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Accomplices
in War Crimes
By Ghali Hassan
02/21/05
"Information
Clearing House" - - Worldwide polls conducted before and
during the US war on Iraq, revealed clear majority of world public
opinion opposed the US war without UN approval. However, polls
conducted during and after the war found that only a minority of
US citizens were aware of this. A significant majority
of Americans believed that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda and Iraq
involved in the 9/11 attacks. Further, before the war overwhelming
majorities believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
[1].
Despite numerous reports
clearing Iraq from any link to al-Qaeda and involvement in 9/11
attacks, or in procession of WMD, the numbers of Americans
supporting the war remain almost the same. Even President Bush has
publicly admitted ‘there are no WMD in Iraq’. Yet recent US
poll conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and the Ohio
University reveals that 47 percent of US citizens approved of the
war against the Iraqi people compared with 44 percent.
How these misperceptions developed and persisted when all
the allegations against Iraq proved to be fabricated lies? This
distortion of the truth is due to the fantastic performance of
Western mainstream media. The best description of it is that it is
the ‘art of deceiving the public’ [2]. Together with the
governments, mainstream media, led by Britain, the US and
Australia, managed a campaign of deception and lies in order to
soften the public to support an illegal act of aggression against
the defenceless people of Iraq.
Despite the horrific crimes and wanton destruction caused
by an illegal act of aggression and Occupation, mainstream media
continues to promote the Occupation of Iraq as a
“humanitarian” act. And ignoring international
law experts who have substantiated that the war was an
“illegal” act of aggression against the Iraqi people. Major
mainstream media particularly in Britain and the US have
deliberately failed to inform their citizens that
the war on Iraq is not sanctioned by the UN, and therefore was
illegal and in violations of UN Charter.
In Britain, the
BBC, the mother of all acts of deception, led and is still leading
the chorus of mainstream media deception in its war against the
people of Iraq. A study by the Cardiff
School of Journalism found that the BBC followed a more
pro-government line than its commercial rivals. It stated that the
BBC was more likely to unquestioningly relay false stories such as
the non-existent scud missiles supposedly fired into Kuwait in the
early stages of the war as well as the mythical Basra
‘uprising’. The study also made reference to Tony Blair claim
that captured British soldiers had been executed by the Iraqi
authorities; a claim the British Government retracted the next
day, but not the BBC. Professor Justin Lewis, the study leader
concluded that the BBC is leading the way in its support for the
British Government pro-war propaganda [3], and failing its
responsibility to the people. By contrast, in Germany, the public
broadcasters' ARD and ZDF provide more balanced coverage of the
event than the commercial RTL”, writes, David Ward of the Centre
for Media Policy and Development [4].
A second study of the media was
carried out by the Media Tenor group (cited in David Ward), which
looked at the performance of different broadcasters in five
countries, found that the BBC gave least airtime to anti-war views
with just 2% of airtime given over to opponents of the war. By
contrast the American ABC gave 7% of airtime over to anti-war
views [4]. This is frightening because many people around the world,
including the British people, followed world events (i.e. wars) on
the BBC.
In the US, the cheerleaders of the war on Iraq are
America’s biggest: Fox, CBS, ABC, CNN and NBC, followed by the
print media and National Public Radio (NPR). “American had these
misperceptions not simply because of internal biases but because
of the important role being played by variations of the stimuli
they received from their mainstream media”, writes Steven Kull,
of the University of Maryland.
A study conducted by
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found that the pro-war
views on the major networks were overwhelmingly more frequent than
the anti-war views. The role of the major media network is to
promote the government policy rather than serve the community and
provide balance reporting. Like the selling of the war, and the
destruction of the vibrant city of Fallujah, the continue
Occupation of Iraq by US and British forces is sold by mainstream
media and journalists as democracy under occupation. It is a lie
that brings only more suffering and misery to the Iraqi people.
Journalists have failed
in their moral responsibility and principles to protect the truth.
With the exception of honourable few, Western journalists and
correspondents are relegated to ‘embedded’ propaganda agents
serving the interests of imperial power. “Journalists
are supposed to perform a watchdog function, not a lapdog
function”, said Danny Schechter, editor of Mediachannel.org,
and a former journalist with CNN and ABC.
Those who
wouldn't toe the line were swiftly dismissed, if not
deliberately killed to eliminate any witnesses to US-Britain
crimes in Iraq. “At least 12 journalists” were killed by US
military in Iraq, reported Dominic Timms of the Guardian on
18 February 2005.
Here in Australia, the
media plays its most vital role in keeping the Australian people
well entertained and poorly informed. The Government of Mr. John
Howard (the most insignificant of the “coalition of the
willing”) managed to cover-up Australia’s role in the war, and
Australia’s involvement in the imprisonment, torture and murder
of innocent Iraqi prisoners and detainees. It is reported recently
that Australian interrogators were involved in the murder of a
well-known Iraqi scientist during interrogation. This is natural.
Australia has the most controlled and the most deceptive media in
the Western world. The Australian John Pilger described the media
here accurately as a ‘small fishpond’ with only very few large
white sharks swimming freely at the expense of the Australian
people’s interests. With no independent media and a foreign
policy subservient to US interests, Australia is virtually a
propaganda outpost for US imperialism.
The purpose of this imperialist propaganda is to deny the
Iraqi people their rights to rule their country by themselves.
Omitted by the mainstream media is how Iraqis are arrested abused
and murdered at ease by soldiers of coalition forces and
mercenaries. The Iraqi National Resistance against the Occupation
is portrayed as a band of “suicide bombers”. Like in Israel,
“suicide bombing” is promoted and amplified in mainstream
media in order to discredit the name and
image of people’s struggle, including the Iraqi Resistance
struggle, against the injustice of foreign occupations. As John
Pilger writes, “Those who kill people with car bombs are
‘terrorists’; those who kill far more people with cluster
bombs are the noble occupants of a ‘quagmire’”. Reports from
Iraq have contradicted this distorted image of a legitimate
popular Resistance movement fighting against illegal and
tyrannical occupation [5]. Furthermore, Article 51 of the UN
Charter guarantees resistance against foreign occupation.
Despite the chaotic situation wrought by the tyrannical
nature of the Occupation, the mainstream media alleged that Iraq
is now on its way to “freedom” and “democracy”. The new
front is Syria and Iran. The drumbeats of war against Syria and
Iran have already begun. After the
assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, former Lebanese prime minister,
Western mainstream media immediately pointed the finger at Syria,
not Israel that stands to benefit from any crisis in Lebanon, and
is probably responsible for Mr. Al-Hariri’s assassination.
Israel’s crimes and terror are taboos in Western mainstream
media. The al-Hariri's death is part of the US-Israel plan to
divide the region and weaken the unity of its peoples.
The pretexts for war are the same. Nothing has changed. It is as
if war is replacing peace and death is replacing life for those
living outside the empire and its peripheries.
Last
October, the prestigious British medical journal The
Lancet published a study by a team of Johns Hopkins University, Al-Mustansiriyah
University in Baghdad and Columbia University researchers showing
that over 100,000
Iraqi civilians had been killed since the war began in
March 2003. The study, which was a
conservative estimates, had very short life and generally
dismissed and ignored by Western mainstream media. Dr. Les
Roberts, the researcher at John Hopkins University and the lead
author of the study expected the public response to his study to
be “moral outrage”; instead he was shocked by the muted or
dismissive reception. Can you imagine what the response will be to
100,000 civilians dead in New York or in London?
“For years, the
neocons’ [new euphemism for Americano fascists] push for war
against Iraq was largely uncovered by the US media. For even
longer, the neocons’ close connections to Israel have gone
largely unmentioned in mainstream American news reports. As a
result, very few Americans know to what degree many of those
responsible for the tragic US invasion and occupation of Iraq have
been motivated by Israeli concerns. The omission in coverage of
Iraq has been profoundly disastrous, both for the Middle East and
for Americans”, writes Alison Weir of If
Americans Knew. The true function of the media is to
tell the truth and to hold accountable those in power.
The fact that mainstream
media has had some roles in promoting illegal war of aggression,
particularly the US-Britain war against Iraq, is enough to suggest
that the media failed its true function and is complicit in war
crimes, and ‘crimes against humanity’.
According to the World
Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), an international peoples initiative
investigating the truth about the US war against and occupation of
Iraq, found that mainstream media reporting on Iraq violated the
principles of Article (6) of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Article (6)
of the Nuremberg Tribunal set to investigate crimes committed by
the Nazis stated that: “Leaders, organisers, instigators and
accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a
common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes
(crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity) are
responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of
such a plan”. Dr. Tony Alessandrini, a human rights activist and
one of the organiser of the WTI told the meeting in Rome, Italy,
that ‘evidence of active complicity of the mainstream media in
wrongs committed against the people of Iraq, and the wrongs of
deception and incitement, was now overwhelming’, reported IPS news on 14 February 2004.
No matter what, the
responsibility of aggression and violence reverts on the leaders
and their accomplices who waged an illegal war, which was rejected
by the majority of the world community. Mainstream media shares
responsibility and should be held accountable for the lies they
promoted and for failing in their duty to honestly inform the
public.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth Western
Australia. He can be reached at e-mail: G.Hassan@exchange.curtin.edu.au
Notes:
[1]. Steven Kull et
al. (2003-2004). Misperceptions,
the Media, and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 118 (4). http://www.psqonline.org
[2]. Mark
Curtis. (2004). ‘Unpeople’. London: Vintage.
[3]. Justin Lewis. (2004). Television,
Public Opinion and the War in Iraq: The Case of Britain Int.
J. Pub. Opinion Res. Vol. 16 (3), 295-310. http://ijpor.oupjournals.org/cgi/reprint/16/3/295
[4]. David Ward. (2004). Public
Service Broadcasting in Europe and the Coverage of the Iraq War.
14th JAMCO International Symposium.
http://www.jamco.or.jp/2004_symposium2/en/02/
[5]. Molly Bingham, Boston
Globe, 15 December 2004.
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