Sometimes a post just makes an unabashedly excellent point. The US press is guilty of distorting the issues of war and looting. That is more often true, than not. One, the U.S. press, as a whole, did not dwell much on the point that the war on Iraq was illegal from the point-of-view of international law. Hitler's cronies used the "preemptive war" defense at Nurnberg, and it was found to be lacking. Two, the press has also largely ignored the question of US legal obligation of protecting the civilian population, the hospitals and cultural institutions. I am however, puzzled how these significant distortions are "liberal." I did not know that liberals believe in wholesale violations of law. I also don't quite understand how the sniper case relates to a war and shows the press' "dislike" of Bush et al. Perhaps my problem is that I am in the 99% of those who are not as well educated as other folk on the list. Perhaps that is why I don't know words such as "irregardless". The joy I receive from the list is through furtherance of my benighted education. NB -----Original Message----- From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Deb Fuller Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 9:43 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Iraqis, looting and the press You know, I don't think I've seen one message in the whole looting discussion about how the press has really distorted this whole issue. Yet people on this list - who are probably better educated than 99% of the world's population - are quick to belive what they read and slam the US and the troops for first not protecting the museum adequately and then for trying to gloss over the whole incident. Could it be that the press - to use a quaint Southern expression - is "letting its mockingbird mouth get ahead of its jaybird behind"? (Sanitized for propriety's sake. ;) I live in the Washington, DC area and during the sniper attacks of last year, got a very eye-opening view of how quickly the press is to jump on a little fact, irregardless of its significance or validity, and make a full-blown story out of it. I had just been laid off so needless to say I wasn't sleeping well and spent many nights flipping channels. After one attack, the vehicle description of the "sniper van" literally changed every hour. The main suspect vehicles for the whole incident were a white box truck or a white cargo van. For this shooting, it started out that way, then turned to a cream colored van, then a cream colored van with right tail light out, then a cream colored van with the left tail light out, then it was a cream colored van with just a tail light out but also keep looking for that box truck and that ubiquitious white cargo van. When the sniper was finally caught, he was in a blue Chevy hatchback. Yet the press had everyone in the area practically in a panic every time they saw a white cargo van, one of the most common vehicles on the road. During the war, the press was criticized for reporting just the war and doing very little commentating on it. Wow, for once they were just doing their jobs. It's kind of hard to spin information if you are on the battlefield and getting shot at and have strict controls on what you are allowed to say. But now it seems like the press is more than making up for it by latching on to any little story and running with it. The US press is very liberal as a whole and doesn't like Bush, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld or getting into this war but rallied around the troops like everyone else. Now the main fighting is over and they are back to picking on the troops, and the whole Bush administration. I'm sure some of it is warrented like the lack of planning for looting. But I'm really skeptical about how blown off UNESCO experts were or how little the troops did to stop the looting. Given that in the sniper case, a blue Chevy hatchback was turned into a white box truck, cargo van and cream colored van with a tail light out, I'm not surprised to hear that the Iraqi museum went from completely stripped to "Oh, sorry, we forgot we put all these artifacts down here. We really only lost about 30 or 40." Loosing artifacts is tragic, don't get me wrong, but it's a far cry from a bunch of troops sitting on their duffs while people blithely walked in and carted off 4000 years of history. So people, please. Don't jump to conclusions about what is in the press. Like most major happenings, the whole truth rarely comes out until many years afterwards when it can be looked at objectively from all angles. Right now, we're too close to the entire war to really understand what happened, what went wrong and the major impacts of it and probably won't be in a position to understand it for years to come. Deb __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . 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