The Fog of war and other cliches

'A US military study that examined wars from World War I to the first Gulf War found that 15% of all casualties came from friendly fire, according to retired US Army Lt Col James Corum, the author of Fighting the War on Terror. The British and German military statistics were similar, the study found.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6337137.stm

The End.

But it won't be. Take this story for instance:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6040372.stm

Here are some choice quotes:

"Was reporter victim of a 'war crime' ?"

"Former ITN chief executive Stewart Purvis told the inquest he believed "the British military knew more about what happened at the top level than they were disclosing to us". He said he believed this may have been linked to their dislike of unilateral journalists and he added: "In my experience the British and the American military do not want unilateral teams operating full stop."

"Mr McLaughlin said: "Terry Lloyd was the victim not just of an unlawful killing, but also of a war crime. We would like to see the British government pressing charges against whoever was responsible." The NUJ's general secretary Jeremy Dear said: "The killing of journalists with impunity must never, ever go unpunished. Any attempt to silence journalists in this way must never succeed."

I know Jeremy Dear. I used to work with him. He is as far left as it is possible to go, way out into Trotskyist territory. What he is accusing America of is murder- politically motivated murder of 'non-embedded' journalists so they would not report on the war.

Proof please? Or evidence? Any evidence AT ALL. You haven't got any? REALLY? So this is just politically motivated hate-mongering of the worst kind...

The reporting of the blue-on-blue story from 2003 shows that the reporting of these stories is not about the real situation of men in a war- whether they are journalists or soldiers- who are at risk of dying each minute of each day. It is about showing the Americans to be callous killers, in love with their weapons, blazing away at anything and everything; And cold-bloodedly murdering reporters who might relay that back to the world.

The real story is much less dramatic, but has its own sad quality. I'm just reading that AP have a new super high-security bureau in Baghdad- phew! Because those hotels in the Green Zone are soooo risky. Last year I blogged about the pitiful number of embeds in Iraq, journos who are actually doing journalism- in June 2006, there were six of them. Reasonable estimates are that America has approx. 500,000 journalists of various shapes and descriptions. So of the available individuals, 0.0012% made it to the biggest story of the decade. Most embed applications are successful, as long as the journalist is able to establish proper credentials. The conclusion we must make then is that rather than the US and British militaries preventing journalists from reporting Iraq, there are virtually no journalists with the balls to do it.

This was the clincher for the Terry Lloyd 'murder' story though

"Most of the bullets were definitely coming from the American tanks," said Mr Demoustier.

Ergo, some of them weren't. Terry Lloyd died in a fire-fight that he tried to drive through the middle of. And thats it. But for the armchair critics who demand that all warfare goes strictly according to the Queensbury rules, thats never going to be enough.