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Times Watch for 04/21/03
“Death Squads” In Argentina, But Not Iraq
In her Sunday wrap-up story on how the White House communications operation performed during wartime, Elisabeth Bumiller ponders whether the U.S. is employing “propaganda” by labeling Iraqi’s fedayeen paramilitary groups “death squads.” She calls it an example of “loaded language.” But is the Times always so fussy about use of the phrase “death squads”? Only sometimes.
In her story, “Even Critics of War Say the White House Spun It With Skill,” Bumiller sniffs over “the repeated use of phrases that critics branded propaganda, like ‘coalition forces’ and ‘death squads,’ that became part of the accepted language of war.” Bumiller is obsessed with the current etymology of “death squads,” noting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers “were the first in the administration to use the phrase, on March 28 and 29, and by March 31 the president had employed it to describe Iraqis ‘ordered to fight or die by Saddam's death squads.’”
The Times has been antsy about the phrase ever since.
Times reporter and Middle East specialist Judith Miller has been especially troubled. “President Saddam Hussein's fedayeen, whom Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld now insists be called ‘regime death squads,’ have been cruising the sandy roads of southern Iraq…” Miller wrote on March 31. Another Miller story from the same day also carries it in quotes.
In fact, the Times consistently puts “death squads” in quotes when referring to the fedayeen killers beholden to the Iraqi regime. This policy results in formulations like: “General Myers described the attacks against coalition forces by Iraqi paramilitary forces in the south as ‘harassment by ‘regime death squads.’”
But when it comes to “right-wing” juntas in Latin America, the quotes come off and the Times tosses “death squads” around like a hand grenade. A November Times story on Argentina’s 1976-1983 “dirty war” includes this line: “Mercedes-Benz made trucks for the army, while Ford made the greenish-gray Falcons used by death squads in the kidnapping of thousands of people.” Hey, where did the quotation marks go?
From another story on Argentina, from August: “By the fall of 1976 reports of abuses were rampant and Ambassador Hill had lost faith in President Videla's ability to control death squads and his own military.”
From an October story on Chile under Augusto Pinochet: “A swift and forceful United States response in late July, when American policy makers first learned of the death squads, [author Peter Kornbluh] said, ‘could have stopped this thing in its tracks.’" Apparently, at the Times, the only real death squads are “right-wing” death squads.
The Times Man In Baghdad Speaks Out On Saddam’s Reign
John Burns is the Times man in Baghdad, a reporter who acquitted himself marvelously well under wartime duress. Andrew Sullivan, no friend of the Times, thinks Burns deserves a Pulitzer for his work. Now, in a long front-page analysis for Sunday’s Times titled “Last, Desperate Days of a Brutal Reign,” Burns sheds some light on how journalism is made in a dictatorship:
“A tacit understanding, accepted by many visiting journalists, was that there were aspects of Mr. Hussein's Iraq that could be mentioned only obliquely. First among these was the personality of Mr. Hussein himself, and the fact that he was widely despised and feared by Iraqis, something that was obvious to any visitor ready to listen to the furtive whispers in which this hatred was commonly expressed.”
“The terror that was the most pervasive aspect of society under Mr. Hussein was another topic that was largely taboo. Every interview conducted by television reporters, and most print journalists, was monitored; any Iraqi voicing an opinion other than those approved by the state would be vulnerable to arrest, torture and execution. But these were facts rarely mentioned by many reporters.”
Burns did mention these things in his reporting from Baghdad, which is perhaps why this happened: “At midnight on April 1, without warning, a group of men led by Mr. Muthanna, identifying themselves as intelligence agents, broke into my room at the Palestine Hotel. The men, in suits and ties, at least one with a holstered pistol under his jacket, said they had known ‘for a long time’ that I was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, that I was from that moment under arrest, and that a failure to ‘cooperate’ would lead to more serious consequences. ‘For you, it will be the end,’ Mr. Muthanna said. ‘Where we will take you, you will not return.’”
The men gathered up Burns’ equipment, stole some money and warned him that others would be coming for him: “From that moment until the arrival of the American tanks, I lived a clandestine existence, using darkened hotel stairwells in place of elevators, sleeping and working in other reporters' rooms.”
“Nobody got it quite right” is the first sentence in R.W. “Johnny” Apple’s Sunday war wrap-up, and he of all people should know.
Here’s Apple from March 30: “With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made…gross military misjudgments…The very term 'shock and awe' has a swagger to it, no doubt because it was intended to discourage Mr. Hussein and his circle. But it rings hollow now.” Less than a month later, the war is over, and it’s Apple’s piece that rings hollow.
Apple’s latest, “A New Way of Warfare Leaves Behind an Abundance of Loose Ends,” tries to split the difference: “The war in Iraq, now in its final military stages after only a month of fighting, was neither as painful as its opponents predicted nor as painless as its proponents suggested.” Awful big of Apple to spread around the blame concerning faulty war predictions, don’t you think? The fact is, Apple and other Times writers were dead wrong, Let not let them forget it.
Just What Russia Needs: More Planning
Last month, Sabrina Tavernise claimed the fall of the Soviet Union led to a “sexual free-for-all,” adding, “in the scramble to survive, prostitution and human trafficking jumped, as did production of child pornography." Today she returns to the “Bring Back the Iron Curtain” theme, writing about an aluminum plant under construction near a rich Russian neighborhood. The wealthy Russians are protesting the project.
Tavernise marvels: “The public protests were unusual enough. Russia is a country where such efforts have historically ended in failure at best and Siberian exile at worst. In the chaotic changes after the Soviet Union's collapse that widened the gap between rich and poor, early 1990's idealism hardened into sour hopelessness and a sense of futility.”
The root of Russia’s problem? Not enough planning. “In the past decade of poverty and economic dislocation, underpaid government bureaucrats have proved to be poor judges in [planning work projects].” Those same bureaucrats that presumably were masters of efficiency in the old Soviet days.
She continues to bemoan the loss of Soviet structure: “Urban planning is virtually nonexistent, with development progressing willy-nilly at an astonishing rate.” As if the former Soviet Union lacked for “plans,” five-year and otherwise.
While lamenting the gap between rich and poor, Tavernise favors protests against development that would actually help close that gap by providing jobs. Like most sophisticates, she misses the irony staring her in the face.
Scott Ritter, the Times Mr. Credibility
People who don’t think Iraq has weapons of mass destruction could use more credible spokesman—and the Times could use Nexis.
The Times William Broad reports: “One of the most vocal skeptics is Scott Ritter, a former Marine Corps major who worked as a United Nations inspector in Iraq for seven years. Mr. Ritter became deeply skeptical of American charges that the Baghdad government had weapons of mass destruction. ‘Professionally, I don't see how these weapons could exist. They defy the laws of industry, the laws of science and technology.’” Well, Scott Ritter certainly knows a thing or two about defying laws.
Broad also ignores this widely circulated, credibility-crushing quote from Ritter’s March appearance on a South African radio station (as laughably wrong as an Iraqi information minister briefing, though not as entertaining): "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated...We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable….We will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost."
Given Ritter’s perfectly wrong track record, why should the Times or anyone else respect his opinion on Iraq, or anything?
Taking Dictation From Dictators
After CNN news chief Eason Jordan’s disturbing revelations on the Times op-ed page, assistant editorial page editor Ethan Bronner reveals more details on the difficulties journalists face covering dictatorships—and the compromises they make with truth.
“Just getting a visa to places like Iran, Syria, Sudan and Libya is a monumentally frustrating chore. A few countries' applications, for example, demand to know if you have ever visited ‘Occupied Palestine,’ meaning Israel. If you say yes, you may be barred. Since any decent reporter covering the region has been to Israel, this means being forced to lie. A few countries ask your religion. ‘Jewish’ is not the right answer. Often a visa is available only during a staged state celebration, like Saddam Hussein's obscene birthday parties or the anniversary of a revolution.”
Kudos to the Times for providing a forum on the scandal of journalists trading truth for access inside oppressive regimes.
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org