[Media-watch] INVISIBLE SOLDIERS

[david Miller]

http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/EdDesk.nsf/printing/9B900CCA6C31F8A4
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March 26, 2003 
FEATURES 
INVISIBLE SOLDIERS 

Australians are the forgotten troops of the war in Iraq. As Tony Wright
explains, a look at any TV screen will show plenty of Americans and Brits
but no diggers. 


Australians are watching the new Gulf War on television and they are seeing
astonishing pictures. Here is a new wave of missiles blowing Saddam
Hussein's chain of palaces and defence-related buildings all to hell; here
are lines of tanks hurtling across the desert; here are fighter planes
blasting off the decks of an aircraft carrier.

As this is written, a British journalist is on Sky Television, bunkered down
with US marines involved in a vicious firefight, and he is interviewing a
marine who is gasping for breath and aiming his rifle over the parapet.
Within minutes of a US soldier rolling grenades into a tent in Kuwait at the
weekend, wounding 13 of his own commanders and killing one, CNN was
screening pictures and an American reporter was giving a description of the
scene. 

But where are the pictures of Aust-ralian soldiers, sailors and air crews?
There aren't any, apart from the occasional vision provided by defence
public relations. No interviews, either, and certainly not within any field
of battle. 

Instead, Australian audiences must rely largely on "briefings" ­ a more
accurate word could hardly have been chosen ­ by military spokesmen in
Canberra and Qatar. They give heavily filtered versions of what Australia's
defence forces are doing during this war, almost entirely bereft of detail.

At time of writing, Australians knew that small groups of the Special Air
Service soldiers were somewhere deep inside Iraq, carrying out their
trademark "long-range reconnaissance and surveillance" missions. One team
had discovered what appeared to be a missile site and had destroyed it. The
SAS had fought and overwhelmed an Iraqi force ­ somewhere ­ and had treated
the Iraqis who were fortunate enough to be no more than wounded.

We discovered that a boarding party from HMAS Kanimbla had intercepted
Iraqis intent on dropping mines into the Gulf and had taken prisoners. HMAS
Anzac was providing artillery cover for British troops landing on Iraqi
soil. Royal Australian Navy clearance diving teams were due to set out to
remove and disarm mines in the Kha-ab-allah waterway. RAAF FA-18 Hornet
fighter jets had been involved in strike operations and provided cover for
air-to-air refuellers and spy planes, and a Hornet had pulled out of an
attack on some target somewhere because the pilot wasn't convinced the
conditions of the sortie were precisely what they were supposed to be.

These are, by any measure, extraordinary efforts by Australians, despite the
lack of any real detail. But if you watch international TV, you would
imagine the only forces operating in the Gulf are British and American.

Two Australian reporters ­ Ian McPhedran from News Ltd and Paul McGeough
from the Fairfax organisation ­ have been courageous enough to remain in
Baghdad, sending reports by satellite phone. ABC-TV decided to go it alone
in northern Iraq. The Australian freelance cameraman employed by them for
that task, Paul Moran, died instantly when a terrorist car bomb exploded
beside him. ABC reporter Eric Campbell was wounded but survived.

Virtually all other Australian reporters in the Gulf are in Qatar or Kuwait,
distant from the action and separated from Australia's forces, milling about
and relying on irregular "briefings" from the brass. In Gulf War I, there
were Australian reporters aboard Australian warships. But not this time. No
first-hand description of the navy's efforts is possible. No Hornet pilot
has been interviewed. The commandoes of the 4th Battalion of the Royal
Australian Regiment, the long-range PC3 Orion air crews and those on
Hercules transport planes and Chinook helicopters, not to mention the
hundreds of support personnel, are all but invisible.

Yet more than 500 reporters have been "embedded" with the US forces. These
reporters travel with military units within Iraq, and can report and film
directly from the heat of battle. Precisely two Australians managed to get
themselves embedded ­ Lindsay Murdoch from Fairfax and Geoff Thompson from
the ABC. But they are not with Australian units. The Australian Defence
Force, heavily leant upon by the Howard government, decided it would be
"impractical" to embed Australian journalists, whatever that is supposed to
mean. No one expected to accompany or interview the secretive SAS, but no
reasonable explanation has been provided for keeping the media ­ and thus
the public ­ far from all the other elements of Australia's contribution.
This is a designed fog of war.
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