Iraqi immigrants, protest and the media battle to justify war
News that agents of United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were in Jamaica interviewing undocumented Iraqi nationals this week must have been very sobering for those who believe that a US-led war on Iraq would be a distant television event in the Arabian desert of no consequence to Jamaica.
Tourist Board chairman Dennis Morrison, clearly concerned about the possible consequences of stories on the BBC, CNN and other international media took to the airwaves to explain that the presence of the Iraqis did not pose a security threat or suggest a link to terrorism.
By weekend, US authorities, apparently convinced that these were just ordinary Iraqis wanting to get out of the country for reasons unconnected to American interests, withdrew an earlier offer of political asylum thus leaving the group free to wander the globe for anyplace else that would take them.
The drama unfolded as anti-war demonstrations mushroomed all over the world yesterday, bringing out millions of people in cities across the world from Sydney, Australia through London and Kingston to New York.
I have heard arguments that Jamaicans should not participate in the demonstrations because President George W Bush could use it as a pretext to retaliate against us.
This argument is faulty on at least two grounds. Firstly, the incident over the unwanted Iraqis demonstrates that Jamaica’s security and economic interests can be jeopardised by actions taken by others without the knowledge or participation of the Jamaican government or people.
Secondly, as citizens of a democratic society, Jamaicans have a right to express their opinion on an issue of great concern to all of humanity. In today’s world, all the dots are connected.
Bush and the other leading advocate of war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair must be recognised as leaders of governments in democratic societies who have an obligation to convince the world community (the UN Security Council) and at least a majority of the population that a war is morally justified.
The obligation is based on the Just War Doctrine which can be traced to the writing of St Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries. The doctrine has two components: (a) There must be moral underpinnings for an action as extreme as war and (b) the means by which war is fought must also be moral.
A moral underpinning could be protecting human life or human rights or righting an enormous wrong. (Column of Jan 19, 2003)
Almost the entire moral claim for war rests on the argument that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction in defiance of UN resolutions and disarmament cannot be achieved by peaceful means.
Obviously, it is expected that both Bush and Blair will seek to use the press to convince the people about the justness of the war. But the press has an obligation to serve the public interest rather than helping the government make its case.
Since the major source of foreign news and analysis available in Jamaica comes from US television networks and news agencies it may be of interest to share the results of a survey by a New York-based media watch dog agency.
Analysts from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) examined US reporting on Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, presentation of what was supposed to be intelligence and other evidence of alleged Iraqi violations of UN resolutions to the United Nations Security Council.
FAIR concluded, “Many journalists treated allegations by Powell as though they were facts. Reporters at several major outlets neglected to observe the journalistic rule of prefacing unverified assertions with words like “claim” or alleged”. (See www.fair.org/media )
Among the news organisations cited in the report were the New York Daily News which reported Powell’s allegations as facts while giving “no indication that it had independent confirmation that the photos were indeed weapons sites or that individuals on the tapes were indeed who Powell said they were”.
Dan Rather, introducing an interview with Powell (60 Minutes II, Feb 5) shifted from reporting allegations to describing allegations as facts while Andrea Mitchell (NBC Nightly News) transformed Powell’s into actual Iraqi military capability.
Commentator William Schneider on CNN Live Today (6/2/03) dismissed the possibility that Powell could be doubted: “No one disputes the findings Powell presented at the UN that Iraq is essentially guilty of failing to disarm.”
As FAIR remarked, journalists should always be wary of implying unquestioning faith in official assertions given both recent and current history in which official claims said to be based on satellite and other intelligence data later turned out to be false or dubious.
For instance, The Clinton administration justified a cruise missile attack on the Sudan by saying that intelligence showed that the target was a chemical weapons factory; later investigation showed it to be a pharmaceutical factory (London Independent, May/4/99).
In the present instance, journalists have a responsibility to put US intelligence claims in context by pointing out that a number of allegations recently made by the current administration have already been debunked. Among them:
* Following a CIA warning in October that commercial satellite photos showed Iraq was “reconstituting” its clandestine nuclear weapons programme at Al Tuwaitha, a former nuclear weapons complex, George W. Bush told a
Cincinnati audience on October 7 (New York Times, October/8/02): “Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of his nuclear programme in the past.”
When UN weapons inspectors returned to Iraq, however, they visited the Al Tuwaitha site and found no evidence to support Bush’s claim, according to an Associated Press Report of January 18/03) which said that UN inspectors scruitinised the complex a dozen times and “reported no violations”.
* British and US intelligence officials said new building at Al-Qaim, a former uranium refinery in Iraq’s western desert, suggested renewed Iraqi development of nuclear weapons. But an extensive survey by UN inspectors in December reported no violations (Associated Press, 1/18/03).
The Associated Press concluded in its January 18 analysis: “In almost two months of surprise visits across Iraq, UN arms monitors have inspected 13 sites identified by US and British intelligence agencies as major ‘facilities of concern,’ and reported no signs of revived weapons building.”
The FAIR analysis concluded that responsible journalists should avoid being participants in any conversion of allegations into facts. They “should make a clear distinction between what has been alleged by the US government and what has been independently verified”. It is an injunction that should to all journalists and all governments.
Claude Robinson is Senior Fellow in the Research and Policy Group, Mona School of Business at UWI. kcr@cwjamaica.com