MEDIA - LOOKING GLASS NEWS
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U.S. kills, media helps hide the truth
by Eli Stephens    left i on the news
Entered into the database on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 @ 15:23:04 MST


 

Untitled Document

Let's start with the headline in today's story of tragedy and war crimes: "Iraqis Say 11 People Killed in U.S. Raid." Oh, "Iraqis say," do they? Not quite. After the second paragraph of the story tells us "the military said only four people were killed -- a man, two women and a child," we eventually make our way down to the ninth paragraph where we learn that there's a little more than the word of the "Iraqis": "Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at the hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives."

So, even with AP photographers on the scene documenting the atrocity, as "hard" and non-circumstantial as evidence gets, the AP still gives a "he-said, she-said" credibility to the ludicrous claim of the U.S. military that only four people were killed.

As to the actual story, well, what can be said that hasn't been said hundreds of times before? Why were these 11 people killed? "The U.S. military said it was targeting and captured an individual suspected of supporting foreign fighters for the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist network." But much higher in the article, we were told that "the U.S. military acknowledged the raid and said it captured one insurgent." So it now appears it wasn't an "insurgent" at all, but a suspected supporter of resistance fighters. And based on that suspicion, the U.S. was willing to use warplanes and armor to flatten a house (a curious way to attempt to "capture" someone, incidentally), inside of which they had no idea who was present, and in the process to kill 11 people.

By the way, the first sentence of this post contains the phrase "war crimes." You knew that phrase didn't come from the AP article, didn't you?

Postscript: CNN reports the story something like this: "U.S. troops report that they were shot at from the house, and they returned fire." Sorry, attacking a house with bombs and tank shells is not just "returning fire." It's a complete and callous indifference to the possibility that any non-combatants might be inside, even if you accept the right of the U.S. troops to be there in the first place (which of course I don't).