'US lied about deaths of journalists in the Palestine Hotel'

[donsu]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=481715

The shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by an American tank, which killed two journalists and injured two others, was an act of "criminal negligence", said a report by an international media watchdog.

Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) accused US authorities of concocting lies to hide what had happened on 8 April last year, and a subsequent official "investigation" was nothing more than a whitewash. They said the Bush administration must bear some responsibilities for the deaths as US forces entered the Iraqi capital, as well as the "cover-up" which followed.

-snip-

The report charges General Buford Blount, their commander, of bearing a "heavy responsibility for not providing the necessary information that would have prevented the deaths of the journalists".

The report said: "It is inconceivable that the massive presence of journalists at the Palestine Hotel ... could have passed unnoticed. The question is whether this information was withheld deliberately, because of misunderstanding or by criminal negligence."
-snip-
----------------------------

1 out of 7 deaths of our troops in Iraq are suicides

[RBHam]

1. That was apparent on the day it happened...

Criminal negligence at least! To me, it seemed like the Reuters office was targetted - they were the news agency that was pushing the armless Ali story...

Hey, the Bushies always send a message...just ask the Nat'l Enquirer editor's wife. Her husband, who exposed the Bush daughter's wild life style, was killed by that wasve of anthrax attacks which also targetted other Bush critics in the Dem party and the media...

[donsu]

2. agree

Revenge is one of their Operational Departments

[teryang]

3. My personal take on journalist targeting

...is based on the notion that information from the battlefield regardless of the source is regarded by most military personnel as a threat. There are two dimensions to this, tactical and psychological. The latter is a political consideration in the notion of prevailing in the conflict. (This goes along with the mistaken notion that the press was instrumental in loss of the Vietnam war. We never could have prevailed no matter what we had done.)

If a helocopter is shot down and it is not reported, politically it is as if it weren't shot down. If photographers are recording the shootdown, it assumes a political and dimension the military and the government seek to deny to the enemy. As a tactical response will occur as a result of shootdowns, bombings, or other casualties, the presence of the press can become an immediate threat theoretically as well as a propaganda threat. One rarely if ever sees pictures of American dead or wounded. Underlining the whole hypocrisy of American treatment of the press, is the notion that Iraq is "free" or has a "free" press.

That is why there seems to be a pattern of journalists being shot at, wounded, arrested or killed in the vicinity of tactical incidents. Safeguarding journalists isn't the priority for battlefield units. They regard themselves as safeguarding themselves when taking action against journalists. Iraq is an active combat zone not a free country. There is definitely an element of coercion in not informing troops that there are journalists in a hotel. Just as telling journalists that they were on their own if not embedded was an implied threat. In my opinion many of these "accidents" have a calculated aspect to them and to pretend otherwise is simply political convenience.