a little more light reading

[mamajoan]

I promise I won't make a habit of this. Really.

Red Cross warns of impending humanitarian crisis in Iraqi city of Basra, which has been without water and electricity since Friday. I warn you that this article includes a photo of an Iraqi man holding a dead or wounded child, which could be disturbing, so click with caution. (Personally I believe we all have a responsibility to look at images like this, but that's me.)

After finishing a commercial airline flight, man finds note in his luggage rebuking him for having anti-war signs in his suitcase. Quite probably placed there by TSA employee. Your tax dollars at work!

Because yesterday I said that the American media wasn't telling us about Iraqi casualties, an article listing numbers of casualties so far both Iraqi and otherwise, military and otherwise. Note that almost all the mentions of Iraqi deaths include phrases like "Iraq says," whereas stats about American and British deaths are given without qualification as fact....

And in case you haven't seen this one yet: Minutes before the speech, an internal television monitor showed the president pumping his fist. "Feels good," he said.

Feels good?!?!?!?!?! Can you fucking believe this asshole?!

Comments

[munoz.livejournal.com]

Note that almost all the mentions of Iraqi deaths include phrases like "Iraq says," whereas stats about American and British deaths are given without qualification as fact....

Well, that's not true. Consider:
March 25 - Pentagon identifies, says, puts
March 24 - official total
March 23 - U.S. military sources say
March 25 - A Reuters correspondent says

Then you have the list of Iraqi dead, given by Iraqi sources. After this follows a bunch of unattributed data and then

March 24 - Pentagon says

Then journalists and one unattributed non-Iraqi followed by March 23 - Syria says

Finally, the two missing persons entries. So your claim that stats about American and British deaths are given without qualification as fact is factually incorrect.

[munoz.livejournal.com]

After looking a second time, I realize that I'm partly wrong, too. There are only 4 references to U.S. and British combatant deaths, one of which comes from the Pentagon and another which comes from the "official total." So it's 50-50. Nevertheless, the article does have up front: "Following are the announced casualties to date." Announced by whom? Unclear, but presumably the U.S. and British governments when it's not explicitly stated.

Journalists of sufficient caliber to write for the Boston Globe may be as biased and creepy as the next guy, but usually they do know how to attribute properly. And they do so here, although sometimes via the "global shortcut."

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

It's a Reuters story, but yeah, I take your point. I've just been annoyed lately by the harping on American casualties and the deliberate ignoring of Iraqi, and I probably could have chosen a better news article to use to illustrate that.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

I didn't say ALL stats were unattributed. But just as I elided some of those that were attributed, which you have pointed out, so you elided a bunch of those that were NOT attributed.

My point was that there are *no* Iraqi-casualty reports that aren't qualified in some way (unless you want to count "Intense fighting in Nassiriya leaves at least five Iraqis dead" which is somewhat vague) whereas there are several instances of American- or British-casualty reports that are simply presented as fact.

And yes, I realize that in wartime it can be hard to get exact numbers and the American media probably mostly have to rely on the Iraqis to provide them; but the American media cares about American casualties and doesn't about Iraqi. Which isn't surprising, but it still pisses me off.

[munoz.livejournal.com]

the American media cares about American casualties and doesn't about Iraqi. Which isn't surprising, but it still pisses me off.

Yeah, I take your point (maybe we traded points? What color was yours ? I think I like the green ones.). But this happens always. Even in WW2, when the moral ambiguity was arguably far less, news reports of German and Japanese dead were nearly nonexistent. Obviously the point you'd appropriately make is that we should be more enlightened 50 years later. But, really, we're not. After all, our hips are still designed for quadripedal movement after all these millennia, so what can you expect in half a century? ;-)

[munoz.livejournal.com]

You may also want to consider http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/22/sprj.irq.war.casualties/index.html