Truth and reality are two concepts that seem foreign to most American news media.
On 31 March 2003 Reuters reported that "American television network NBC said on Monday [31 March] it had severed its relations with veteran reporter Peter Arnett after he told Iraqi television that the US war plan against Saddam Hussein had failed".
"I said in that interview essentially what we all know about the war, that there have been delays in implementing policy, there have been surprises," Arnett told NBC's "Today" show.
However, NBC said, "It was wrong for Mr Arnett to grant an interview with state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war, and it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions."
According to Reuters, Arnett's remarks were received with anger by the administration in Washington. One White House source said they were based on "a position of complete ignorance".
Also according to Reuters, Arnett's view echoed similar comments in many US media after the rapid advance of US forces through southern Iraq slowed south of Baghdad amid disruptive attacks on its long supply lines by persistent resistance, particularly in the towns.
Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Arnett had earlier been fired from CNN for a report that neither the major media nor the politicians wanted revealed. In 1998 the Pentagon pressured the news channel over a documentary in which Arnett alleged that US commandos had used sarin gas on American troops who had defected to Laos during the Vietnam war.
NBC/MSNBC is the outfit that San Marino Librarian Irene McDermott says figures first among "The Best Mainstream Media". Ms McDermott seems oblivious to the fact that a major NBC/MSNBC partner is the Washington Post, noted war hawks as brazen and biased as Fox News.
Next, a story that hasn't even made the mainstream US media involves the murderous American cowboy raid on a British tank and two armoured vehicles in southern Iraq. Though newspapers outside of the USA have carried the story, only USA Today and The Boston Globe in America even carried the Associated Press report that included the horrible incident among other references to friendly fire.
The British who were involved in the attack "criticized the American pilot for showing 'no regard for human life' and accused him of being a cowboy who had gone out on a jolly". This part - the truth - has been excluded from American media reports.
Unreported in the American press, was the Britons' bewilderment and anger that, despite flying very low over their heads, the A10 pilot apparently failed to recognize the coalition identification markings on their British-made tanks. Another vehicle in the five-strong convoy patrolling the marshes near the meeting of the Euphrates and Shatt al-Arab rivers bore a large Union Jack.
According to one of the injured Britons, "We can identify a friendly vehicle from 1,500 metres, yet you've got an A10 with advanced technology and he can 't use a thermal sight to identify whether a tank is a friend or foe. It's ridiculous."
News services in America don't want to bring you the news. They want to deliver doctored news.
Reuters, carried by the New York Times, reported, "US says it seized cache of Iraqi chemical equipment". The implication of that headline is that the US military had found the pointer to the smoking gun of chemical weapons of mass destruction.
What they found, in reality, were chemical protection suits and decontamination equipment among a large Iraqi arms cache. Why report the find unless the implication is that they were prepared to use the equipment in conjunction with their own weaponry?
Why would the Iraqis not be expected to prepare for chemical attacks by others? If America once provided the Iraqis with sarin gas and also used it elsewhere, why wouldn't the Iraqis prepare for its use against them?
On another front, we don't know who's responsible for the denial of service attacks on the Doha-based al-Jazeera news website. We do know that al-Jazeera is an independent voice in the Arab world. It's been incorrectly dubbed "the Arab CNN" - incorrect because CNN is another propaganda mouthpiece in America that sweeps reality under the carpet. CNN ignores the bloody bodies and instead has reporters embedded with United States troops on the battlefront.
We also know that al-Jazeera isn't afraid to show the bloodied corpses of Iraqis or Americans and that it came under heavy fire from the American media for showing captured Americans on TV.
Why should American politicians and the media want to deny the realties of war? Are they too sickening? The reality is that they're disgustingly sickening. That's war, and that's why the realities should be shown. Why should Americans or Britons be forced to accept or fight a war that will make them sick when they're exposed to the reality of it?
According to Donna Lienwand, writing in USA Today, the airing of a gruesome Iraqi government video of American prisoners of war on the al-Jazeera TV network provoked a steady stream of sharp condemnations from US leaders, who said the Arabic-language news network has gone too far. Why do these American leaders want to hide the reality of the horrible situation they created?
Responding to an al-Jazeera reporter in a tense moment at a press briefing, US Lieutenant-General John Abizaid said, "I regard the showing of these pictures as absolutely unacceptable." The brutality of the blood baths themselves is acceptable, but showing that reality is not! Well done, general!
Oddly enough, even the New York Times called the decision by the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq to bar the station's reporters "repugnant". Blasted by Washington and London for beaming distressing pictures from Iraq, al-Jazeera television said it would not censor the horrors of war. Nor should it. If anything should be eliminated for its horrors, it should be the invasion itself.
Now, YellowTimes.org, which publishes views that directly question, criticize and berate the US official line regarding the impending invasion of Iraq, has been shut down by hacker attacks. As Firas Al-Atraqchi comments, "The campaign to stifle dissent and censor any questioning of current US policies vis-a-vis the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular, has reached new levels."
So much for the American rallies for a free press!
*Paul Balles is a retired American
university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the
Middle East for 34 years. For more information, see
http://www.writerfreelance.com
and http://www.pballes.com.