Antiwar.com Blog

The Bushies–sorry, Iraqi Governing Council–got caught with their pants down on the new Iraqi flag, so they have now changed it. Kind of.

Via Atrios, we learn that Sinclair TV has announced a boycott of Ted Koppel’s Nightline show in which he intends to read the names and show a picture of all the Americans killed in combat in Iraq.

Apparently, Sinclair is only interested in good news from Iraq. This is from a story in the Baltimore Sun dated February 18, 2004:

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Jon Leiberman and Mark Hyman are in Iraq to report the positive, “untold stories” that we’re not getting from the liberal media. Hyman tells David Folkenflik: “Hopefully, what we’ve done is given our viewers more of a sense of what’s happening, beyond ‘There was a car-bombing today.’ …What’s really fascinating to me is the optimism that so many Iraqis have.”

Mmmmkay. Oddly, googling either “Jon Lieberman” or “Mark Hyman” produces no stories with their byline. Maybe they’re still tracking down that good news.

Via Poynter Online:

STATEMENT OF THE SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

The ABC Television network announced on Tuesday that the Friday, April 30th edition of “Nightline” will consist entirely of Ted Koppel reading aloud the names of U.S. servicemen and women killed in action in Iraq. Despite the denials by a spokeswoman for the show the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.

While the Sinclair Broadcast Group honors the memory of the brave members of the military who have sacrificed their lives in the service of our country, we do not believe such political statements should be disguised as news content. As a result, we have decided to preempt the broadcast of “Nightline” this Friday on each of our stations which air ABC programming.

We understand that our decision in this matter may be questioned by some. Before you judge our decision, however, we would ask that you first question Mr. Koppel as to why he chose to read the names of the 523 troops killed in combat in Iraq, rather than the names of the thousands of private citizens killed in terrorists attacks since and including the events of September 11, 2001. In his answer, you will find the real motivation behind his action scheduled for this Friday.

ABC NEWS STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO SINCLAIR

We respectfully disagree with Sinclair’s decision to pre-empt “Nightline’s” tribute to America’s fallen soldiers which will air this Friday, April 30. The Nightline broadcast is an expression of respect which simply seeks to honor those who have laid down their lives for this country. ABC News is dedicated to thoughtful and balanced coverage and reports on the events shaping our world with neither fear nor favor — as our audience expects, deserves, and rightly demands. Contrary to the statement issued by Sinclair, which takes issue with our level of coverage of the effects of terrorism on our citizens, ABC News and all of our broadcasts, including “Nightline,” have reported hundreds of stories on 9-11. Indeed, on the first anniversary of 9-11, ABC News broadcast the names of the victims of that horrific attack.

In sum, we are particularly proud of the journalism and award winning coverage ABC News has produced since September 11, 2001. ABC News will continue to report on all facets of the war in Iraq and the War on Terrorism in a manner consistent with the standards which ABC News has set for decades.

The general in charge of the US-run prison system in Iraq has been suspended and put under investigation over the alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees by US soldiers.

A senior US military spokesman says Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was suspended from her duties in late January after six US soldiers were indicted for mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

Gen Karpinski and another six officers are under administrative investigation that could result in letters of reprimand.

The US Army confirmed the suspension after American network CBS broadcast images of US troops mistreating Iraqi prisoners.

Photographs aired by the network on 60 Minutes II include one showing a prisoner standing on a box with a hood over his head and wires coming from his hands.

The network says he was told he would be electrocuted if he fell off.

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UPDATE: Rahul Mahajan at Empire Notes makes an interesting post on this topic. Rahul:

April 28, 11:30 am EST. Late start blogging this morning because I was on MSNBC News in a “debate” about the shocking (but not surprising) degradation and abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison committed by U.S. personnel.

Read the rest, including shocking quotes from one of the indicted soldiers’ emails home.

The Independent is reporting that the 36th battalion, composed of Iraqi Arab and Kurdish peshmerga militia , has mutinied. The battalion has been fighting alongside the Marines in the siege of Fallujah. The Independent reports that the Marines separated out those who would fight from those who wouldn’t.

The battalion may have split along ethnic lines. Its soldiers were recruited from the militiamen of the Iraqi political parties which belong to the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, and about half were Kurdish soldiers, known as peshmerga. The Kurds were prepared to fight but Iraqi Arab soldiers said they had had enough. Those who refused to fight were withdrawn from the battlefield for retraining.

The speculation about the peshmerga fighting against the Arabs alongside the Americans is confirmed repeatedly.

From an interesting article by Charles Paul Freund on images of war dead:

The struggle for war-image control began when a camera was first aimed at soldiers in Crimea, but that struggle is hardly founded on the absolutes implied by arguments like the one over the war coffins. The simple version of this and similar debates—that the state must hide its dead or risk growing opposition to its war—is a pointless simplification of a complex phenomenon. Yet both the state, which wants to limit these images’ exposure, and war critics, who want them disseminated, are acting as if the reaction to such images is necessarily Pavlovian.

Freund is correct to write that reactions to war images are not always what one would expect them to be. (For a more in-depth study of this phenomenon, read David Perlmutter’s Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in International Crises, which I hope to discuss in greater detail at some point.) I know plenty of yahoos whose response to photos of dead American soldiers would be something akin to, “Let’s go nuke all those ragheads!” As far as I’m concerned, the point in showing uncensored images from the war is not that they will automatically turn everyone against it. I don’t believe they will. I do believe, first, that state censorship is inherently un-American, and, second, that showing such images (of soldiers and civilians) would finally give this war the unchallenged attention it deserves. A photo of a dismembered Iraqi child might not turn a majority of the country against the war, but imagine showing one on the nightly news just once a month and then tell me that we would still be duking it out over gay marriage or Janet Jackson’s bosom. That’s why the U.S. government and its cheerleaders suppress these images–they don’t want anyone, especially the great, apathetic middle of kinda-pros and kinda-antis, to think too hard about what’s happening.

International Blog Roundup

I thought it might be interesting to some AntiWar readers if I put together a post of links to some good blogs written from interesting places that you might not have discovered yet. These are all active blogs that are worth checking daily.

• De Spectaculis – This blog is written by Martial, an American in Kabul, Afghanistan.
• wildfirejo – Written by a British woman in Baghdad, who is a performer in Circus2Iraq. Jo is also involved in many humanitarian efforts in Iraq and recently helped take medical supplies to Fallujah.
• Beyond Northern Iraq – Written by Stuart Hughes, a journalist who lost his leg (Mr. Stumpy) to a landmine in April, 2003 during the Iraq invasion. Stuart is a BBC reporter now in London, but he blogs from everywhere.
• Raed in the Middle – Written by Raed Jarrar who originally blogged on Salam Pax’s blog Where is Raed? Raed blogs from Amman, Jordan and Baghdad, where his family lives.
• The Religious Policeman – Yes, there is actually brave blogger writing from Saudi Arabia. Alhamedi Alanezi amazingly blogs from Riyadh. He even has a FAQ, in which he explains how he manages to be critical of the Saudi government.
• The Angry Arab – Written by As`ad AbuKhalil, who is from Beirut, Lebanon, but has lived in the US since the early eighties and is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley.

Of course there are quite a few other bloggers out there telling their stories, and more come online all the time but I listed these because they are frequently updated and often have unique insights that can’t be found in the mainstream media.