Robert Fisk: Is There Some Element In The US Military That Wants To Take Out Journalists?

argument.independent.co.uk...


Robert Fisk: Is there some element in the US military that wants to take out journalists?
09 April 2003


First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff.

Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the right word for these killings � the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1 Abrams tank � was murder? These were not, of course, the first journalists to die in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Terry Lloyd of ITV was shot dead by American troops in southern Iraq, who apparently mistook his car for an Iraqi vehicle. His crew are still missing. Michael Kelly of The Washington Post tragically drowned in a canal. Two journalists have died in Kurdistan. Two journalists � a German and a Spaniard � were killed on Monday night at a US base in Baghdad, with two Americans, when an Iraqi missile exploded amid them.

And we should not forget the Iraqi civilians who are being killed and maimed by the hundred and who � unlike their journalist guests � cannot leave the war and fly home. So the facts of yesterday should speak for themselves. Unfortunately for the Americans, they make it look very like murder.

The US jet turned to rocket al-Jazeera's office on the banks of the Tigris at 7.45am local time yesterday. The television station's chief correspondent in Baghdad, Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian-Palestinian, was on the roof with his second cameraman, an Iraqi called Zuheir, reporting a pitched battle near the bureau between American and Iraqi troops. Mr Ayoub's colleague Maher Abdullah recalled afterwards that both men saw the plane fire the rocket as it swooped toward their building, which is close to the Jumhuriya Bridge upon which two American tanks had just appeared.

robert fisk ? he may know a few journalists but he's far
from being one.

i don't know of a more obscene example of an ideologue who masquerades as a journalist. given his loose grip on reality he should pen cover stories for the national enquirer.

there are countless examples of soap box heads who don't hide their slant, but this fiend has
the gall to hide under reporter's virtue as he twists and
misrepresents the events he covers.
the guardian, the british liberal rag he writes for, must have a litmus test to gauge their hirees, to weed out
any sympathizers to 'truth and objectivity', whatever
value those terms have for the notorious.

This guy's sure thick headed.

The "Journalist" is at the bottom of the food chain, even Panda's want to kill them.

No, but there are some journalist who don't realize they are in the middle of a war and not a ballgame and they had better keep their rears out of the line of fire.

but it was an excellent point...

You're fired on from a building...from a distance, a reporter aiming a camera at you from the same building is pretty hard to distinguish from someone aiming a shoulder launched missle in your direction....

Some of these reporters need to realize the danger their in, and act accordingly....or more of them will simply end up dead, due to their own lack of caution and common sense....