Page 203 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Doctrines of Media and State 193

other terrorist acts of barbarism, as the use of concepts like collateral damage
"not only cynically reduces the murder of innocents to something banal; it is a
hypocritical attempt to excuse the murders that result from repetitive recourse to
military force."59 The challenges of Achcar and others to official U.S. humani-
tarian propaganda have unsurprisingly been overlooked amongst media organi-
zations that are not only heavily reliant on official sources, but also extraordinar-
ily gullible in accepting and embracing noble official justifications for war.
Major news outlets have quietly acknowledged, from time to time, that
there are clear dangers to the people of Iraq in the face of "precision bombing."
This point was perhaps best seen shortly before the March 2003 invasion, when
the American news agencies in Baghdad ordered their journalists out for their
own safety.60 The orders for reporters to leave Iraq in anticipation of "shock and
awe" showed that there was a strong concern amongst American journalists that
Iraq was an unsafe place at the time of the invasion. U.S. bombing in Iraq is
directed overwhelmingly in urban areas with heavily concentrated populations.
Most of the fighting throughout Iraq has been between American troops and
guerillas conducting hit and run attacks against the U.S. Iraqi fighters use the
urban landscape in order to blend in with civilians in an attempt to avoid retribu-
tion by massive conventional bombing. While major American media outlets
maintain that the concern with not killing large numbers of civilians in urban
areas prevents the U.S. from unleashing its full military might on Iraqi resistors,
Independent-Left media critics counter that bombing in urban areas is the pri-
mary reason why large numbers of civilians (in the tens of thousands) have died.
Marc Herold, a University of New Hampshire professor and contributor to Iraq
Body Count argues that: "The mantra that precision weapons will kill few people
is false when the Pentagon is dropping them in civilian-rich areas. The U.S.
military has carpet-bombed around Baghdad and in the northern areas where
concentrations of Iraqi fighters are believed to exist."
As American forces bomb buildings throughout Iraqi cities, it is difficult to
verify who exactly is in each building, or how many civilians are killed versus
how many "insurgents." For example, the New York Times reported in 2003 that:
"Every day, briefers at Central Command show high-tech images of buildings in
and around Baghdad being blown to bits by America's advanced precision
weaponry. Were there people inside? No one can say."6' Even when targets are
hit precisely, it is difficult, if not impossible, to know for certain whether civil-
ians have been killed, and if so, how many. Admiral Stufflebeam explains that
"smart bombs," dropped from B-2 bombers, have a specified margin of error
rate of thirteen meters, or forty-two feet. Even when accurate, these bombs kill
everyone within a 120-meter (396 foot) radius, and 790-foot diameter from the
blast site. To be safe from serious shrapnel damage, individuals must be at least
365 meters away, or 1,204 feet, and to be safe from all effects a full 1,000 me-
ters away, or 3,300 feet (three-fifths of a mile). Such revelations raise important
questions about the indiscriminate nature of American bombing concentrated in
dense areas with large populations.