Maybe not all of them.
Posted on 04/11/2003 2:13:44 PM PDT by Noddegamra
Statue Toppling Conspiracy? Almost Seen as U.S. “Conquest”
ABC made sure viewers understood that the Arab media see the U.S. as occupiers of Iraq, and why they do. In a prime time special, Jennings characterized Middle East TV coverage as seeking to learn: “Is this liberation or occupation?” Cynthia McFadden declared that “the pictures that play in America as liberation play in the Arab world as domination.”
Soon after McFadden's story, Robert Krulwich saw the toppling of the Hussein statue as a parable for how Arabs see the U.S. action in Iraq. Krulwich provided a very strange blow-by-blow account of the toppling, a time line in which he implied some sort of conspiracy by the Iraqi citizenry (“two men who just happen to have a 12 foot ladder with them....then a third man just happens to have...a long, two-inch thick rope”) before noting that had the Iraqis managed to fell the statue “it would have looked like the Iraqis liberating themselves,” but since the Marines stepped in, Krulwich warned that if the statue had fallen with the U.S. flag over Hussein's face, “the world would have seen an image of American conquest.”
Jennings warned on ABC's 10:06pm EDT special: “As for what happened in Baghdad today and the change it may ultimately unleash in other countries, that's the issue. We monitored today the various Arabic language television networks. There's been one sort of issue that has threaded its way throughout all of the country, which in many respects has looked like our coverage, but they want to know, is this liberation or occupation?”
In the subsequent story Cynthia McFadden argued that “the pictures that play in America as liberation play in the Arab world as domination, says professor Fawaz Gerges.”
Over matching video, Krulwich soon offered an odd event-by- event rundown of how the Hussein statue was toppled. Krulwich began: “Two men, who just happen to have a 12 foot ladder with them. The first one hoisted himself up onto the pedestal. Followed by another guy in blue, who just makes it. And then a third man just happens to have, look to the right there, a long, two-inch thick rope.”
Showing how they managed to place a “loose noose” around the statue, Krulwich noted that “all around the circle, from a distance, Marines are calmly watching as an extremely large man arrives with a sledge hammer and begins pounding the pedestal. Then there's a tug of war over who gets to pound next. Had the statue fallen at this moment it would have looked like the Iraqis liberating themselves. But then a U.S. tank retrieval vehicle shows up...”
After showing a Marine climbing up the 25-foot high statue, Krulwich explained: “Seconds later that soldier is handed an American flag, which in a light wind stays on Saddam's face. Had the statue fallen at this moment, the world would have seen an image of American conquest. But after a minute and thirty two seconds” the Marine takes down the U.S. flag and places an Iraqi flag as a scarf.
Skipping ahead to the end, Krulwich recounted: “The episode ends with Saddam's head being dragged down the street, followed by a guy in a maroon T-shirt who's banging the head repeatedly with a mallet. And if you stop the tape here, you'll notice seven people in this crowd are journalists taking photos and only eleven are Iraqis celebrating. There was extensive coverage of this event. But that does not mean that the coverage will be the same all over the world. In America we have already chosen our defining image.”
At that point viewers saw the Baghdad statue tumbling over. Then, over video of the guy hitting the statue's head and of a U.S. flag over Hussein's face, Krulwich ominously concluded: “The question is, when the Arab world opens its morning papers, given the choices, what image will they see?”
Maybe not all of them.
A group of maybe 20 Iraqis came walking down the street in the afternoon, the cameras picking them up as they chanted anti-Hussein yells and passed through the Marine perimeter. They walked around a little and then milled. A couple of them went over to the statue. They started throwing shoes at it, trying to hit it with their shoes and insult it.
They started trying to climb on each other's shoulders to get up. More of the group came over and started trying to help them up. Eventually one and then another made it up to the top of the concrete upon which the statue stood. All of this took 20-25 minutes.
More people gathered at the base. More shoes were thrown. A ladder appeared after a few minutes. Then a rope. They took the ladder up to the top of the concrete and used it to get the rope up over the statues shoulders. It was dangerous work and I commented to my wife how bad it would be if one fell to his death. It took several minutes of swinging one end of the rope to get it around the statue's neck. Then it was obvious that the rope was too short. It barely reached the ground. The two men climbed down. All of this took another 20 minutes or so.
The crowd had grown larger. Looked like a couple of hundred. The guys went and talked to some US soldiers. Maybe 10 minutes later the M88 pulled up and then they hooked a chain to the rope and started to back up tp pull it over. Everyone thought this was it. But that first attempt failed as the rope and chain came loose. Another 20 or more minutes had now passed. Maybe 30.
The M88 came back and lifted it's hoist all the way up. A Marine climbed up to attach a heavy chain around the neck. They then went through the whole US Flag - Iraqi Flag thing. All of this too another half hour or so and then they finally pulled it down to the cheers of hundreds of Iraqis. It didn't come all the way down and took another few minutes to finally pull it loose from its anchorings. The Iraqis immediately scrambled all over it, dancing on it.
Later, a pickup tied a chain to the thing and drug it off ... but it pulled its head off. Several Iraqis then dragged the head away with a chain, some Iraqis taking turns sitting on it.
It was a good 2-3 hour affair and was obviously spontaneous, irrespective of what the slanted media wants to try and turn it into, or how much they want to abett our enemies. Jennings disgusts me with his unveiled attempts to nay-say and bad mouth what is clearly a monumnetal point in history and success for liberty loving people everywhere. I saw it and will never forget it.
Frankly, who gives a sh*t? Any people who send their own children out to kill themselves with bombs strapped on, or use their neighbor's children as human shields, are contemptible to Allah.
Symbol blurs the U.S. mission -- US flag on statue hinted at occupation, not liberation
If you see the front page photo of the statue crashing down on USA Today, you will see that the Marine who secured the chain around the neck of the statue also went out of his way to tie the Iraqi's now useless manila rope securely to the chain. The result was that the Iraqi's rope was purposely included and not discarded.
The pundits are psycho-analysing every action of that 20-something Marine but only those actions that can have nefarious interpretations are publicized by them.
Ah ha ha ha!!! LOL!!!
I'd forgotten about that!
Jennings' a boob.
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