Corporate Media Largely Silent on Trumps Civilian Death Toll in Iraq

[Judi Lynn]

JULY 19, 2017

BY ADAM JOHNSON



Earlier this week, human rights group Amnesty International issued a lengthy report accusing US-backed forces of “repeated violations of international humanitarian law, some of which may amount to war crimes,” in Mosul, Iraq, causing the deaths of at least 3,700 civilians. Neither this report, nor the broader issue of the civilian toll in the US war against ISIS, has come close to penetrating US corporate media.

The only major radio or television outlet to report on Amnesty’s claims was NPR (7/12/17). While traditional print outlets, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, did run Reuters (7/11/17) and AP(7/12/17) articles, respectively, on the report, neither covered it themselves. Neither Amnesty’s charges, nor the broader issue of civilian deaths in Mosul, garnered any coverage in television news, with no mention on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN or MSNBC.

The expulsion of ISIS from Mosul by the US-led coalition did receive coverage, but the US role in killing civilians was uniformly ignored.

CBS News’ reports (6/25/17, 7/4/17, 7/9/17) made no mention of US responsibility for civilian deaths, referring only vaguely to “a rising civilian death toll” and “whole neighborhoods” that “cease to exist.” The role of US bombing role in that rising death toll or those no-longer-existing neighborhoods was never mentioned.

More:
http://fair.org/home/corporate-media-largely-silent-on-trumps-civilian-death-toll-in-iraq/

[Blue_Tires]

1. And so is the liberal blogosphere

For the record, Adam Johnson is a piece of shit leftbro who still hasn't acknowledged that Russia has even killed one civilian over there...

He's also been ratfucking us for a couple of years with his Clinton derangement and anti-anti-Trump antics... I'd think twice about giving his shit more mouse clicks....

[Lyricalinklines]

2. Has trump or his administration mentioned it? Eom

[Igel]

4. Probably only in official reports that nobody cares about.

DOD issues such things routinely.

But AI always knows more than it's possible to know. In Mosul, like in Raqqa and other places, AI's numbers are produced by vacuum cleaner. If there's a death from an explosion, it's the US' fault and "may be a war crime." (Of course, "may be a war crime" is exactly equivalent to "may not be a war crime", but it's never put that way.)

It doesn't matter if the bombing raid was called in by Iraqi forces, regular or irregular, without any US folk present. It doesn't matter if the coordinates were wrong. It doesn't matter if a 100-lb hits a truck carrying 5 fighters and 1000 lbs of explosives which in turn take out a fuel depot 100 feet away, killing not just the 5 fighters but anybody near the secondary explosion or tertiary explosion. If a chain of responsibility can be found to the US, it will be given as fact or near fact. The baseline, default, null scenario is all the bad guys fall dead in their uniforms while holding their ISIS-issued ID combatant cards, while all civilians are well and fine and fail to even trip and skin a knee while coming out of hiding. It doesn't matter how many Iraqi or US personnel are killed.

It doesn't really even matter if the bombing was done by the US. If a ISIS bomb goes off and a US plane was in the area, there's a traditional xenophobia to blame the outsider, if only to avoid the difficulty of blaming somebody in the area or having nobody to blame.

AI also forgets that civilian infrastructure can be military targets, if being used by the enemy and the assessment is that the value of the target makes striking it worthwhile. Part of the assessment is the number of civilians present. For AI, no collateral damage is ever worth it. That's AI. We'd be commonwealth if AI was around in 1776.

The thing is, in the last 6-8 months they've moved from getting ISIS out of villages and desert to getting them out of built up areas. They simply abandoned many villages, and bombing raids were on convoys in the middle of nowhere. Now ... They're in towns, and ISIS has a fondness for the old parts of cities. Places where you can open your 3rd story window and hand something to your neighbor across the street.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R