Rantingprofs

John Burns on the Videotaped Execution

Always count on the Times' John Burns to add a critical detail everyone else missed. In this case, something they can be heard saying on the tape that to me makes what comes after even more chilling:

Insurgent groups in Iraq have made heavy use of the Internet, posting videos showing ambushes, bombings and beheadings. Many of the videos have been chilling, showing in graphic detail the killings of captured Iraqis and foreigners. In this helicopter crash, the importance attached to videotaping was clear when the pilot was discovered lying in the grass. "Is the recorder on?" an off-camera man asked in Arabic. (My emph.)

Can there be any doubt that a large reason for much of what they do is to create propaganda? The purpose of their actions is to provide something worth filming, the justification for filming is that there have been actions the Westerners will put on TV, and so it goes. I'll say it again: while there are no inviolable rules where everything is a judgement call, in general, the networks should show footage that is newsworthy, and not footage that merely provides them additional news footage. There has to be a sensitivity to the fact that every time they air terrorist-provided footage, they (to the terrorists) prove their thinking right, that if footage is provided, it will be aired, hence proving there is a market for footage -- which creates a demand for more carnage, in order for that carnage to be filmed. That having been said, in some cases, as with this footage of the survivor being shot, the footage should be shown, because of what it tells/reminds us of who these people are and what this war really is all about.

But does that mean the footage (apparently provided after, separately) of the helicopter actually being shot down should have been shown? What did it add? Could that not merely have been described?

By the way, a quarrel today with Mr. Burns.

Here's his constantly shifting description of the group involved. First:

Much about the attack suggests the insurgents are well organized, quick to react when targets present themselves, and just as quick to escape before superior American firepower can bear down.

The group is made up of terrorists, but in this case were they involved in terrorism? The shooting down of the helicopter was not a terrorist act. While civilians, the contractors were clearly combatants, it seems to me.

And the shooting of the survivor?

Well, clearly he was heures d'combat. Some definitions would (stretch) and call his murder terrorism. Surely it would be a war crime, if these groups were operating under the laws of war. Others would say be might be out of the fight, and in that sense a non-combatant, but he isn't exactly a civilian, hence leave it at murder.

My point is that the action, while it would be condemned by virtually everyone, would not automatically be called terrorism. It's terroristic, to be sure. So, once again the dilemna: what do you call terrorist groups when they are involved in either legitimate military acts or grey area activity (or clearly illegitimate actions, war crimes, that many would not technically call terrorism?) I don't know, but I don't know that "insurgent" is the answer.

Here's his second term (and the fact that reporters keep shifting, never using the same term all the way through one article, says to me that they don't know what to do either -- they're just takin' a flyer on this one):

Increasingly, this has been the profile of the rebels offered by senior American commanders, who say the insurgents match ruthlessness with a growing tactical sophistication. American officers said that their helicopters had reached the crash site in minutes from a base at Taji, but found the insurgents already gone. (My emph.)

No.

It amazes me that reporters work so hard to avoid the word "terrorist," presumably because it has such negative connotations, that they end up swinging all the way around to a word that often is used with positive connotations.

No.

And Speaking of Filibusters

The rules governing the Iraqi Transitional Government (thank you, Paul Bremer) stipulate that if a new Prime Minister has not been able to form a government within a month, he's out.

There's now speculation that this has taken so long that, either the delay has put the idea that dragging things out just a bit longer as a possibility into the heads of Kurdish leaders, or, that that was the point of the delay all along, since the hyper-secular Kurds really, really don't like al Jaafari, representative of a Shiite religious party after all.

This is not just counter-productive, it's dangerous, since, while things remain peaceful in the Kurdish areas, clearly enemy activity is ratcheting up again in the Sunni areas. And there's real concern that one of the reasons for that is the perception that the government is paralyzed and can't respond -- which is in many ways more than a perception.

Now, you may believe that the enemy has been severely damaged, as I do, but clearly they've got a bit of life left in them, and not only are they continuing to kill people, this is the kind of war where momentum breeds momentum. They may be on their last legs, but what they most need is to demonstrate that they can still kick. If they can just do that, they can convince key constituencies (like, for example, the American press) that they're still viable -- which will earn them more respect both here and at home, hence, potentially more resources (and possibly more recruits.)

Momentum was going the right way. What's critical is that these new attacks be tamped down before either the Iraqi or American publics begins to believe that it's shifted back the wrong way.

And that's all on top of the fact that the elections are being wasted if a free Iraqi government isn't being formed. Politics is a wonderful thing, but using political strategies to stalemate action is probably something the Iraqis shouldn't play with until they actually have a government engaging in action to stalemate.

Will More Reporters End Up in Court?

Remember Steven Hatfill?

Mystery Unsolved

As the Post notes, now that Moussaoui has plead guilty, there's still no resolution to the question of whether or not he was meant to be the 20th hijacker.

I just don't believe it.

Don't get me wrong -- find the bastard guilty. He was in custody a month before the attacks, I'm convinced he knew about the plot, he could have therefore have revealed (and stopped) the plot, and he chose not to.

See ya.

But I think the evidence is fairly compelling that the final hijacker was meant to be Ramzi bin al Shibh, who simply couldn't get into the country.

(Speaking of which: in the unsung national hero category, let's all hear it for the customs official who wouldn't let him into the country. Who's to say that the passengers of United 93 would have succeeded against a full team of hijackers?)

The hijack teams were composed of al Queda's very best, and as this guy has demonstrated in court he's a bit, er, unreliable.

But look at the government's current thinking:

The commission concluded that any second wave plans were ill-formed and that, instead, Moussaoui was probably being prepared as a replacement for pilot Ziad Samir Jarrah, whose loyalty to the cause was in question for a time. (My emph.)

But that wouldn't have made him the 20th hijacker (a slot that was, in the event, left empty) but, I guess, the 21st hijacker, a desperation last minute replacement. You can tell they would have had to be desperate to use him since, given the choice, they left Ramzi's slot empty rather than use him.

The other possibility is that he was being prepared for a "second wave" of attacks.

But notice how careful everyone is to avoid talking about when that second wave would have taken place. The commission report says that one of the first drafts of the plan called for a second set of planes to attack targets on the West coast at the same time, but he nixed that quickly, saying it was too complex, so presumably he wouldn't still have been in the States training for that plan as late as August.

Which means presumably this "second wave" theory is talking about a distinctive second set of attacks, and begs a pretty damn serious question: where the hell are the other pilots?

Security Contractors

The Post provides a nuanced look at the men who work for Blackwater. Good for the Post for going one level deeper on a storoy: too often they're just a label in news reports ("security contractors did X, security contractors were killed") with no discussion of who these people are or what role they play in Iraq. It's also good that the reporter makes clear that while money is an incentive (at those rates, how could it not be?) it is not at all the only incentive (with those risks, how could it be?)

Coincidentally, it was almost exactly a year ago I posted an email from a student of mine who was at the time a security contractor in Iraq. (I say "at the time" because I haven't gotten any emails in awhile. If you're reading this, yes, that's a hint. But I digress.) If you've never read it, or if you don't remember it, I recommend giving it a reread. His email does suggest that some of the material in the Post article might be incorrect, but since he was writing prior to the hand over of sovereignty, much less elections, it's impossible to know for sure. But it's still worth a read for what it says about who these people are and what they do and how they view their role.

A Modest Proposal

All 3 networks do pieces on the tape again tonight, with NBC and ABC mentioning that the use of uploaded footage for propaganda purposes has become a key strategy for the terrorist groups active in Iraq.

I was enormously struck though, by a line in Richard Engel's report, where he points out that the point of these tapes is to "sway American public opinion."

No kidding.

But it would have been useful, helpful, nice, if he had stopped to consider the fact that these groups operating alone have essentially no hope of swaying American public opinion in anything close to large enough amounts to help their cause. Certainly not enough hope to justify the effort.

If the only communications medium at their disposal really were uploaded tapes on obscure Arabic language web sites associated with terrorist groups, they'd be dead in the water.

They can only have a chance of succeeding in their goal if communications outlets with access to substantial portions of the American population (let's say, millions of people a night) replay those tapes, perhaps without properly contextualizing them, perhaps not always making clear to people that it is propaganda they're watching -- you know my riff on the subject by now.

My point is that this strategy only works for the terrorists if they can count on the American mass media to play a role. Clearly they have been, and clearly the terrorists have been right in their assumption that they would.

Maybe the American mass media should stop and give that some thought.

And, by the way, no, I do not think that the American television networks are somehow "on the same side" as the terrorists, as I've seen some in the blogosphere suggest, or even explicitly argue. I think that's ridiculous. I think for a variety of reasons, mostly driven by not thinking through the implications of choices they've been making, one at a time, under time pressure, none of which seemed, in isolation, all that bad, they gradually and cumulatively normalized some very bad practices, without ever thinking through the meaning of what they were doing.

I would like them to just stop for a minute and think through the implications of the practices that have become normalized and institutionalized without their apparently having thought them through. Many of these judgements, as I've been saying yesterday and today, are very difficult. But they often, I suspect, build on one another, so that a bad decision in one case, can lead to bad decisions in other cases. I also believe, as I said yesterday, that there are few guidelines that can work for all of these instances with a high degree of reliability. But I'll go with two: never use footage taken from a terrorist web site as news footage, and never edit that footage so that it becomes difficult for the viewer to tell the origin of the footage (leave visible any logos, writing, or other material the terrorists have laid over the footage itself, in other words). Here's my proposal: Based on a proposal that I believe originated with the folks at the Annenberg School at U. Penn several election cycles ago, it's become customary, as you know, when playing political ads during news pieces to place those ads inside some type of visible television set, either a graphic or an actual picture of a television, so that the viewer never thinks he or she is watching the ad itself, but is always aware the context is a news piece. I'm calling for the same kind of framing. Going that extra step and putting the footage inside that visible television set, to make it obvious that the viewer is watching pulled down footage to make the fact that it's a propaganda video, and not news footage that's being viewed, even if it might have news value can be of use no matter what editing decisions a network might make regarding how much or how little to show, or how they want to use the footage.

Disappeared

As I noted yesterday, deciding what to show and how when material is graphic and disturbing is a tough, sometimes anguishing case by case call.

But we had better remember what the descriptions of the tape released yesterday are, because, at least so far, it looks as if this particular tape may well turn out to be authentic, and the real point of the material, what makes it so important -- what it tells us about the enemy we face -- is rapidly being disappeared, at least on MSNBC. Not only are they showing none of the relevant portions, as NBC did last night in their exquisitely fine parsing of how far to go, they are not discussing that part of the tape.

In James Hattori's reports, unlike Richard Engel's on NBC, the tape is of a helicopter being shot down, and of wreckage burning. No mention of a survivor, no mention of what happens to him.

Talk about missing the point.

Update: Fox makes completely different choices, as you might imagine. They show the part of the video NBC never showed, where the helicopter is shot down, but none of the portion involving the survivor. Instead they show two frame grabs of the portion where the man is holding out his hand, (stills, in ohter words) but describe what happens. They don't hype the description at all (would they need to?) but this choice, as with NBC's, keeping the terrorist's logo on screen, seems to meet all the needs I argued NBC's approach did.

By the way, they bring on a military analyst who describes a series of countermeasures (flares, etc) that the civilian helicopter would not have had.

Think the FBI and CIA Don't Play Well Together? They're Amateur Night

You want to see real interagency rivalry, and marvel at people who won't take 9/11 as a shock to the system forcing them to get past business as usual -- go to New York city.

Follow-Through

All too often stories get enormous attention on the front-end -- and then just fade away, with the conclusions reduced to a paragraph or two on pg. A-22, a sentence mention from the anchor if that.

So, good for the Washington Post for putting the conviction of that soldier who attacked his comrades immediately before the war in Iraq started on pg. A-3, with a link right on their home page. And good for them, also, for not shying away from honestly reporting his motive, as sensitive and disturbing and difficult as it is.

An Army sergeant who wanted to stop U.S. troops from killing his fellow Muslims was convicted by a military jury yesterday of murdering two colleagues and wounding 14 other soldiers in a chaotic grenade and rifle attack two days after the United States invaded Iraq.

Hasan Akbar, who turned 34 yesterday, faces the death penalty for the killings at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait, which prosecutors said were carefully planned to achieve "maximum carnage." The jury, which deliberated for 2 1/2 hours at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., before delivering its guilty verdicts on murder and attempted-murder charges, will reconvene Monday for a death-penalty hearing.

The impact of this is hard to overstate:

The accusation that Akbar was responsible for the attack struck an emotional chord in a military culture built around camaraderie and loyalty -- the "band of brothers" creed. Akbar is the first U.S. service member prosecuted on charges of murdering fellow troops in wartime since the Vietnam War era.

You'll recall he went after the command tent.

Capt. Robert McGovern, the military prosecutor in the case, said Akbar acted with a "cool mind" in executing the attack with stolen grenades, according to the Associated Press.

The defense argued he was simply mentally ill, and there have been what the reporter labels "vexing" debates over his motives.

Akbar's mother, Quran Bilal of Baton Rouge, La., told reporters that he had skipped the 1991 Persian Gulf War because it conflicted with his religious faith. Military officials initially said they did not believe Akbar's religious beliefs had anything to do with the attack he was accused of committing in Kuwait. But not long after his arrest, Akbar's mother told reporters that she sensed his Muslim beliefs were creating tensions in his battalion as it prepared to invade a predominantly Muslim nation.

Update: Local emphasis is definitely different. Now I wish I'd bought a copy for the sake of comparison, but I just walked by a newspaper machine, and the News and Observer's blaring, front page, above the fold headline was AKBAR FOUND GUILTY. Given that emphasis, I suspect the story was something other than the mere wire report found on their web site, but I could be wrong. The important points here are, first, it was the lead story of the day, and second, the headline writer could simply use the man's last name, and assume that the paper's readers would immediately know who he was, suggesting that the trial had been receiving a level of attention all the way along that simply wasn't the case in the national press.

Oh, Canada!

Just a tiny bit of Canada trivia that amazed me. You may or may not know that they're headed for new elections, and as that jockeying began, Paul Martin asked for time to address the nation. Here, to an American, is the amazing part:

It was the first time in a decade a prime minister has asked to make a nationwide televised address.

I guess the parallel to the study of presidential rhetoric is either non-existent or wildly different, huh?