Getting ugly

Sounds like troops are not only beginning to take things out on the media:

With casualties mounting in Iraq, jumpy U.S. soldiers are
becoming more aggressive in their treatment of journalists covering the
conflict.
Media people have been detained, news equipment has been confiscated
and some journalists have suffered verbal and physical abuse while
trying to report on events. Although the number of incidents involving
soldiers and journalists is difficult to gauge, anecdotal evidence
suggests it has risen sharply the past two months.
A number of journalists, particularly Iraqis and other Arabs working
for foreign media organizations, say they are now routinely threatened
at gunpoint if they try to film the aftermath of guerrilla attacks.
Some have been arrested and held for short periods. Sami Awad, a
Lebanese cameraman working as a freelancer for a German TV network,
said that when his crew tried to check out a report Friday about hand
grenades being thrown at a U.S. patrol in Baghdad, they encountered a
roadblock at which soldiers told him to go ahead and film. But as the
crew proceeded down the street, more soldiers appeared, threw them to
the ground and pointed their weapons at their heads, Awad said. "They
checked our identity badges and then let us go, saying they thought we
were with Al-Jazeera," he said. "Each group of soldiers acts on its
own, and most of them are very scared and inexperienced."
A TV news producer in Baghdad for a major U.S. television network said
his crews had been threatened at least 10 times in recent weeks with
confiscation of their equipment. He asked not to be quoted by name
because of his company's policy against giving interviews to other
media. In September, U.S. soldiers shot up the car of an Associated
Press photographer in Khaldiyah after an American convoy was hit with a
roadside bomb. The photographer, Karim Kadim, and his Iraqi driver
jumped from the car and ran for cover when they saw a tank aim at them.
They were shot at with a machine gun as they ran and the car was badly
damaged. Neither man was hurt. In the same incident, a U.S. tank's
.50-caliber machine gun fired at AP correspondent Tarek al-Issawi as he
viewed the scene from a nearby rooftop. He also escaped injury. "If you
don't like the way the military works, I can't help you," Capt. William
Pickett told a group of reporters left standing outside the gate after
being invited to cover a briefing Monday with Australia's defense
minister, Robert Hill.

Four soldiers at Fort Benning have been arrested and
accused of stabbing to death a member of their infantry unit, setting
the body on fire and leaving it in the woods just days after their
return from Iraq.
Police said the soldiers had gotten mad at Spc. Richard R. Davis for
insulting a dancer at a strip club and getting them kicked out of the
place.
Davis, 24, of St. Charles, Mo., was stabbed repeatedly in July. His
skeletal remains were found Friday, nearly four months after he was
reported missing. Fort Benning investigators had received a tip to
search the woods near the Army post.

Posted by flow Frazao on November 12, 2003 at 09:48 PM | Permalink