Human shields in Iraq "shocked back to reality"

[Asher]

Very interesting story: http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...1-023627-5923r

Excerpt:

A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."

I don't know anything about the UPI -- is it trustworthy?

[Gatekeeper]

UPI is one of the "smaller" news gathering organizations — along the lines of AP, Reuters, Gannet and Knight Ridder — but are trustworthy.

Gatekeeper

[Gatekeeper]

United Press International is what their acroynm stands for, I believe.

[Drake Tungsten]

I don't know anything about the UPI -- is it trustworthy?

Extremely. It's like the Associated Press or Reuters...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Maybe Gatekeeper can confirm this - some years ago, UPI was about to go into bankruptcy, as it had been in a major decline from it's heyday as the straight-up competition to AP.

Right before it went into BK, Pat Robertson either bought UPI itself, or it's existing archives, for about 6-7 million. I don't remember if it was all of UPI that was bought, and I don't know if there's still any connection.

One thing sounds extremely fishy about this story - though I don't doubt Hussein's every bit as bad as anyone says. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has been allowed in Iraq with video cameras and equipment, and been allowed to move about and film or interview people without government supervision, for years. The Iraqi government is all over these people, and even if they were naive fools, the Iraqi government intended to cynically use them, not trust them and have them cruise around with video cameras and tape.

[Dis]

That just doesn't sound like something human shields would say. But maybe.

I was going to post a troll response here, but thought better of it. Apparantly the Apolyton regime is worse than Saddam's

[DRoseDARs]

MtG, if Pat Robertson has ANYTHING to do with these tapes...

...Oh, who am I kidding? I can't POSSIBLY hate him more than I already do.

Seriously, I certainly hope that these tapes are genuinely objective and unbiased.

[Dis]

why would they be biased? Based on the statements in the opening post. It's not something you would expect anti-war people to say. That is why I have my doubts.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
...
Nobody, and I mean nobody, has been allowed in Iraq with video cameras and equipment, and been allowed to move about and film or interview people without government supervision, for years. The Iraqi government is all over these people, and even if they were naive fools, the Iraqi government intended to cynically use them, not trust them and have them cruise around with video cameras and tape.

A Norwegian freelance reporter in Bagdad is giving a lot of first-hand information on Swedish TV these days. She said that her US/UK/Canada collegues etc are followed by government officals in every step they take, but that she and other reporters from smaller language groups could move more freely.

[MichaeltheGreat]

What tapes?

If anyone had 14 hours of uncensored, unsupervised interviews with Iraqis in the street, that would be worth a goldmine to somebody, or lots of somebodies - news footage like that hasn't been available for years.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Olaf HÃ¥rfagre


A Norwegian freelance reporter in Bagdad is giving a lot of first-hand information on Swedish TV these days. She said that her US/UK/Canada collegues etc are followed by government officals in every step they take, but that she and other reporters from smaller language groups could move more freely.

How about interviews with Iraqi citizens? That's been the thing really tightly controlled by the Iraqis, even in the Arabic press. Being able to move around and film "stuff" has been less of a problem.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
What tapes?

If anyone had 14 hours of uncensored, unsupervised interviews with Iraqis in the street, that would be worth a goldmine to somebody, or lots of somebodies - news footage like that hasn't been available for years.

Hello, that's what this thread is about.

Very first sentence of the excerpt provided by Asher.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


How about interviews with Iraqi citizens? That's been the thing really tightly controlled by the Iraqis, even in the Arabic press. Being able to move around and film "stuff" has been less of a problem.

At least she had been talking to victims wounded in the air raids. She also reported that most of them had minor injuries from shrapnel. Her theory was that most of the wounded was hit by debris from Iraqi flak an AA missiles, not by US bombs.

[Gatekeeper]

MtG:

Hmm ... off the top of my head, I do believe it *was* UPI that had financial issues. For some reason, I keep thinking than the Rev. Sun Moon (sp) of the "Moonies" purchased it outright or at least a percentage of it. I know the man owns one of the major newspapers in Washington, D.C., and that Helen (she's one of the senior correspondents you see giving Ari Fleischer grief at nearly every White House press briefing) quit over it, for fear that UPI's credibility would be destroyed by Moon. Somehow UPI, Moon, and the Washington Times (?) are all tied together, or were.

What's for certain, though, is that UPI's significance has shrunk. It's now almost an also-ran ... but once in a blue moon or two, they move utterly fascinating articles.

Gatekeeper

[Uncle Sparky]

It should be noted that traditional military targets do include government buildings, railyards, airports, communications systems (television & radio stations), military & civilian police stations and power stations.

I mentioned this to an American I'm currently working with, who suggested that Iraqi military were purposely hiding in civilian areas. I pointed out that the building we were in at the time contained government offices and was across the street from the city's main rail station.