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On-the-ground-reality TV
Shocking footage of US military conduct in Iraq is available through major news services, yet the American public seldom sees what reporters see
BY JASON VEST


ON NOVEMBER 22, 2003, the 16th paragraph of an Associated Press story filed from Baghdad reported that troops from the US Army’s Fourth Infantry Division had arrested former Iraqi lieutenant general "Taha Hassan" "for alleged involvement in mortar attacks on police stations" in his hometown of Baquoba. One day later, Agence France-Presse noted the arrest of "Taha Hassan Abbas," as he was correctly identified, in a report that included additional dramatic details. A Fourth Infantry Division spokesman quoted by AFP provided the official account of the arrest: Abbas had "resisted when an assault force approached his house," and "engaged [in] fire," which was returned by US troops who "captured" Abbas and two others.

Far more important than the AP’s errant reporting — itself a reflection of the story’s low priority — is that these two dispatches moved over the wires but went unpublished by any newspaper. Instead, in what has become par for the course, readers were treated to brief depictions of beleaguered US troops engaging in the challenge of bringing law and order to a country beset by Ba’athist insurrectionists. But as disturbing details and images continue to flow from investigations into the horror show that was Abu Ghraib, an increasingly outraged American public is trying to fathom why US forces seem so obviously out of control in their sweeping arrests and torturous interrogations of Iraqis. Just as important, they’re also wondering whether the American media have failed — by design or default — to convey the ground-level truth of the US occupation of Iraq, minimizing the causes of Iraqi alienation and resentment.

In a yet-to-be-released documentary, a top international investigative reporter offers a tentative explanation for both forms of derailment. On March 14 — almost six weeks before 60 Minutes II aired its Abu Ghraib story — the Australian NineNetwork’s Sunday newsmagazine program aired a scaled-down version of Iraq — On the Brink, reported by Ross Coulthart, a journalist whose award-winning investigations have spanned rough-and-tumble assignments in East Timor and Afghanistan to seminal intelligence and public-corruption investigations in the US and Australia. Indirectly, Coulthart raises serious questions about American media self-censorship — something journalists have been wrestling with since the first Gulf War. The film also raises the possibility that, then as now, such self-censorship may have helped the military cover up Iraqi wartime deaths. (A 15-minute trailer for Iraq — On the Brink can be seen at www.journeyman.tv/?lid=14772. Latest RealPlayer required. American audiences may get to see snippets of the documentary in Michael Moore’s award-winning Fahrenheit 9/11, depending on how it’s released.)

Indeed, what began at Abu Ghraib as a probe into torture has now forced the Army to reveal that at least 32 Iraqi deaths may qualify as homicides. Whether Taha Hassan Abbas was one of the victims is difficult to say; extensive official and unofficial inquiries by the Phoenix into the former general’s status yielded no answers. Yet as film footage shot by the NineNet crew shows, the Fourth Infantry Division’s official account of Abbas’s arrest was disingenuous at best.

Beyond the sometimes-shocking documentary content of Iraq — On the Brink, the film bears witness to the yawning gap between what on-the-scene journalists see and what the rest of the world sees. The Hassan-arrest footage was not recorded or guarded or classified by the US Army. It was shot and marketed by a major news organization, the Associated Press Television News (APTN). So why doesn’t footage like this make it into US news coverage? TV news services send out teasers for potential stories, and clients buy footage based on what they see in the teasers. The trouble is, either teasers don’t include the most damning material or, even if such material is included, news producers, for whatever reasons, decide not to buy the whole piece. However it happened, the footage that made it into Coulthart’s documentary, as well as that which was left out, was as available to American TV networks as, say, footage of George W. Bush carrying a turkey platter to troops on Thanksgiving Day. Yet no one chose to run it.

COULTHART GOES out of his way to present a nuanced view of the occupation. He notes that under the command of Colonel David Teeples, soldiers of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which was charged with enforcing a 9 p.m. curfew in the Iraqi-Syrian border town of Qusabah, were exceptionally careful. Coulthart’s camera crew captured images of Teeples’s resolute but respectful soldiers questioning Iraqis through translators, and in one case, quickly entering and exiting a house in pursuit of a suspected curfew violator. In other encounters, US troops make a point of explaining why they’re doing what they’re doing, and ask for the Iraqis’ help in the future. Heavy weaponry aside, the footage plays like a domestic-dispute encounter from Fox TV’s Cops.

These scenes stand in stark contrast to what comes next. "The Americans need to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis," Coulthart says in his voiceover. "But that’s not helped by aggressive raids like this one carried out by troops not under the command of Colonel Teeples." Though the troops are not identified, patches on their uniforms peg them as soldiers from the 588th Engineering Battalion of the Fourth Infantry Division. "It’s the dead of night outside the house of a senior former Iraqi officer," Coulthart continues, referring to Taha Hassan Abbas, "who’s suspected of helping the insurgents."

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Issue Date: May 28 - June 3, 2004
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