VTR wrote:
> May 9, 2008 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
> People Can Handle the Truth About War
> by Helen Thomas
>
> Some readers resented The Wa****ngton Post for publi****ng an Associated
> Press photograph of a critically wounded Iraqi child being lifted from
> the rubble of his home in Baghdad’s Sadr City “after a U.S.
airstrike.”
>
> Two-year-old Ali Hussein later died in a hospital.
>
> As the saying goes, the picture was worth a thousand words because it
> showed the true horrors of this war.
>
> Neither side is immune from killing Iraqi civilians. But Americans
> should be aware of their own responsibility for inflicting death and
> pain on the innocent.
>
> The Post’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, said about 20 readers complained
> about the photo, while a few readers praised The Post for publi****ng the
> stark picture on Page 1.
>
> Some mothers said they were offended that their children might see the
> picture, though one wonders whether their youngsters watch television
> and play with violent videos in a pretend world.
>
> From the start of the unprovoked U.S. “shock and awe” invasion of
Iraq
> in March 2003, the government tried to bar the news media from
> photographing flag-draped coffins of American soldiers returning from
> Iraq. A Freedom of Information lawsuit forced the government to release
> pictures of returning coffins.
>
> Howell said some readers felt the photo of the Iraqi boy was “an
> anti-war statement; some thought it was in poor taste.” Well, so is
war.
>
> Howell said her boss, Executive Editor Len Downie, “is cautious about
> such photos.”
>
> “We have seldom been able to show the human impact of the fighting on
> Iraqis,” Downie was quoted as saying. “We decided this was a rare
> instance in which we had a powerful image with which to do so.”
>
> It’s unclear to me why this was deemed to be “rare.” After five
years of
> war, there is finally one photo that is supposed to say it all?
>
> Howell said she checked hundreds of U.S. front pages on the Internet but
> saw the AP photo nowhere else.
>
> That makes me wonder why the media have ****ed away from telling the
> story about Iraqi civilian casualties. News people and editors were more
> courageous during the Vietnam War. What are they afraid of now?
>
> Who can forget the shocking picture of the little Vietnamese girl
> running down a road, aflame from a napalm attack?
Helen Thomas apparently wants to twist the truth about war. The
Vietnamese girl was not aflame - she had been badly burned by napalm,
but was not on fire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TrangBang.jpg
>
> And who can forget the picture of South Vietnamese Police Chief Nguyen
> Ngoc Loan putting a gun to the temple of a young member of the Viet Cong
> and executing him on a Saigon street?
>
> I don’t remember any American outcry against the media for showing the
> horror of war when those photographs were published. Were we braver
> then? Or maybe more conscience stricken?
>
> Of course, the Pentagon did not enjoy such images coming out of Saigon
> in that era. Most Americans found them appalling, as further evidence of
> our misbegotten venture in Vietnam. Americans rallied to the streets in
> protest and eventually persuaded President Lyndon Johnson to give up his
> dreams of re-election in 1968.
The photo of Phan Thị Kim Phúc was taken in June of 1972, almost three
and a half years after Johnson left office.
Isn't there anything this extremist **** Thomas can get right?
>
> Some Americans believe the media were to blame for the U.S. defeat in
> Vietnam. Nonsense.
>
> Johnson knew the war was unwinnable, especially after the 1968 Tet
> offensive and the request by Army Gen. William Westmoreland for 200,000
> more troops, in addition to the 500,000 already in Vietnam.
>
> The Pentagon made a command decision after the Vietnam War to get better
> control of the dissemination of information in future wars. That led
> then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to create an office of
> disinformation at the start of the Iraqi war. It was later disbanded
> after howls from the media.
>
> More recently, we have seen the Pentagon’s propaganda efforts take the
> form of carefully coaching retired generals about how to spin the Iraq
> war when they appear on television as alleged military experts. The New
> York Times’ revelations about those pet generals have cast a pall over
> their reputations.
>
> Too often in this war, the news media seem to have tried to ****eld the
> public from the suffering this war has brought to Americans and Iraqis.
>
> It’s not the job of the media to protect the nation from the reality
of
> war. Rather, it is up to the media to tell the people the truth. They
> can handle it.
>
> Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.
>
> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/362350_thomas09.html
|
