Yesterday I watched with astonishment as three segments of Amy Goodman's Democracy Now unfolded the incidents at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on April 8, 2003. Remember? American military fired on the hotel which was filled with journalists and killed two. There was no justification for the shooting. There were suspicions that aiming tank fire at the hotel was quite deliberate. Like so many atrocities or probable atrocities committed by the Pentagon before, during, and after Bush's blitzkrieg , this one has faded as each week or month brings something new to make us gasp in disbelief. At least in this country. In Europe and particularly Spain, the Palestine shooting is far from forgotten.
Amy first interviewed Olga Rodriquez, reporter for the Spanish network, Cadena SER, friend and colleague of murdered journalist, José Couso. She was also staying in the Palestine Hotel, was a witness, and has researched the incident. The second segment was a transcription of a documentary about the incident -- Hotel Palestine: Killing the Witness. It has just opened in New York and Houston. I'm hoping PDiddie of Brains and Eggs, who has just seen the documentary in Houston, will write something about it. The third interview segment is with Javier Couso, brother of the murdered journalist, who has done his own research into the incident. The full interviews are recommended reading or hearing. What I'll do here is pull out some details, put them together, and see what we have.
Olga Rodriguez:
...The 8th of April, we woke up early in the morning, and we saw some tanks already on the bridge. They were not hiding. They were there. When the attack happened, I saw them the first time like four hours before the attack on the bridge. I was in the 16th floor of Palestine Hotel, and I was waiting for a phone call from my radio station in Spain, because I had to be on the air, and I was on the balcony. Suddenly, my phone rang, so I went inside the room. And when I was doing that, the attack came. At first, I thought that I was dead. I felt completely empty inside me. I couldn't hear anything. Then five seconds later, I reacted. I started to touch myself. I discovered some blood in my leg, and I decided to run. I went to the other room where some Spanish journalists were, and I said, I cannot hear anything. We have been attacked....
...In the 15th floor, there were Reuters people. One of them, Taras, was dead, immediately, in that attack. But we didn't know that. When I arrived to the 14th floor, an Italian journalist who was a friend of mine was shouting, "Jose is injured. Jose is hurt." And after that, we went to look for him, we saw that he was really injured in one of his legs here...
...Like one hour after that, I talked with Spain by phone, and my boss said to me, “The Pentagon has recognized that it was an American attack.” And I couldn't believe it, because I knew that they knew that that hotel, as everybody in the world knew, that hotel was the place in which were living 200 journalists from Europe, from America, and they were not far away. They didn't arrive ten minutes before the attack. They were there before, 36 hours before. They knew exactly where the Palestine Hotel was, even from the bridge. They could -- you can go to the bridge in Baghdad, and you can see Palestine Hotel in English in the building...
[Film clip: Vincent Brooks, spokesman for CentCom, interviewed at that time: "Initial reports indicate that the coalition force operating near the hotel took fire from the lobby of the hotel and returned fire."]
...When I listened to that explanation, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it, and nobody of the Palestine Hotel could believe it. I remember a lot of – I have a lot of good American journalists who were there staying. We were -- we were like astonished...
...A very good friend of mine who is a journalist in this country when the attack happened against the Hotel Palestine. He phoned me. He was in Jordan. He told me nothing is going to happen, Olga, because there is not an American journalist between the hurt people or dead people... I love this society and this country. I have been living in New York for a while, but I think he was right in this.
Excerpts from the documentary, Hotel Palestine: Killing the Witness:
DAVID CHATER: They knew exactly that there were journalists here and that there were cameras pointing at the tank battle going on from these balconies. It's extraordinary that they should come up with this excuse, saying that we have all got to hang white sheets out of the window to identify ourselves because there were sniper rounds coming out of the building. I never heard a single shot coming from any of the area around me, certainly not from the hotel.
CARLOS HERNANDEZ: [translated]All of us there knew there had been no hostile fire at all against the American tanks, neither from the hotel, nor from the hotel’s surroundings.
JESUS QUINONERO: [translated] I sat for about five hours, positioned on the hotel terrace. I heard no shooting from our side. Not from our side. None at all.
NARRATOR: There is an obvious fact that contradicts this first version from the U.S. forces. More than 1,500 meters separate the Palestine Hotel and the tanks, far beyond the effective range of a rifle or a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Associated Press correspondent Chris Tomlinson was embedded with the second battalion of the third infantry division.
CHRIS TOMLINSON: I think that was something that the soldiers started to say after the fact to try to protect themselves from criticism. But as you pointed out, if you go stand where the tank was and look at where the Palestine is, there's no -- an RPG cannot fire that far, a sniper rifle may be able to reach that far. AK47s certainly can’t shoot that far....
* * *
SHAWN GIBSON [Commander of the tank which fired on the hotel]: Okay? And I took my time, and I called it up to ensure what I seen, and it was clarified with another set of eyes.
NARRATOR: The decision was not taken in the heat of battle. Ten minutes go by until Gibson receives the order to open fire.
SHAWN GIBSON: We did not know that they had reporters in the Palestine Hotel. If we would have known that, we would not have fired a round over there. I don't even know if that information was given to the U.S. Army. I do not know that. Okay? If it was, it didn't get down to my level.
CHRIS TOMLINSON: What Colonel Perkins and Colonel DeCamp have told me is that they did not have any information about the Palestine Hotel or the location of western journalists prior to coming into Baghdad on April 7.
NARRATOR: When Colin Powell visits Spain on May 2, he confirms what everyone had assumed. The military command was perfectly aware that the journalists were based at the Palestine Hotel.
COLIN POWELL: We knew about the hotel. We knew that it was a hotel where
journalists were located, and others, and it is for that reason it was not attacked during any phase of the aerial campaign.
The Spanish journalists in general got the sense that firing at reporters was deliberate.
The final segment was an interview with Javier, the brother of José Couso, who was killed during the attack. Amy Goodman sets it up, explaining that Javier Couso has called "for an independent investigation into the death of his brother and the prosecution of those responsible. I asked him to talk about the comments of the tank commander, Sergeant Shawn Gibson on the documentary. Gibson is the U.S. soldier who pulled the trigger that killed Jose Couso..."
I think he’s [Gibson, tank commander] lying, because of all of the proof, because of the evidence that we have, that we know of: Recordings, the testimony of hundreds of witnesses, of military experts who make it very clear that if you are exposed to an enemy attack, you would never have a tank on the bridge, you know, just sort of sitting there. Ten minutes that the main gun of the tank was aiming at the Hotel Palestine. There was a heat round from the tank. It was a high explosive, high power explosive used called “heat.” We have actually been able to gain a copy of the manual of urban combat of the U.S. Army. They had to get information – they had to ask for information from the G2, which is the operations section, and G3, which is information sections. And they knew. They knew that the Hotel Palestine was a civilian building. They received authorization from the head of the Third Infantry Division, General Buford Blount, who also knew that the Hotel Palestine was a civilian target and the Hotel Palestine had all of these journalists...
...On the 13th of April, they're going to debate this in the European Parliament. Really, the focus on the difference between the case of Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist who was attacked a few weeks ago and the case of the attack on the Hotel Palestine and Jose Couso, why is there going to be a serious investigation apparently into the attack on the Italian journalist but not into the Hotel Palestine? We're working with the Human Rights Commission of the European Parliament on a resolution that would demand explanations from the government of the United States, which would deal with all kinds of attacks on journalists, not only the attacks like the Hotel Palestine or the one on Giuliana Sgrena, but also journalists who have been kidnapped, because my impression both having been in Iraq and also outside Iraq is that independent journalism is under threat, is that there have been more than 40 journalists who have been killed in Iraq without any investigation. They're being kidnapped by dark forces whose whereabouts in that character were don't know. If we don't stop this among -- between all of us, with all of us, that is, families, journalists, media organizations, then the only information we'll receive about war will be from embedded journalists or from the military itself.
I'll be interested to see if the European Parliament demands and explanation. As Olga Rodriquez pointed out elsewhere during her interview, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi immediately demanded an explanation from the American government when Sgrena's car was fired on and her rescuer killed. The then-conservative government in Spain didnn't exert pressure. Time someone did, since we not doing it over here. Not so far, anyway...
