[Peace-discuss] photo fraud (fwd)

[Jim Buell]

To his credit, Peter Jennings had a pretty good piece on this on ABC last 
night - I flipped to it just before 10 pm, so it must have been either 
special coverage or one of those prime-time network news shows. He showed 
the small crowd of people pulling at the statue (first with a rope - yeah, 
right; of course it didn't budge), then the US tank pulling up, the Marine 
climbing up the ladder and motioning away an Iraqi in order to unfurl the 
US flag (according to a story I saw today, the same flag had been flying at 
the Pentagon on 9-11-01 - my, what a cooooooincidence! - 
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_769376.html), mentioned that the flag 
stayed up for a minute, 50 seconds, then was replaced by a pre-1991 Iraqi 
flag for a little over 2 minutes, etc. He even pointed out the fact that 
there were all of 15 people gathered around the statue after it finally 
came down - and that seven of them were photojournalists, snapping shots at 
the other 8. (He also commented that of the 2 flags, guess which shot was 
likely to get more play in the Arab press - then I switched over to Fox and 
saw them glorifying the very same shot.)

Remember of course that this statue was right outside the Palestine Hotel 
and its 200-plus foreign correspondents - where only a day before, the US 
military had killed two Reuters journalists with tank fire. (Shortly after 
blowing away an Al-Jazeera reporter on that network's building with bombs 
from a jet.) I can't help thinking that the photo-op was the military's way 
of getting the journalists' coverage back on track, so to speak. After all, 
even Wolf Blitzer had, on Tuesday, started showing footage of the Iraqi boy 
who'd had his arms blown off and lost his family. (Surreally, Blitzer 
narrated that CNN had been overwhelmed with calls and emails from viewers 
wanting to help the boy - he even thoughtfully provided contact information 
for a foundation that intends to donate prosthetic limbs to Iraqis. How 
sweet we Americans are.) My feeling on seeing Blitzer's piece that 
afternoon was, "ok, this is where the lapdog journalists show the military 
that they're not quite the pushovers our congresspeople are - and that they 
just might have the potential to turn public opinion a little if the 
military makes it too tough on them. (After all, Aaron Brown of CNN had 
been saying for days, even on Amy Goodman's show, that CNN wouldn't show 
civilian casualties graphically because it would offend American viewers' 
sensibilities. Ahem.) Now of course CNN and its even less savory 
competition (MSNBC and Fox) are back on board again, thanks to that statue.

Robert Fisk's story for today in the Independent (www.independent.co.uk) 
also includes the statue - he was there, and a lot of other places around 
Baghdad over the course of the day as well. As he commented:

>In Al-Fardus (Paradise) Square, US Marines helped a crowd of youths pull 
>down the gaunt and massive statue of Saddam by roping it to an armoured 
>personnel carrier. It toppled menacingly forward from its plinth to hang 
>lengthways above the ground, right arm still raised in fraternal greetings 
>to the Iraqi people.
>
>It was a symbolic moment in more ways than one. I stood behind the first 
>man to seize a hatchet and smash at the imposing grey marble plinth. But 
>within seconds, the marble had fallen away to reveal a foundation of cheap 
>bricks and badly cracked cement. That's what the Americans always guessed 
>Saddam's regime was made of, although they did their best – in the late 
>Seventies and early Eighties – to arm him and service his economy and 
>offer him political support, to turn him into the very dictator he became.
>
>In one sense, therefore, America – occupying the capital of an Arab nation 
>for the first time in its history – was helping to destroy what it had 
>spent so much time and money creating. Saddam was "our" man and yesterday, 
>metaphorically at least, we annihilated him. Hence the importance of all 
>those statue- bashing mobs, of all that looting and theft.
>
>But of the real and somewhat less imposing Saddam, there was no trace.


peace,
Jim



At 04:25 PM 4/10/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> >From Sam Smith's Progressive Review:
>
>[YOUR EDITOR thought there was something odd about those TV stories
>describing the removal of the Saddam statue. Why had this spontaneous
>crowd gathered only on one side of the statue? Why no long shots? And why
>were those people in the background going about their urban business as
>though nothing was happening? DC Indymedia has the answer.]
>
>DC INDY MEDIA - The up-close action video of the statue being destroyed is
>broadcast around the world as proof of a massive uprising. Still photos
>grabbed off of Reuters show a long-shot view of Fardus Square... It's
>empty save for the U.S. Marines, the international press, and a small
>handful of Iraqis. There are no more than 200 people in the square at
>best. The Marines have the square sealed off and guarded by tanks. A U.S.
>mechanized vehicle is used to pull the statue of Saddam from it's base.
>The entire event is being hailed as an equivalent of the Berlin Wall
>falling... but even a quick glance of the long-shot photo shows something
>more akin to a carefully constructed media event tailored for the
>television cameras.
>
>http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=63743&group=webcast
>
>MORE EVIDENCE OF THE FOTO FRAUD http://prorev.com
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Peace-discuss mailing list
>Peace-discuss at lists.cu.groogroo.com
>http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss