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Times Watch for 03/28/03
The Times Unseemly Eagerness Over Iraqi Terror “Tactics”
Alan Cowell finally finds something about the war to get enthused about: Iraqi guerilla warfare against American troops. For the Times man in London, it’s a change from fretting over British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s future encapsulated in doom-ridden headlines like “For Blair, a Gamble to Avoid Political Disaster.” (Blair’s approval ratings rose once hostilities started and a recent poll showed 55% of the British population approve of his handling of Iraq.)
In Thursday’s “Urban Warfare: Long a Key Part of an Underdog's Down-to-Earth Arsenal,” Cowell takes a rather unseemly relish in describing the sort of depraved fighting Iraq is unleashing on Allied troops. Cowell sets quotes Gen. Wesley Clark on what to expect: "The fighting will be full of the tricks we have already seen and more: ambushes, fake surrenders, soldiers dressed as women, attacks on rear areas and command posts.”
Cowell dismisses outrage over such “tactics,” arguing they go back to (mythical) Greece: “For all that allied commanders in Iraq have expressed outrage at what they see as such dishonorable tactics, though, urban warfare has always set its own rules of guile and deceit — from the legendary use of a wooden horse at Troy over 3,000 years ago to modern times when war is broadcast live 24 hours a day.” So Iraqi’s contempt for the rules of war is just part of a long tradition of cunning warfare.
From the United Nations, Felicity Barringer today
makes a promising attempt at an anti-US United Nations press release: “As Iraqi civilian casualties mounted and the disruption of electrical, water and sewage systems in Iraq's southern cities continued, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain met today with Secretary General Kofi Annan to discuss bringing aid to those in need of food, shelter, water and medical care.”
Mounting casualties? Barringer doesn’t offer any figures. And just who cut off the water and electricity? In Basra, electricity and water were cut before allied forces even arrived, pointing to Hussein-inspired sabotage, not the allied bombing Barringer appears to implicate.
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org