November 17, 2004

More Fallout from Fallujah-gate

Bill Dauterieve sends this e-mail along with a report on how the Arab media uses the Marine killing of an Iraqi in Fallujah as a propaganda tool for anti-Americanism. Since he didn't call patent pending, I decided to share it with you. You'll have to scroll to the end to see the article. It's just as bad as I predicted:

This should have been the week of a great propaganda
victory for us. Now, the Marine might have violated rules of
engagement, but as I recall, the Geneva Convention also allows for the
summary execution of partisans (no uniforms, dressed as civilians,
carrying arms). So no violation of international law there. He may
have violated US and military law.

But come on. What is the matter with the marines who didn't pay
attention to the fucking camera in the room. Shoot the fu**ing
reporter and be done with it. Oops. Rebels got him. From a legal
point I can understand the marine's actions. But just from plain old
practical sense they should have never let this video out.

Then the fact that the Jawas know nothing about Hassan, the biggest
bleeding heart friend that they ever had, makes it even worse. This
should have been a tremendous propaganda victory. Hands down.
Instead, some marines forget to cover their asses and ruin the
reputation of all Americans.
F**K!!!!!

San Jose Mercury News:

The chilling video of a U.S. Marine shooting and killing a wounded and apparently unarmed man in Iraq dominated the Arab world's media Wednesday, overshadowing the slaying of a British aid worker who had been kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents.

The Marine shooting in a mosque in Fallujah was played and replayed, debated and portrayed as "evidence" of what many Arabs believe: that the United States is destroying Iraq and Iraqis.

Frames of the Fallujah shooting appeared on many newspaper front pages Wednesday and Arab satellite stations repeatedly aired the footage taken by an American television crew.

Al-Jazeera was among the stations airing the Marine shooting. The station said Tuesday it also had received a videotape showing a blindfolded woman believed to be Margaret Hassan being shot in the head at close range, but had chosen not to broadcast it.

"We don't show acts of killing," Jihad Ballout, Al-Jazeera spokesman, said of the decision not to show the slaying of the longtime director of CARE in Iraq. "We've never done it before, outside war."

Adnan Abdul-Rahman, a 34-year-old Syrian government employee, was one of those loosely linking the two killings and placing blame for both at the feet of the United States. He said Hassan's death was "a normal response to the crimes which the Americans are committing in Iraq."

"Violence breeds violence," he said.

The U.S. military said Tuesday it was investigating the shooting in the mosque to determine whether the Marine acted in self-defense.

Some Arabs portrayed the shooting by the Marine as a war crime committed by trigger-happy Americans, and the video as revealing the true face of the U.S. invasion. Others saw it as another debacle in the Iraq war that hurts America's image and efforts to restore stability in Iraq.

One Lebanese newspaper, As-Safir, called the shooting a "cold-blooded" killing. A Saudi pan-Arab daily, Asharq al-Awsat, warned of "another Abu Ghraib," a reference to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some of their American jailers.

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who is an expert on Arab media, noted that at one point an anchor on Al-Jazeera "was almost having a heart attack, he was so angry," about the video showing the shooting by the Marine.

"He said, "Where are the Arabs? Where are the Arab states, why is nobody complaining about this?" Cole noted, speaking on the Public Broadcasting Service.

The pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat cited both killings as images of what is happening in Iraq now, Cole noted, calling it unfair for the Marine, whose case remains under investigation, to be compared to those who killed Hassan.

Amman car rental clerk Youssef al-Atoum was so disgusted by the pictures of the Marine shooting that "I switched off the TV."

"The Americans are criminals, they don't distinguish between a mosque and their places of battle, they want to exterminate Arabs and erase Iraq and its people from the map," the 29-year-old said.

Jordanian businessman Isa Samawi, 42, said: "Exterminating the Americans is the way to combat international terrorism."

Both declined to comment on Hassan, saying they had neither seen nor heard news of the killing of the 59-year-old aid worker who had been an opponent of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. She was abducted in Baghdad on Oct. 19 on her way to work, the most prominent of more than 170 foreigners kidnapped in Iraq this year.

A Lebanese Shiite Muslim cleric, Sheik Afif Nabulsi, said both the killing in the mosque and the shooting of Hassan were "barbaric acts that cannot be condoned.