US attack on Baghdad media hotel no accident: rights group

Source: AFP

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A media rights group called for a full probe into a 2003 US shelling that killed two foreign journalists at a Baghdad hotel, claiming that new evidence showed the incident was not an accident.

The International Federation of Journalists said the United States should "tell the whole truth" about the incident at the Palestine Hotel on April 8, 2003, just a day before Baghdad fell to US invading forces.

The IFJ said a former US army sergeant had reported seeing secret US documents that listed the hotel as a possible target, a statement which it said "exposed as a cover-up" the US position that the shelling was an accident.

"Slowly the awful truth about the events of that day are emerging," Aidan White, general secretary of the Brussels-based IFJ, said in a statement.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080519/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestmedia_080519140743

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Truthdigger of the Week: Adrienne Kinne
Posted on May 18, 2008

democracynow.org

Truthdig tips its hat this week to former Army Sgt. Adrienne Kinne, who has defied her one-time higher-ups by speaking out about how military officials knew that a target list in April 2003 contained the name of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel, which was shelled by a U.S. tank on April 8 even though embedded reporters were staying there. Two journalists were killed in the attack; one of them even filmed his own death.

Kinne recently talked to “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman about the Palestine Hotel incident, describing how both she and one of her superiors, Warrant Officer John Berry, knew from an internal e-mail that the hotel was on the target list. Kinne, who knows Arabic and worked in military intelligence from 1994 to 2004, told Goodman she had approached Berry and said she was concerned that “there are journalists staying at this hotel who think they’re safe, and yet we have this hotel listed as a potential target, and somehow the dots are not being connected here, and shouldn’t we make an effort to make sure that the right people know the situation?”

Unfortunately, according to Kinne, Berry gave an all-too-familiar response, telling her “that it was not my job to analyze ... someone somewhere higher up the chain knew what they were doing.” Shortly thereafter, two cameramen, Taras Protsyuk from Reuters and José Couso from Telecinco, were killed by an American tank, which Couso filmed as it pointed at the hotel and fired the shot that took his life. Couso’s family is still pursuing the case, and Kinne’s account has strengthened its resolve. As it stands, Goodman reports, a Spanish court has brought murder charges against three U.S. military members implicated in the Palestine Hotel attack.

Kinne noted how then-Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted that the hotel “was not attacked during any phase of the aerial campaign”—with emphasis, perhaps, on aerial. She also revealed what she considered to be illegal wiretapping by the military to monitor certain NGOs and described how information from the Iraqi National Congress that later turned out to be false was given high priority in the U.S. government’s chain of command. Accounts like this from the inside may in some ways be hard to hear years after the fact, but they may help others come forward and fill in the crucial information gaps that still exist in the public’s understanding of what brought us to where we are now—and what to do about it.

more:http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080518_truthdigger_of_the_week_adrienne_kinne/

Maybe if we kill a few journalists they'll see our side of things. Jail Bush/Cheney and Rummy for life. I think a Baghdad prison will do.

vermin need to answer for.

< Al-Jazeera was bombed, the Palestine hotel was attacked and Abu Dhabi television was bombed. All by allied forces, all in the span of a single morning and all had repeatedly instructed the American military where their people were. That is deliberate. Incompetent wouldn't have been so effective. >

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2928153.stm

BBC correspondent Rageh Omaar, who was in the Hotel Palestine the time, said video footage filmed by both a French television crew and the BBC had picked up no sounds of fire coming from the hotel in the 20 or 30 minutes before the blast.

Chief spokeswomen Victoria Clark said she had repeatedly warned news organizations that correspondents were "not safe in a war zone".

< This is a lot like the mob telling you it would be a shame if your business were to burn to the ground some night. Every war zone for all modern history has had correspondents there reporting, why did this one have American soldiers killing so many journalists? >

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/05/01/gitmo.journalist/

< We held a camera man in gitmo for 6 years with no charges before we finally just released him. Scores of other journalists were killed by American forces, their only crime being that they weren't "embedded" with the troops. >

The network also said the United States placed some conditions on al-Hajj's release, including one that prevents him from any political activity.

< Another threat, try to be politically active, by protesting his unlawful kidnapping, and they will come get him. >


http://www.democracynow.org/2007/3/14/italian_journalist_giuliana_sgrena_on_washingtons

GIULIANA SGRENA: No. No, we have not seen any warning, because the patrol was not on the street. The patrol was outside the street, behind a curb. And we have not seen any warnings, because if not we could be stopped, there was no problem. But we have seen no warnings. And when the light arrived to us, immediately with the light arrived the bullets.

AMY GOODMAN: And Nicola Calipari laid down on top of you or fell down on top of you after he was shot?

GIULIANA SGRENA: No. He pushed me down between the two seats and to protect me, he was up to me.

AMY GOODMAN: On top of you.

GIULIANA SGRENA: Yes. And then they continued to shoot, and—

AMY GOODMAN: How many shots fired?

GIULIANA SGRENA: Against the car, they found fifty-eight bullets, and fifty-seven were against the passengers of the car. Only one, the last one, was against the engine of the car. That’s why the Italian judges, they will put on trial Lozano for voluntarily killing, because if he wanted to stop the car, he has to shoot to the engines before or to the wheels of the car, and not on the majority, the great majority of the bullets against the passengers.

< Why was the engine targeted last if the soldier wanted to stop the car? He intentionally was trying to kill the people in the car. >

GIULIANA SGRENA: Yes. All the communication between the patrol and the division commander were destroyed, because when the two Italians that took part of the military commission, they went to Baghdad and they asked for the communication, because there was some differences between the testifying of the different soldiers in the patrol. But they said—

AMY GOODMAN: How could the documents be destroyed? I mean, this is an extremely high-level case. You have Calipari, who is personally close to the Italian Prime Minister at the time, Berlusconi, who is a close Bush ally—there was a massive celebration prepared for your return to Italy.

< Destroying all documentation? No cooperation with one of our allies in investigating why we shoot their number 2 intelligence officer? Stinks like a cover up to me. >

..the day before the pulling down of the Saddam statue by American troops Photo Op, AND the hotel mentioned is ON THE SAME SQUARE.

The pictures of the Saddam statue being pulled down were sent around the World, and were made to look as if it was done spontaneously by a lerge crowd of grateful Iraqis.

The problem was that this event was entirely manufactured. Wide Angle shots of the event proved that there were very few people in the Square, and it was surrounde by US Tanks, BUT those were NOT the photos shown to the World.

I can't help but believe that the shelling of the hotel was a WARNING to the Media before the staged propaganda event.

speaking of crime and journalists.

The interview he did with Bush in Egypt showed the War Criminal Bush saying the bees won't stay in their nest. They didn't stay in their nest, they killed 3000 of our citizens.

I am wondering why when he said killed 3000 of our citizens he managed to smirk. I guess he couldn't contain his jubilation this time.

Available at www.today.msnbc.com