London, November 26, 2003
David Irving
comments: Fisk --
one of the greats MEET Robert Fisk
-- consistently one of the world's
greatest and bravest writers. Unlikely to
win the Noble Prize for Literature or any
other "meaningful" award; but able, I make
so bold as to say, to sleep with his
conscience untroubled each night.
A few months ago
he spoke at a university in the United
States. No US newspaper (to my knowledge)
carries his despatches, and yet over a
thousand students turned up to meet and
hear the British journalist in person.
What does that tell us about
the growing might of the Internet? And
about why the traditional enemy is taking
frantic steps to control it? |
Are we now to
support atrocities against the 'scum of the earth'
in our moral campaign against Evil? By Robert Fisk IN Iraq, they are just numbers,
bloodstains on a road. But in the little town of
Madison in Wisconsin last week, they were all too
real on the front page of the local paper, the
Capital Times. Sergeant Warren Hansen,
Specialist Eugene Uhl and Second Lieutenant
Jeremy Wolfe of the 101st Airborne Division
were all on their way home for the last
time. Hansen's father had died in the military. Uhl
would have been 22 at Thanksgiving but had written
home to say he had a "bad feeling". His father had
fought in Vietnam, his grandfather in the Second
World War and Korea. Two of the three men were
killed in the Black Hawk helicopter crash over
Tikrit just over a week ago. But of course President Bush, our hero in
the "war on terror", won't be attending their
funerals. The man who declined to serve his nation
in Vietnam but has sent 146,000 young Americans
into the biggest rat's nest in the Middle East
doesn't do funerals. Nor do journalists, of course. The American
television networks have feebly accepted the new
Pentagon ruling that they can't show the coffins of
America's young men returning from Iraq. The dead
may come home but they do so in virtual
secrecy. Things are changing. At a lecture I gave in
Madison last week, there was a roar of applause
from the more than 1,000-strong audience when I
suggested that the Iraq war could yet doom George
Bush's election chances next year. A young man in
the audience stood up to say that his brother was
in the military in Iraq, that he had written home
to say that the war was a mess, that Americans
shouldn't be dying in Iraq. After the lecture, he
showed me his brother's picture - a tall 82nd
Airborne officer in shades and holding an M-16 -
and passed on a message that the soldier wanted
to meet me in Baghdad next month. But I'd better make sure I don't reveal his name
because those in America who want to keep the
people in the dark are still at work. Take the case of Drew Plummer from North
Carolina who enlisted during his last year in high
school, just three months before 11 September 2001.
Home on leave, he joined his father, Lou, at a
"bring our troops home" vigil. Lou Plummer
is a former member of the US 2nd Armoured Division
whose father, unlike Mr Bush, served his country in
Vietnam. Asked for his opinion on Iraq by an
Associated Press reporter, Drew Plummer replied
that "I just don't agree with what we're doing
right now. I don't think our guys should be dying
in Iraq. But I'm not a pacifist. I'll do my
part." 
BUT free speech has a price for the military in
America these days. The US Navy charged Drew
Plummer with violating Article 134 of the Uniform
Code of Military Justice: Disloyal Statements. At
his official hearing, he was asked if he
"sympathises" with the enemy or was considering
"acts of sabotage". He was convicted and
demoted.
Yet still the US press turn their backs on this.
How revealing, for example, to find that the number
of seriously wounded soldiers brought home to
America from Iraq is approaching 2,200, many of
whom have lost limbs or suffered facial wounds. In
all, there have been nearly 7,000 medical
evacuations of soldiers from Iraq, many with
psychological problems. All this was disclosed
by the Pentagon to a group of French diplomats
in Washington. The French press carried the
story. Not so the papers of small-town America,
where anyone trying to tell the truth about Iraq
will be attacked. And while the Pentagon is now planning to have
100,000 GIs in Iraq until 2006, the journalistic
heavyweights are stoking the fires of patriotism
with a new and even more chilling propaganda line.
One of the most vicious has just been published in
The New York Times. Claiming that Saddam's
torturers are attacking American troops - some of
his intelligence men are now working for the
occupying army, but that's another matter -
David Brooks writes that "history shows that
Americans are willing to make sacrifices. The real
doubts come when we see ourselves inflicting them.
What will happen to the national mood when the news
programmes start broadcasting images of the brutal
measures our own troops will have to adopt?
Inevitably there will be atrocities that will cause
many good-hearted people to defect from the cause
... somehow ... the Bush administration is going to
have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the
Battle of Midway in the war on terror ..." What on earth is one to make of this vile
nonsense? Why is The New York Times
providing space for the advocacy of war crimes by
US soldiers? I doubt the US channels will broadcast
any images of "brutal measures" - they've already
had the chance to do so and have declined. But
atrocities? Are we now to support atrocities
against the "scum of the earth" - Mr Brooks' word
for the insurgents - in our moral campaign against
Evil? Amid such filth, we should perhaps remember the
simple courage of Drew Plummer. And remember, too,
the following names: Army Private First Class
Rachel Bosveld, aged 19, Army Specialist
Paul Sturino, aged 21, Army Reservist Dan
Gabrielson, aged 40, Army Major Mathew
Shram, aged 36, Marine Sergeant Kirk
Strasekie, aged 23. They, too, came from
Wisconsin. And they, too, died in Iraq. © The
Independent 
... on this
website
We Are Paying The
Price For An Infantile Attempt To Reshape The
Middle East-
"They're
getting better," Chuck said approvingly. "That
one hit the runway"
-
The hunt
for weapons of mass destruction yields --
nothing
-
Official Is
Prepared To Address Issue Of Iraqi
Deception
|
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