[Media-watch] FW: IRAQ, CIVILIAN FATALITIES, AND AMERICAN POWER

[David Miller]

-----Original Message-----
From: davidepet [mailto:davidepet at comcast.net]
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2004 12:26 AM
To: 'davidepet'
Subject: RE: IRAQ, CIVILIAN FATALITIES, AND AMERICAN POWER

 

Iraq, Civilian Fatalities, and American Power

 

Ever since Ahmed Janabi¹s report first surfaced on english.aljazeera.net
that an ³Iraqi political group,² indeed, an expatriate Iraqi political group
based in Britain, contends reports that approximately ³37,000 Iraqi
civilians were killed between the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003
and October 2003² (That¹s already ten months ago), I have been watching and
waiting to see which English-language medium in the States, the U.K., Canada
or Australia was going to mention the fact that somebody, somewhere, had
produced such an estimate.  If only to denounce the estimate as
uncorroborated fabrication, for Christ¹s sake.  Or to allow one of the State
Department or Pentagon spokespersons to disavow any knowledge of such
irrelevancies.  ("Iraqi group claims over 37,000 civilian toll
<http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66E32EAF-0E4E-4765-9339-594C323A777F
.htm> ,² July 31.---For a copy, also see below.)

 

Remember: Janabi¹s report first appeared 16 days ago.  With the greatly
intensified killing delivered upon the city of Najaf in the month of August,
questions about body counts and civilian death tolls would hardly seem
inappropriate, even for the most bought-and-sold establishment reporters.

 

Regardless.  I can attest, here and now, that as of this date in mid-August,
2004, I have yet to find a single follow-up mention of any of this.  Not the
size of the estimate (some 37,000 through October, 2003---exclusive of the
Kurdish-controlled northern territories, note well, where such research
wasn¹t taken too kindly).  Not the name of the group that assumed the
responsibility for producing the estimate (the People¹s Kifah, or Struggle
Against Hegemony).  Nor the name of the gentleman credited with a leadership
role in carrying out the research (one Muhammad al-Ubaidi, a ³UK-based
physiology professor,² Janabi reports).  Instead, nothing.  Absolutely
nothing. 

 

But since the day I first started running searches for mentions of any of
these words, on Saturday, July 31, the findings remain chillingly unchanged:
No English-language news media source based in the United States, Britain,
Canada or Australia that I¹ve been able to search has so much as mentioned
anything like the information contained in Al Jazeera¹s ³Iraqi group claims
over 37,000 civilian toll
<http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66E32EAF-0E4E-4765-9339-594C323A777F
.htm> .² 

 

As a matter of fact, the only thing I did discover was that the name
Al-Ubaidi is fairly common in Iraq. That is to say, a considerable number of
individuals named Al-Ubaidi turn up in the products of the English-language
news media---and absolutely none of them is the Muhammad al-Ubaidi reported
by Al Jazeera.  But aside from false matches of this kind, nothing on the
estimates of Iraqi civilian fatalities.

 

Of course, I can always keep checking.......  But the bottom-line, I think,
is this: The English-language news media in the major occupying powers of
the United States and Britain have reported nothing comparable to what Al
Jazeera reported.  As the pile of dead bodies of the untold thousands of
Iraqi civilians whose lives have been wiped out by the occupiers edges
higher, how long will official denials of interest in the actual body count
satisfy a news media that, to date, has served the occupiers well---and on
all questions, this one in particular?

 

FYA ("For your archives"): Am depositing here a copy of Ahmed Janabi¹s
report on the estimates by the People¹s Kifah ("Struggle Against Hegemony").
(Wish I also could drop copies here of the images that Al Jazeera published
with the report.  But, another time.  Perhaps.)

 

(See also Al-Jazeera
<http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/iraqs_civilian_fatalities/> .)

 

 


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