Watching Saddam Fall
From the New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley, a description of the way yesterday’s events in Baghdad were portrayed in various TV outlets: Amid the scenes of joy, a sight less welcome. I like her comment on Fox’s reaction to the Marine draping a US flag over Saddam’s head:
Even the Fox News Channel, the 24-hour cable news network that has been the most consistently ardent in celebrating the American show of force, seemed a bit nonplussed by the imagery. “You can understand these marines who have put their lives on the line, sweated with blood and guts for past three weeks wanting to show the Stars and Stripes in this moment of glory,” David Asman said quietly as the flag went up. “It is understandable, but no doubt Al Jazeera and others will make hay with that.”
Another version of the same story, from the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz: The shot seen round the world.
The problem, as Ted Koppel put it, was that he remembered seeing anti-Soviet crowds trying to bring down a statue of Lenin, and “it took them 17 hours.”Television wanted the pictures faster than that. And daylight would soon be gone.
As if sensing the impatience, some Marines brought in a tank to speed the statue’s destruction. Then one of them clambered up the statue and threw an American flag over Saddam’s head – producing precisely the wrong image, that of a foreign occupying force.
“You had troops with specific orders – no displays of any American flags,” NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski noted.
“This was not the picture the Pentagon wanted to see,” said CNN’s Barbara Starr.
Finally, from CNN.com, proof that where you sit really does make all the difference sometimes. Despite that fact that commentators the world over were clucking their tongues at Marine Corporal Edward Chin’s bonehead mistake in draping the flag over the statue’s head, that didn’t stop his family in Brooklyn from going batshit over his 15 seconds of fame: Family cheers as ‘their Marine’ leads statue’s destruction.
“I [am] so, so proud, so very proud,” said an emotional Nai Koon Chin, the Marine’s mother. “He used to play like GI Joe as a little boy. He always dreamed he would be a Marine.”
April 30th, 2003 at 6:49 am
I think this site is an interesting one but forgive me for being somewhat skeptical. I don’t think that we as americans have been told the full truths about this war. What I hve a problem with though is in this article the soldiers are apparently portraying an image that the pentagon does not want. However In a previous article posted, this same event of pulling down the statue of Saddam, was questioned as a hoax. (Tale of Two Photos) That the only people present were marines, media, and basically actors. My question is, How can this event be a hoax staged by the pentagon, and have marines portraying a negative image? Wouldn’t the pentagon disallowed this? Or if it was a hoax, and the marines did this “unscripted”, why would they allow it to be aired on tv? That’s the problem with shit like this. Try to find a conspiracy in every little facet of this war.
April 30th, 2003 at 9:12 am
Well, a couple of things:
First, you have the timeline backwards. This item was posted April 10. The link to the wide-angle photo of the statue-toppling was posted three days later, on April 13, after that wide-angle shot began being widely distributed.
Second, you seem to be arguing that this event couldn’t have been both a staged piece of propaganda and something that sent a mixed message via a Marine draping a US flag over Saddam’s head. But I don’t see any problem with that at all. In the real world, even scripted events can send mixed messages. How you interpret the sight of US Marines helping a crowd pull down a statue of Saddam depends very much on your perspective. And that perspective shifts significantly when you see a wider-angle shot of the scene that shows a largely empty square guarded by US tanks, and a close-up that allegedly shows one of the flown-in followers of Ahmed Chalabi among the Iraqis in the “spontaneous” celebration.
I’m not saying the whole thing was a set piece created on a Hollywood sound stage with professional actors. But I think a reasonable person, looking at those images, could well conclude that this event was indeed staged as a propaganda ploy.
Or not. You get to decide for yourself. And if your personal bullshit detector is sensitive enough that you question some or all of the information presented on this site, then I can only say, with complete sincerity, congratu-fucking-lations. You have made me very happy.
In the case of this particular item I happen to incline the other way, but I have a profound respect for your willingness to seek out information and think critically about what it means. I only wish more people were willing to do so.
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