The International Association to Protect Tyrant’s Flacks
: The International Federal of Journalists (don’t ask me, I sure don’t belong) just issued a statement condemning the U.S. taking out Iraqi TV:
The head of the world’s biggest journalists’ organisation says a U.S. bomb and missile attack on Iraqi television was an attempt at censorship and may have breached the Geneva Conventions.
“I think there should be a clear international investigation into whether or not this bombing violates the Geneva Conventions,” Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told Reuters on Wednesday.
“We have every reason to believe this is an act of censorship against media that U.S. politicians and military strategists don’t like,” he said.
Now that’s absurd — as if Iraqi TV remotely resembles anything journalistic or has the slightest thing to do with free speech. [via Lost Remote]
: Now Amnesty International is name-dropping “Geneva Convention” in this context.
Amnesty International said that the bombing could be a breach of the Geneva Conventions. “The bombing of a television station, simply because it is being used for the purposes of propaganda, cannot be condoned. It is a civilian object, and thus protected under international humanitarian law,” it said.
“To justify such an attack, coalition forces would have to show that the TV station was being used for military purposes, and that the attack properly balanced the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated with the incidental risk to civilian life”, Claudio Cordone, Amnesty’s director for international law, added.
It’s just too easy, a softball, not even worth the effort….
