Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

Prisoners of War

The first pictures we saw of prisoners surrendering were on British television. Presumably, viewers in the USA watched the same images on CNN or Fox News.

We watched some of Saddam's bedraggled troops being marched down the road with hands on head, fear in their eyes, and other shots of some walking across a shimmering desert pathetically waving a flag made out of a white shirt at the end of a stick. Three hundred, we were told, had surrendered on Day One.

It was a great boost to morale for those supporters of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and early 'proof' that the Iraqis had no stomach for war, would roll over, and would greet the invading army with flowers and kisses at the prospect of being liberated from the despotic Saddam Hussein.

Then, a few days later, Iraqi television, facilitated by the Iraqi authorities, copied the exercise. But its broadcasting of captured US POWs provoked an immediate outcry. This was against the Geneva Convention, said Blair and Bush, who are waging war in breach of the United Nations Charter and international law and in defiance of the majority on the UN Security Council, and substantial numbers of their own citizens.

Two years ago in Afghanistan the USA launched its 'War Against Terrorism' and eventually drove out the Taliban regime which had harboured al Qaeda and Bin Laden, chief suspects for the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA. US forces captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters which the Bush government then unilaterally declared were not POWs and transported them half-way round the world to a US-occupied part of Cuba, Guantanamo Bay. There, it allowed these prisoners to be televised dressed in orange suits, hooded and shackled, and wheeled out on hospital trolleys as they were taken between interrogation centres. Yes, the US government subscribes to the Geneva Convention, okay.

To this day, six hundred prisoners are kept in open-air, chain-link cages. Spotlights are kept on throughout the night. They have no access to their families or lawyers and they are only allowed two fifteen-minute exercise breaks every week.

Last Wednesday, Tony Blair condemned Iraqi TV, and the Qatar-based satellite channel al-Jazeera TV, for showing footage of two dead British soldiers.

I remember a British government having no qualms about the media broadcasting the images of two other dead British soldiers, the two army corporals who were beaten and shot by the IRA after they drove into the funeral of Kevin Brady in Andersonstown. The government correctly judged the images as extremely damaging for republicans. I also remember the RUC producing a leaflet after the La Mon Hotel bombing, when twelve people were killed by the IRA, horrifically showing what the fire had done to a human being.

In these instances what guided the British government and the RUC was not ethics or concern for the dignity of the dead but the powerful propaganda value of the images. Similar images from Iraq, however, because of their potential damage to the morale of the troops, provoke demands for censorship (and in the case of Baghdad television and radio stations ongoing missile attacks for giving the Iraqi point of view).

Is it right to show captured prisoners and brutal and disturbing images of the effects of war on soldiers and civilians? The answer has to be, generally, yes. What both sides do to each other in war, or in the name of their society, should be shown to the population as part of the debate which those who advocate, defend or apologise for war attempt to control and manipulate. Militarists want only selective pictures presented, ones of their heroism or popularity but not those that might lower morale or contribute to anti-war sentiment.

There is an old expression which goes: sin has many tools but a lie is the handle that fits them all. Last Wednesday, fifteen people, including a mother and her three children who were incinerated as they sat in their car, were killed by a US cruise missile attack on a market in Baghdad. It was a sin, a war crime, and the big lie that had to be told by the war mongers was that it wasn't their missiles that did it. "It may have been caused by a stray Iraqi surface-to-air missile or even sabotage," said Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks.

Amidst all the bloodshed and suffering one small but important consolation is the daily, if not hourly exposure of Blair and Bush, their armed forces and their apologists as downright liars. Lies that are usually repeated and transmitted by many of the five hundred journalists 'embedded' with army units with whom they have patriotically bonded.

We were told that Saddam was dead, that Saddam was wounded. That Saddam was a stretcher-case who needed a blood transfusion. That it wasn't him on TV being interviewed the morning after the first raid - didn't you notice that a mole was missing beside his left ear - it was his double… or treble. That Umm Qasar was taken. That it wasn't taken. It's taken. It's not taken. It might be taken. It is taken. That there's an uprising against Saddam in Basra. There isn't. There is. There might be. There isn't. Oh well.

On and on and on come the lies, cover-ups, the deceit, the hypocrisy, the double standards. Fooling less and less people but, tragically, taking more and more lives.

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