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NEW YORK
- April 4 - In two separate incidents last week, dozens of Iraqis
were killed by what eyewitness survivors claim were U.S. airstrikes.
U.S. officials, however, offered a range of denials and evasions
about what may have caused the explosions. Despite evidence
uncovered by one British newspaper about the second (and more
deadly) of the incidents, however, most U.S. media outlets have
allowed the story to end with the official denials.
On March
28, in an open-air market in the Shuala section of Baghdad,
over 60 people were reportedly killed in what seemed to be a
missile attack-- the Los Angeles Times (3/29/03), for example,
reported matter-of-factly that "a missile slammed into
a crowded market area." But as with an earlier explosion
on March 26, the New York Times' John F. Burns reported (3/29/03)
that "it was impossible to determine the cause," adding
that "a Central Command spokesman in Qatar said Friday
night that the United States could not tell what caused the
bombing on Friday." Burns suggested that these incidents
"threaten to become yet another major problem for the Bush
administration."
The PR angle
was also highlighted on the CBS Evening News after the earlier
explosion (3/26/03), with anchor Dan Rather noting that "scenes
of civilian carnage in Baghdad, however they happened and whoever
caused them, today quickly became part of a propaganda war,
the very thing U.S. military planners have tried to avoid."
(Of course, the extensive preparations the Pentagon made for
communicating to the press before the war indicate that it was
not hoping to "avoid" a propaganda war-- but to win
one.)
While one
might hope that reporters would be interested in uncovering
the cause of more than 60 civilian deaths, U.S. media have so
far made little effort to investigate the Shuala incident. One
British reporter on the scene, however, found evidence that
appears to shed light on the origin of the devastation.
On March
30, Robert Fisk reported in the London Independent that what
appeared to be a missile fragment was found on the scene of
the explosion-- and that it bore a visible serial number, which
Fisk published. In a follow-up report on April 2, the Independent's
Cahal Milmo reported that the serial number could be traced
back to the Raytheon Corporation, and that the weapon was "thought
to be either a HARM anti-radar missile or a Paveway laser-guided
bomb." The Independent continues: "The American military
has confirmed that a navy EA-6B 'Prowler' jet, based on the
U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, was in action over the Iraqi capital on Friday
and fired at least one HARM missile to protect two American
fighters from a surface-to-air missile battery."
Some media
accounts have pointed to the relatively small crater created
by the explosion at Shuala as an indication that a U.S. cruise
missile was not responsible. But cruise missiles are not the
only weapons being launched from U.S. planes in Iraq. The Independent
reported that, according to experts, "the damage caused
at Shuala was consistent with that of Paveway or, more probably,
a HARM weapon," which are smaller than cruise missiles.
So far,
according to a search of the Nexis database, no major U.S. news
outlet has picked up this new information; instead, reporters
have continued to relay U.S. officials' denials of any knowledge
about the Shuala blast. The New York Times' Burns (4/4/03) questioned
why the Iraqis have not been able to explain the incident: "Often,
as in Shuala, officials have delayed taking reporters to the
site for hours, and have met with evasions the inquiries about
the unusually small crater at the marketplace, and the fact
that most victims appeared to have died from shrapnel wounds
and not from the kind of blast associated with high-energy bombs
and missiles."
On NPR's
Talk of the Nation (4/2/03), the question of civilian casualties
was discussed by host Neal Conan with guests Michael O'Hanlon
of the Brookings Institution and retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson.
In response to a caller's question, Conan explained that U.S.
military officials still could not find any evidence that the
first bombing was caused by a U.S. weapon.
O'Hanlon
then explained that an investigation into these cases would
involve answering three questions: verifying where you were
shooting, and tracking "how many of the bombs or cruise
missiles that you fired reached their proper targets";
looking for bomb fragments; and, finally, judging the size of
the crater left by the explosion, "whether it's consistent
with the size of the explosive charge that was on the warhead
in question, possibly even the shape of the crater and things
like that."
Interestingly,
the report in the Independent provides what could be answers
to all of those questions. But Conan summed up the matter this
way: "There were other attacks, though, and as so far,
the investigations by the U.S. military... are not complete,
and again, as Michael O'Hanlon knows, it may be some time, if
ever, before we actually know what happened there."
NPR's listeners
might have been interested to know that more information was
available-- even though it wasn't part of an investigation by
the U.S. military.
ACTION:
Encourage NPR's Talk of the Nation and the New York Times to
continue to investigate what caused the March 28 explosion in
Baghdad that killed dozens of Iraqi civilians. You might suggest
that they interview reporters from the Independent who have
pursued the story.
CONTACT:
NPR
Talk of the Nation
mailto:totn@npr.org
If you're
a regular listener to the show, you might try calling in live
to Talk of the Nation at 800-989 8255.
New York
Times
mailto:nytnews@nytimes.com
To read
the Independent's account, go to: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=393066
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