The Sunday New York Times (12/18/11) featured a powerful investigation of civilian casualties resulting from the NATO war in Libya–casualties that, to hear NATO officials tell it, maybe don’t even exist.
The Times‘ C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt report:
But an on-the-ground examination by The New York Times of airstrike sites across Libya–including interviews with survivors, doctors and witnesses, and the collection of munitions remnants, medical reports, death certificates and photographs–found credible accounts of dozens of civilians killed by NATO in many distinct attacks. The victims, including at least 29 women or children, often had been asleep in homes when the ordnance hit.
The Times even took its research–based on a small number of incidents–to NATO, which seemed to change its story immediately:
Two weeks after being provided a 27-page memorandum from the Times containing extensive details of nine separate attacks in which evidence indicated that allied planes had killed or wounded unintended victims, NATO modified its stance.
“From what you have gathered on the ground, it appears that innocent civilians may have been killed or injured, despite all the care and precision,” said Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for NATO headquarters in Brussels. “We deeply regret any loss of life.”
The Times reports that it “found significant damage to civilian infrastructure from certain attacks for which a rationale was not evident or risks to civilians were clear.” The paper also noted that many witnesses talked about “warplanes restriking targets minutes after a first attack, a practice that imperiled, and sometimes killed, civilians rushing to the wounded.” That is a tactic often associated with terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.
The Times also offers a sickening glimpse into the denial of NATO leaders after civilians were killed in an airstrike in Tripoli:
Initially, NATO almost acknowledged its mistake. “A military missile site was the intended target,” an alliance statement said soon after. “There may have been a weapons system failure which may have caused a number of civilian casualties.”
Then it backtracked. Kristele Younes, director of field operations for Civic, the victims’ group, examined the site and delivered her findings to NATO. She met a cold response. “They said, ‘We have no confirmed reports of civilian casualties,'” Ms. Younes said.
The reason, she said, was that the alliance had created its own definition for “confirmed”: Only a death that NATO itself investigated and corroborated could be called confirmed. But because the alliance declined to investigate allegations, its casualty tally by definition could not budge–from zero.
If you recall the corporate media coverage of the war while it was happening, Libyan leaders were churning out laughably clumsy propaganda about civilian deaths. “Libya Stokes Its Machine Generating Propaganda” was the June 7 headline of a New York Times story by John Burns, who scoffed at the “nightly propaganda tour” of the Libyan capitol. It seemed obvious at the time that Burns and his ilk were offended by by the Libyan government’s inability to lie as effectively as the NATO generals.
The Times also investigated August airstrikes that it termed “NATO’s bloodiest known accidents in the war”–a series of strikes on buildings in the town of Majer:
The attack began with a series of 500-pound laser-guided bombs, called GBU-12s, ordnance remnants suggest. The first house, owned by Ali Hamid Gafez, 61, was crowded with Mr. Gafez’s relatives, who had been dislocated by the war, he and his neighbors said.
The bomb destroyed the second floor and much of the first. Five women and seven children were killed; several more people were wounded, including Mr. Gafez’s wife, whose her lower left leg had to be amputated, the doctor who performed the procedure said.
Minutes later, NATO aircraft attacked two buildings in a second compound, owned by brothers in the Jarud family. Four people were killed, the family said.
Several minutes after the first strikes, as neighbors rushed to dig for victims, another bomb struck. The blast killed 18 civilians, both families said.
The death toll has been a source of confusion. The Qaddafi government said 85 civilians died. That claim does not seem to be credible. With the Qaddafi propaganda machine now gone, an official list of dead, issued by the new government, includes 35 victims, among them the late-term fetus of a fatally wounded woman the Gafez family said went into labor as she died.
The Zlitan hospital confirmed 34 deaths. Five doctors there also told of treating dozens of wounded people, including many women and children.
The airstrikes in Majer were discussed by FAIR in an August 18 media advisory, where it was noted that several reports talked about a death toll of about 30. The deaths were barely covered at all. As we pointed out, the Paper of Record did not think much at the time:
The New York Times (8/10/11) ran a 170-word version of a Reuters dispatch which noted: “There was no evidence of weapons at the farmhouses, but there were no bodies there, either. Nor was there blood.”
Corporate media were more offended by inflated Libyan claims about civilian casualties than they were about the false denials coming from the people doing the killing. What’s worse, to kill people and then deny that you did so, or to overstate how many people your enemies were killing? Many reporters–too many–seemed to think the latter was the more serious crime.
So, any takers on whether this is pressed by the Times (or any other corpress outlet), or do you think it will be another one-off quickly buried under the mountain of propaganda that passes for “all the news that’s fit to print”?
There’s no doubt as to where I’ll place my wager.
Didn’t Chomsky once say something along the lines of being able to find most all of what you need to know by reading the NYT? The point being that it won’t be splashed across the front page, but will appear mostly in the nooks and crannies if you’re diligent enough to search for it every damn day.
But the charge of journalism is to give us the facts every damn day, not just on those rare occasions when the corporate media decide to actually do their job, and then expect to be lauded for it.
Their “awards” are more ironic testament to their failings than emblematic of their earnest effort.
Yeah, DL, you’re right, as is Peter Hart’s article above. This whole thing is a current chronic sickening formula in our foreign policy – – concoct some semi-plausible (benevolent-sounding is best) reason why we HAVE to take military action on the other side of the world; give serious media credence to the most exaggerated claims against the purported malefactor while denigrating any cautious, reasoned voices; bomb/invade their country and deny any significant casualties THEY experience while rallying around ‘our brave men & women of the armed forces’ and decrying any of OUR casualties; show impatience in the aftermath with the remaining residents that they’re just not adopting to our glorious democratic system with enough enthusiasm; and finally do a post-mortem and discover that … surprise-surprise… those big bombs we dropped in populated areas actually DID kill & maim indiscriminately! But who could’ve foreseen that? They were sexy laser-guided bombs or missiles or drones or shells fired from miles away or dropped from high-altitude and they were MEANT only for ‘the-worst-of-the-worst’ but somehow they killed a lot of men, women, children (ones like our family & friends, but you’ll never see THAT comparison consistently made in the MSM)… but we’re kinda sorry… we didn’t MEAN to kill them even though we do it over, and over, and over, and over, again and again and again ad infinitum. We’ll even issue a limited, half-hearted kiss-your-sister apology. And the MSM will issue it’s traditional mea culpas (I suspect there’s a template already existing where they just need to change the specific facts), and then it’s on to the next episode with NO reference made to these previous episodes — virtually NO serious context provided of who lied and who told the truth… like the old sitcoms on TV, each week it’s a brand new episode as if it’s the first pilot program with NO history.
FAIR is taking an obviously damning proof of war-enabling media and screwing it up. Going on about Libya’s “laughably clumsy propaganda”…according to what’s being exposed here as serially lying and misleading corporate media? Talk about adding insult to injury. NATO warmongers cruise-missile, bomb and drone-strike defenseless foreign populations under false pretenses, while the profit-making media justifies the naked aggression with Goebellsian deception; and then FAIR hovers around the carnage to judge who best calculates the casualties of the accumulated apparent war crimes. They’ll even laugh at “lies” of the attacked Libya, as alleged overestimating of the dead and injured is mystifyingly equated with lying about committing war crimes [?!?] Thanks for the objectivity, FAIR! Developing nations under threat of having their sovereignty blatantly violated by US/NATO militaries are surely grateful for this knightly journalistic vigilance.
This is the right way to do this this story: ” Libya: New York Times Drip Feeds Truth on NATO’s Civilian Atrocities” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28297
Big Em:
You forgot the part (as during the Iraq war) where the Times says that this was the first pre-emptive war (invasion) in American history. And most Americans believe it!
The United Nations should also be ashamed for their role in ostensibly wanting to save some civilians at the cost of murdering many others and destroying a functioning nation with the highest standard of living in Africa–all so that, like similar destruction in Iraq, their oil should be controlled by the big oil companies of U.S.A and Europe instead of their own population or what’s left of it. How many people would have cheered and voted for Pres. Obama if they had known that the “change we can believe in” was more war and devastation? Horrifying facts too late!
if we compare the civilian casualties in Lybia (which are regrettable) , the NATO will be considered a sleeping Angel compared to our forces striking and destroying the whole infrastructure in Iraq and causing thousands and thousnds in civilians to die , or be maimed . the pre emptive strike for weapons of mass destruction that never was, is the most shameful war of our times .
When I noted to Schmitt that Times reporters had been skeptical of Libyan casualty counts, he agreed and explained that was because its reporters had been unable to conduct a careful investigation until the regime was changed.
RE: Chomsky on how to read the NYT: my mentor Leo Huberman advised to read the Times reports starting with the final grafs…
Glen Ford of BlackAgendaReports has no doubts on the number of deaths..and reports the deliberate murder of thousands of Black Libyan civilians…which have been mainly ignored by the US and European MSM:
The Butchering of Gaddafi Is America’s Crime
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
â┚¬Ã…“Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared like ghoulish despots at a Roman Coliseum, reveling in their Libyan gladiators’ butchery.â┚¬Ã‚Â
Last week the whole world saw, and every decent soul recoiled, at the true face of NATO’s answer to the Arab Spring. An elderly, helpless prisoner struggled to maintain his dignity in a screaming swirl of savages, one of whom thrusts a knife up his rectum. These are Europe and America’s jihadis in the flesh. In a few minutes of joyously recorded bestiality, the rabid pack undid every carefully packaged image of NATO’s â┚¬Ã…“humanitarianâ┚¬Ã‚ project in North Africa â┚¬“ a horror and revelation indelibly imprinted on the global consciousness by the brutes’ own cell phones.
Nearly eight months of incessant bombing by the air forces of nations that account for 70 percent of the world’s weapons spending, all culminating in the gang-bang slaughter of Moammar Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and his military chief of staff, outside Sirte. The NATO-armed bands then displayed the battered corpses for days in Misurata â┚¬“ the city that had earlier made good on its vow to â┚¬Ã…“purge Black skinâ┚¬Ã‚ through the massacre and dispersal of 30,000 darker residents of nearby Tawurgha â┚¬“ before disposing of the bodies in an unknown location.
To cut through all the crap lets look at some truths.People die in wars.You can’t call the bullet back ,and you can NEVER give restitution for the death of even one innocent.When the big elephant with oh so noble intentions enters a room with a thousand eggs on the floor ,the end result is obvious.So the real hope is to avoid war at all costs.Bring a gun into your hand and you bring a gun into your heart.But the other side of that coin and looking at it without the smoke and mirrors, I wonder if anyone on these blogs can admit to how easy it is to avoid war with America or NATO by extension.You really have to be one stupid stubborn MFer to somehow fall into a warlike situation with the worlds Democracies.You literally have to work to be that dumb.At this point we have two countries that want no entreaties with Free democratic countries.Iran and north korea.They strive for what is in effect a non declared state of (if not war)…….belligerent struggle and confrintation.This is the template for an erosion of conditions ,leading to conflict.I see this as easily resolved.If the the will exists THERE.The same would go for the Palestinian problem.I do not buy for a moment that Obama is in the same category as Ah ma needs a job and the Korean son of Godzilla.
confrontation (sorry)