THE MEDIA PLAY a crucial role in establishing and enforcing the norms of international humanitarian law. Though the media do not " own " this law, they should enter the impurity of conflict with a knowledge of what the rules of war are — and a commitment to tell the truth about what transpires.

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and United States Institute of Peace fellow Roy Gutman — one of the co-authors of Newsweek’s groundbreaking report about the " death by container " incident in Afghanistan — was also on the Swiss Foundation panel at SAIS. He acknowledged that stories involving war crimes are " harder to report " than other stories about conflict, but he argued that the media can help to " arrest the process of war crimes " through their work.

Looking back at the last Gulf War, however, one can see just what difficulties the media face in reporting on possible war crimes — both in obtaining access to such places and in translating the gray areas of conflict into black and white. In November 2002, as the Bush administration was pushing hard toward an invasion of Iraq, Newsday war correspondent and Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow Patrick J. Sloyan published an article that cast a harsh look back at the first Gulf War and the media. Sloyan’s piece, " What Bodies? " — published to appallingly little fanfare in the Alicia Patterson Foundation Reporter — was a tart examination of how the first Bush administration " sanitized " the Gulf War for public consumption. The Newsday scribe noted that denying the media timely access to the field of battle was the Defense Department’s most effective method of keeping the inevitable mess and horror of war out of the public eye. In the article’s most startling anecdote, Sloyan quoted UPI writer Leon Daniel’s relation of his experience with the US First Infantry Division. This mechanized infantry unit led the attack on Saudi Arabia’s border with Iraq on February 24, 1992 — crushing the 8000 Iraqi troops in front of them and moving rapidly into Iraq. Daniel observed that the press was kept from the battlefield for more than a day. When they got there, Daniel and other reporters saw no signs of ferocious battle. Daniel found a military public-affairs officer and asked, " Where the hell are all the bodies? " The officer replied: " What bodies? "

Sloyan noted that the mystery about the lack of bodies was explained only months later: " Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them alive and firing their weapons from World War I–style trenches, were buried by plows mounted on Abrams main battle tanks. " The author added that Armored Combat Earthmovers followed the assault, " leveling the ground and smoothing away projecting Iraqi arms, legs and equipment. "

This US military operation appears to have violated two particular articles of Convention I of the Geneva Conventions:

Art. 15. At all times, and particularly after an engagement, Parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled....

Art. 17. Parties to the conflict shall ensure that burial or cremation of the dead, carried out individually as far as circumstances permit, is preceded by a careful examination, if possible by a medical examination, of the bodies, with a view to confirming death, establishing identity and enabling a report to be made. One half of the double identity disc, or the identity disc itself if it is a single disc, should remain on the body....

They shall further ensure that the dead are honourably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged, that their graves are respected, grouped if possible according to the nationality of the deceased, properly maintained and marked so that they may always be found....

There was, however, no hue and cry in the media over this event comparable to the frenzy of the last few days surrounding the Iraqi treatment of American prisoners of war. As Sloyan wrote: " [US Gulf War commander General Norman] Schwarzkopf repeatedly brushed off questions about the Iraqi death toll when the ground war ended in early March [1992]. Not until 2000, during a television broadcast, would he estimate Iraq losses in the ‘tens of thousands.’ The only precise estimate came from [Secretary of Defense Dick] Cheney. In a formal report to Congress, Cheney said U.S. soldiers found only 457 Iraqi bodies on the battlefield. "

Even when reporters have tried to document possible violations of the rules of war years after a conflict, they still have problems. The most notable case in the Gulf War arose in May 2000, when New Yorker reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh published a lengthy exposé of General Barry McCaffrey’s alleged breaking of the ceasefire that ended the war. The gist of Hersh’s 34-page article was that McCaffrey used excessive force to attack a convoy of Iraqi soldiers retreating north from Kuwait during a negotiated ceasefire. The attack — which raised numerous red flags in the US military, but resulted in internal investigations that cleared McCaffrey of wrongdoing — resulted in thousands of Iraqi casualties. " It came across as shooting fish in a barrel, " one colonel told Hersh. " Everyone was incredulous. "

Nowadays, Dick Cheney is the vice-president of the United States, and McCaffrey joins Katie Couric on the set of NBC’s Today show to analyze the current conflict. Neither Cheney’s misrepresentations of the death toll in the Gulf War nor the allegations of McCaffrey’s ceasefire violation seems to have registered in the public mind.

In human-rights terms, one of the advantages of embedding reporters with the military is that witnesses will be on the scene of most military operations. Though censorship may play an immediate role in how any violations of the rules of war are reported, the public record can still ultimately benefit from embedded media. But it’s also possible that in the heat of battle, reporters subject to the same pressures as troops in the field will miss violations.

What we have seen already of the latest war in Iraq has made the question of who owns international law relevant once again. But if history is any indication, it will be a long and arduous path to establishing the truth about this war — let alone achieving justice.

Richard Byrne can be reached at richardbyrne1@earthlink.net