-researched report by journalists Jonathan Steele and Dahr Jamail.
There was a quote attributed to President Richard Nixon about how to subdue enemies with brute force "When you have them by the throat, their minds and hearts will follow". How very wrong he was. The Vietnam war was a humiliating defeat for the US forces and after all the bloodshed, senseless deaths and suffering, maimed and deformed children, nothing was gained. Imposing regime change by brute military forces is doomed to fail but George W. Bush and his administration cant learn the lesson.
This is one clear example of how not to fight insurgency. History shows that only political solutions solve what is essentially a political and religious problem. The policy of using unrestrained brute force, torture physical and psychological only serves to intensify the hatred of the Muslim opponents to the US led invasion. That anger and hatred is so easily inflamed by well orchestrated propaganda as seen in the recent use of the Newsweek report that a US internal Pentagon report on the abuses in the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was investigating incidents where pages of the Muslim sacred book, the Koran, were flushed down the toilet.
The magazine report was brandished by Imran Khan, a Pakistani politician at a press conference. This was a used extremist in Afghanistan to incite riots during which 17 people died. The Bush administration called the Newsweek story irresponsible reporting and forced it to apologize and the White House Spokesman Scott McClellan called on the magazine to "help repair the damage that has been done. But is it not those responsible for the invasion, torture, and widespread prisoner abuse that are really responsible?
Subsequently the Newsweek report was actually substituted and the magazine exonerated when documents optioned through the freedom of information act from the US FBI proved eyewitness evidence by FBI agents to the acts of desecration of the Koran. Those acts of desecration had already been long documents by the detainees released from US detention and interviewed by journalists and documented by Human Rights Watch.
So it was nothing new. The sexual abuse and humiliation inflicted on prisoners in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib that so inflamed the Arab world and shocked the West have gone improperly addresses and unpunished. Not a single ranking officer has been reprimanded or held answerable for that.
The reputation of the United States has been sullied too by the failure of the administration to investigate the continuous reports of abuses in its many detention and torture facilities. Forty deaths have been reported and hundreds of innocent suspects have been delivered to foreign interrogators for interrogations by more brutal torture by contract as previously reported in this column. The pressure on journalists from the US administration is a sever blow to the freedom of the press in the United States. How ironic that President George Bush justifies everything he does in the name of freedom.
Journalists are Self-censoring and under pressure to ignore the mounting evidence of torture and abuse of prisoners held by the US military. The truth is now the casualty of war. When truth is shackled abuse has every freedom, when we remain silent, the cries of the victims grow louder and unheard.
This we cannot allow because when they come for you and me with chains and cuffs who will speak for all of us? [End]
