Will New Law Imperil Free Speech from Embedded Journalists?

The Washington Post reports:

Private contractors and other civilians serving with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan could be subject for the first time to military courts-martial under a new federal provision that legal scholars say is almost certain to spark constitutional challenges.

The provision, which was slipped into a spending bill at the end of the last Congress, is intended to close a long-standing loophole that critics say puts contractors in war zones above the law.

But the provision also could affect others accompanying U.S. forces in the field, including civilian government employees and embedded journalists.

Of course the journalists at WP are up in arms.

The article mentions later:

Graham said the change was aimed solely at holding contractors accountable. But legal observers say it could be interpreted broadly to also include employees with other government agencies, as well as reporters.

"One could imagine a situation in which a commander is unhappy with what a reporter is writing and could use the UCMJ to pressure the reporter," said Phillip E. Carter, a contracting lawyer with McKenna Long & Aldridge.

I'd like to feel sorry for future embedded reporters, but I could find no independent thought expressed by the ones who took part in the Iraqi invasion in 2003, though I read prodigiously  about the conflict, thinking some embed would actually maintain his or her vaunted journalistic critical attitude.

None.  When officers told the journalist (who always just missed seeing the incidences themselves according said officers) that there were human shields used by those nefarious Iraqis, the journalists reported the officers claims without a whimper.

Journalists knew that the troops and especially the officers they were embedded with  held the power of life and death over them.  A future lawsuit is a small hill of beans comparatively.

Journalists say they want to be independent, but they didn't really try last time.  And we know that they faced extraordinary control.  Their satellite phones were confisticated as they arrived in the war zone for supposedly being targeting devices for the enemy.  Therefore journalists were forced to use officers "approved" satellite phones and often stand in the presence of a controlling officer to make their reports.

The murder of non embedded journalists and their employees by US troops (the Terry Loyd group,  Al Jazeera TV, Palestine Hotel) show that the US did intend to use the threat of death to journalists that would not come under their control.

But now the Bush administration's contractors that committed the worst crimes in prisoner, and civilian treatment and feeding our soldiers food from filthy kitchens and otherwise poorly provisioned them,  plus who created faulty and overpriced, under-quality rebuilding want out of a section a Republican Congressman inserted into a bill that passed Congress and the president signed (were Karl and Dick drunk that day and forget to read it)?

So, notify the mainstream journalists.  Tell them they are at risk!

Fire fire fire!  Help!  We are being silenced.

They have always been good for doing the Bush administration's dirty thought control duties.

Sorry, guys and girls.  You silenced yourself in the last invasion (and didn't do too good a job pre-invasion or we wouldn't have gone into Iraq).

Now we need to hold our torturers and the military's provisioners accountable for their acts.

Is that not okay with you?

If you don't like making a deal with the devil then don't embed yourself.

tags: iraq  war  invasion  embedded journalists  contractors  reconstruction  torture  legislation  news media  

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