Last Friday’s attack on the five Iraqi Air Defense sites was provoked, contrary to Brian Emerson Jones’ column (“Latest bombings will only enforce stereotypes,” SN 2/21).
In the month of January alone, Iraq launched over a dozen surface-to-air missiles at British and American planes patrolling the no-fly zone, more than were launched in all of last year. That this fact managed to escape Jones’ column left me perplexed. He researched the event enough to know the names of the two deceased victims of the attack, yet somehow missed the cause of the bombing.
Jones claims that Saddam Hussein has “a great deal of public support.” Had he spent little more time investigating, he would have found that no Western media can work in Iraq without a “minder.” A minder is assigned to any journalistic team, who must pay for his services, and tells the journalists where they can and can’t film, whom they can and can’t talk to and stands nearby whenever an interview is being conducted. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights has recorded more than 16,000 cases of disappearances in Iraq. Reports of torture and arbitrary arrests are widespread. One of the sites struck was an agricultural village with, as Jones put it, “no military sites.” However, no foreign media have yet been allowed access to these sites.
Jones cites the economic sanctions as the cause of widespread malnutrition and disease in Iraq. However he fails to mention that under Security Council resolutions, sanctions cannot be lifted until inspectors verify that all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons have been destroyed, something Saddam has continually blocked. Jones also fails to bring up the $13 billion that Iraq has made in overseas oil sales, which it refuses to spend on food and medicine.
That Jones could have researched the event so thoroughly to know the number of planes used, every country which condemned the act, and even the name of that small agricultural village, but failed to discover any of this other information is practically impossible. Rather it seems he left out those facts which cannot be ignored, simply because it would damage his argument. Come on Jones, I expect better journalism for my four dollars.
Erik Davis
telecommunication sophomore
