The First Casualties: Iraqi Civilians, and the Truth
by Tamara Baker

March 22, 2003 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJP) -- CNN reports on their website that Iraqi Minister of Information al-Sahaf said that 207 Iraqi civilians were wounded by American bombs.

But what CNN America doesn't tell you is that al-Sahaf ALSO said that 250 Iraqi civilians were KILLED by American bombs.

For that information, you have to go to the respected Australian paper The Age.

The Age also provides a French human shield witness, Francoise Rofe, who backs up al-Sahaf's comments concerning civilian casualties.

Now, I know better than to expect any member of the US broadcast and cable media to report the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But this is sickening.

CNN's Aaron Brown gets upset when people accuse him and the networks of openly hoping for war and bloodshed. But in view of the two stories above, it's hard not to make that accusation.

But it seems that even the Australian press is prone to caving under pressure.

For example: The Sydney Morning Herald did a story on the US invasion of Iraq that included these two chilling paragraphs describing the Marine assault on Safwan Hill, an alleged Iraqi military target:

Marine Cobra helicopter gunships firing Hellfire missiles swept in low from the south. Then the marine howitzers, with a range of 30 kilometres, opened a sustained barrage over the next eight hours. They were supported by US Navy aircraft which dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives and napalm, a US officer told the Herald.

A legal expert at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva said the use of napalm or fuel air bombs was not illegal "per se" because the US was not a signatory to the 1980 weapons convention which prohibits and restricts certain weapons. "But the US has to apply the basic principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and take all precautions to protect civilians. In the case of napalm and fuel air bombs, these are special precautions because these are area weapons, not specific weapons," said Dominique Loye, the committee's adviser on weapons and IHL.

Don't bother looking for those paragraphs in the link above.

They were scrubbed from the story less than twenty-four hours after it was published on the SMH's website.

Gee, I wonder why...

...not.

UPDATE: March 23, 2003 -- Seems that the SMH has added the napalm paras back in, along with some comments from a Pentagon guy denying napalm was used.

However, as the SMH's sister paper The Age notes, reporter Lindsay Murdoch talked with two US Marine officers who said that napalm WAS used!