The offensive truth

IT IS IN the nature of a bully to be offended by the truth which may well move him to violence. The non-American journalists covering the brutal invasion of Iraq have been telling the unvarnished truth about this so-called "war", that is the widespread horror which this ill-conceived onslaught has inflicted on the innocent citizens of that unfortunate country. Their reports tell of the killing and mutilation of hundreds of Iraqis, many of them women and children, resulting from the relentless and overwhelming campaign of bombing and shelling carried out by the invading forces of the United States.

Although they were warned about this terrible tragedy in advance, it is not the kind of truth that the perpetrators of the assault on Iraq would want to hear. To these warmongers, the agony and suffering of the Iraqi people caused by their massive and misguided invasion are just the inevitable hazards of war and, as far as they are concerned, are of little or no consequence. Rather, the reports of US-based journalists, those safely "embedded" in the ranks of the invading forces, who tell of the bravery and heroic exploits of American soldiers, their brilliant military strategy, their courageous and expanding conquest of Iraqi territory, are the kind of ego-massaging public-relations reporters the bullies must delight in hearing. Was there any doubt about the results of this attack? What chance did Saddam Hussein's cockroach ever have against George Bush's sledge hammer? What really is there about this "conflict" for the US to boast about?

Not unexpectedly, the "war of liberation" in Iraq has now taken an even more sinister turn. Three non-American journalists were killed yesterday when a US tank shelled the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad which was heavily populated with foreign reporters. The blast took the lives of Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukranian based in Warsaw; cameraman Jose Couso of the Spanish station Telecino and a cameraman from the Arab TV channel al-Jazeera. In a separate incident, al-Jazeera said cameraman Tarek Ayoub was killed in a US air raid on Baghdad. The Arab network accused the US of deliberately bombing its office to silence a powerful voice in the Arab world. With regard to the tank attack, the excuse given by US forces is that they were responding to sniper fire and blamed Baghdad for using the hotel for military operations. However, journalists on the scene said they heard no sniper fire. "It's hard to believe this was just a mistake," said Severine Cazes, head of the Middle East desk of the Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters without Borders. Cazes demanded proof that this was not a deliberate attack on journalists.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which represents thousands of journalists around the world, called for an inquiry into possible war crimes against journalists. "The bombing of hotels where journalists are staying and the targeting of Arab media are particularly shocking events," said IFJ Secretary General Aidan White. We fully support these calls but we are certainly not sanguine about a genuine and concerned response from US military authorities. What this invasion is all about should by now be obvious to most impartial observers, and these incidents are simply demonstrations of the ominous mindset which has provoked it. It is a mindset which may characteristically be seen in the US refusal to participate in the work of the International Criminal Court, a single-superpower post-Cold-War attitude which is determined to have its own way in the world and exhibits little or no regard for the constraints of multi-lateralism and its organisations. With this so-called "war" in Iraq, the world, in our view, has entered a different but no less dangerous era.