Very few glimpses of war's reality
One of the few media glimpses of the racist treatment of
some 300 Afghani prisoners of war held by U.S. captors at
Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba came into view because the
captives rebelled. Within hours after two Marines interrupted a
Muslim prisoner while he was praying, shackled him and stripped
him of a turban he'd fashioned from a bed sheet, more than
one-third of the men held in tiny cages refused all meals on
Feb. 26 and 27.
They threw what few possessions they are allowed out of the
chain link fences and defied the ban on prisoners, raising
their voices by chanting prayers in unison. A shaken Marine
command gave in to the simple demand that prisoners have the
right to use their towels or sheets to fashion turbans to wear
during prayers. (Washington Post, March 1)
Not many such reports make their way into print or
broadcast. By now, most reporters have learned to march in
lockstep with editors who get the word from the military high
command.
Even if some correspondents want to write the truth,
military authorities won't let them near the real action. And
it's not because the commanders worry about the health of the
reporters. More war correspondents have been killed in this
current war than the official number of GIs killed in
combat.
The death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is
being manipulated by war hawks for their own purposes. The
publicity around his death doesn't give a hint of the fact that
he had written somewhat critically of U.S. policy, questioning
the 1998 Clinton-administration-ordered shelling of the El
Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries plant in the Sudan and
allegations of Serbian "genocide" in Kosovo. (Alexander
Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Feb. 20 Counterpunch)
--Leslie Feinberg
Reprinted from the March 14, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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