Page 205 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Doctrines of Media and State 195

to the Iraqi resistance, it is succeeding in leveling huge areas of Falluja, recalling
the Vietnam-era lament that we had to destroy the village in order to save it."74

Iraq and Human Rights:
Torture, Mass Detainment, and Executions

As a human rights worker in Iraq, Cliff Kindy documented many horror stories
about the deaths of Iraqi civilians-stories of people killed by bombs and urban
warfare, others tortured while under detainment, and finally, some who had re-
portedly been executed by American troops. Working with the Christian
Peacemaker Teams (CPT), Kindy risked his life by traveling to Iraq in order to
promote nonviolence at a time when violence was escalating between resistance
groups and the U.S. military. In documenting cases of human rights abuse, CPT
was taking a stand against the escalating violence and destabilization of Iraq.
Working with CPT, Kindy was a vocal critic of the American occupation.
Kindy's human rights work represented a departure from mass media reporting,
which generally refuses to implicate the U.S. in inciting major human rights
violations in Iraq. In November of 2003, Kindy met with a number of Iraqis near
Ramadi to investigate charges that American troops had executed local Iraqi
civilians. CPT determined after speaking with locals who had allegedly wit-
nessed the incident that American troops, searching the area for "insurgents,"
had detained three young Iraqis who were thought to be hostile to the occupa-
tion.

Assuming there may have been resistance fighters in his [one of the Iraqi's]
house, American soldiers split into two groups and entered opposite ends of his
home. They initially cleared the women who were in the house and then con-
tinued their search. Apparently, there had been a shot fired in the house in con-
fusion, which led the soldiers to begin firing as they thought they were being
threatened. As it turned out, there were no resistance fighters in the house, and
the initial shot had been from one of the groups of American soldiers. In the
confusion, a few soldiers had been killed by friendly fire. We were told that in
their frustration and anger, the surviving soldiers left the house, went outside,
and proceeded to execute the three detainees. Afterwards, they called in the
tank and air strike to level the house.75
Kindy spoke with a number of American soldiers, the coroner, neighbors, and
family members of the deceased in verifying this potentially explosive story.
Kindy recounted that: "Although all the details were not perfectly clear, we had
enough information to bring attention to this abuse, so we called a press confer-
ence in order or the coroner and neighbors to testify."76 Only A1 Jazeera, A1
Arabiya, and the Associated Press ended up running with the story, as an earth-
quake in Bam, Iran led most of the other media outlets that had planned on at-
tending to cover the natural disaster instead. This meant that the Associated
Press was the only western media outlet that covered the story.