By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
May 16, 2003
On May 9th, the very first question asked by a reporter in a news briefing with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks, commander, U.S. Central Command, was:
Q: “Mr. Secretary, General, journalists in Iraq report that a sense of public order is still lacking.”
The exchange between Rumsfeld and the reporter went like this:
Rumsfeld: “Who reports this?”
Q: “Journalists.”
Rumsfeld: “Journalists.”
Q: “In Iraq... is still lacking in Baghdad and in some other parts of the country. And some U.S. officials are quoted as saying that U.S. planning and execution of the postwar reconstruction were inadequate. Do you think that any mistakes were made in this area? And what is your assessment of the current state of the reconstruction effort?”
Rumsfeld: “Who are the officials?”
Q: They're unnamed.
Rumsfeld: “Ah. (Laughter.) That's nice. (Laughter.) What you're seeing in the press and on television are slices of truth. You're seeing that someone is harmed, or in a particular location the water isn't back on, or in a different location the power is only intermittent, or is in 80 or 90 percent of the city and not 100 percent of the city. All of that's true. A good deal of it, of course, was also true prior to the war. And it seems to me it's important to have that in mind.”
Rumsfeld then gave a very precise accounting of what was going on I have not seen reported by any news source. I suspect it is not reported because most of it does not fill a certain “news” criteria – i.e. being confrontational and dramatic enough to get the public’s attention. Rumsfeld’s response, that “General Franks' organization and in General Garner's organization have done an outstanding job and are continuing to make things better in almost every corner of that country,” is not considered “news.”
What is “news” was illustrated Wednesday evening in an exchange between Bill O’Reilly and a black woman in Chicago who was politely suggesting that the U.S. military be brought into her area of Chicago to protect children who were being killed by drug dealers in gun fights. She said 16 children had been killed in the last week in Chicago in such gun fights. O’Reilly pointed out that it was illegal under the Posse Comitatus law for the U.S. military to be involved in civil disorder in America.
While I have been unable to verify that figure in recent Chicago news stories, the number of homicides in 2002 in Chicago, a city with 2.7 million people, was 645. Compare that with the 101 American military who died, through April 9, 2003, in Operation Iraqi Freedom. And, only 73 of those who died in the war in Iraq were killed in combat. The rest were accidents.
That Chicago woman has an excellent point. Why is it that the American media is ready to attack and condemn the Bush Administration and our military for not having perfect peace and quiet in Baghdad while we seem to be experiencing a considerable amount of civic unrest in our own cities that goes blissfully unreported?
Consider a lead article in the New York Times on Tuesday of this week that began “United States military forces in Iraq will have the authority to shoot looters on sight under a tough new security setup that will include hiring more police officers and banning ranking members of the Baath Party from public service, American officials said today.”
This was exactly 2 days after the New York Times printed a 7900 word “Correction” in which it blamed Jayson Blair, a young black reporter, for having “misled readers.” The very next day, on May 14th, the Defense Department corrected the misquote in the N.Y. Times with: “American soldiers will only shoot looters who threaten their lives, the Army general in charge of land forces in Iraq said in Baghdad today.
“In an internationally televised press conference, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan said that simple looting is not enough to warrant shooting an Iraqi civilian. Soldiers will, however, arrest and hold those caught in criminal acts.”
That sounds to me to be almost identical to routine police response when race riots take place in American cities. In most recent civil unrest in America, the police only use their weapons when they are attacked by the rioters. Yet, the New York Times in what appears to be Times policy, has consistently portrayed criminal behavior in Iraq as legitimate “protest” and then attempts to create an aura of incompetence when that behavior isn’t instantly halted.
Basically, this is exactly the same approach the N.Y. Times took in reporting the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of four policemen accused of beating Rodney King. In 1992 52 people were killed, nearly 3,000 injured and there hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage crippled Los Angeles. When people called “unruly demonstrators” by the N.Y. Times were committing arson, looting, stealing cars, robbing, and murdering people, who was the villain?
According to the NY Times, the villain was the Los Angeles Police Department. A May 1, 1992 NY Times article, with an accusatory title: “RIOTS IN LOS ANGELES: The Blue Line; Surprised, Police React Slowly as Violence Spreads,” was written as “30 major structural fires, more than half unattended because fire fighters could not get police protection against angry aggressive mobs of youths”
After more than 200 years of self-rule, Americans tried to burn down their city because they were mad about a mere court decision! Give the people of Iraq a little time. After a few months, I suspect Baghdad will be every bit as safe as Los Angeles and Chicago
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com