The US military urgently needs to reappraise its rules of engagement, writesLara Marlowe, in Baghdad
At 11.59 a.m., a year ago today, Samia Nakhoul, the Gulf bureau chief for Reuters news agency, saw an orange flash as a US M1 Abrams tank on the Jumhuriya bridge fired at the Palestine Hotel.
Seconds later, Nakhoul recalls, "I was hit by a lid of fire, as if someone threw hot iron at my head. I felt my face burning and the blood pouring out." Under bombardment, Nakhoul's colleagues drove her to three hospitals, searching for a brain scan. In the first emergency room, she learned that Taras Protsyuk, a cameraman for Reuters, had died.
For weeks, Protsyuk and Nakhoul had gone on stories together. "I wanted to go home to my husband. He wanted to go to his family," Nakhoul says. "When I heard that Taras died, I felt, 'That's it'. Things will never be the same again."
That night, as Nakhoul decided to risk brain surgery in Baghdad, she learned that a second television cameraman died. He was José Couso, from the Spanish channel Telecinco. Though Nakhoul survived several operations and resumed work for Reuters, she still suffers from headaches, nightmares and panic seizures. On August 17th, 2003, another Reuters cameraman, Mazen Dana, was killed when a US tank fired on him in broad daylight from 30 metres. "I felt like I was being attacked again," Nakhoul says.
A fine journalist who has covered many wars, Nakhoul would be the first to admit that a reporter's life is not inherently more valuable than anyone else's.
Yet the killing of journalists by US forces in Iraq is emblematic of much that has gone wrong with the US occupation: the lack of co-ordination and communication; a propensity to lie and refuse to accept responsibility; rules of engagement which are, in the words of the human rights group Amnesty International, "a virtual licence to kill".
To mark the anniversary of the attack on the Palestine Hotel, the International Federation of Journalists has declared today an international day of protest and mourning for media casualties. Twenty-one journalists have died in Iraq in the past year.
At least seven of them were killed by US forces. Tariq Ayoub, a reporter for Al-Jazeera television, was killed by a US rocket on the same day as Couso and Protsyuk.
The targeting of Al-Jazeera had one important point in common with the attack on the Palestine: like several of the journalists staying in the hotel, Al-Jazeera forwarded its building's map co-ordinates to the Pentagon, and received assurances it would not be attacked.
The Pentagon and the US Central Command in Doha knew the Iraqi government forced all foreign journalists to live in the Palestine Hotel. Anyone who listened to the radio or watched television knew that it was a media headquarters, like the Commodore Hotel in Beirut, or the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo.
Jean-Paul Mari, a correspondent for the Nouvel Observateur who helped to carry our wounded and dying colleagues out of the Palestine Hotel, devoted months to an in-depth investigation. His report, entitled "Two murders and a lie", was published earlier this year by Reporters Without Borders.
Mari concludes that responsibility for the attack lies with Gen Buford Blount's 3rd Infantry Division command, for failing to tell unit commanders and soldiers that the Palestine Hotel was the media headquarters. Capt Philip Wolford, the commander of the Alpha 4-64 Armor Co, who authorised the firing of the tank shell, did not know there were journalists in the hotel.
The Pentagon's criminal negligence almost had more horrific consequences. Wolford called in an air raid on the Palestine Hotel, which would have killed dozens more. On learning that his unit had wounded journalists, 20 minutes after the tank shell was fired, he cancelled the air raid.
Explanations for the attack went through an evolutionary process not unlike the lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Less than two hours after the attack, Gen Blount claimed there were snipers firing at US troops from the hotel. More than 200 journalists were witness to the fact that not a shot was fired from the hotel, and that there had been a long lull before the tank fired at it.
The following day, the official version began to slip. Military sources said mortars were being fired from the area of the hotel - not the hotel itself - and that Iraqi "spotters" were using large buildings to watch US troops.
Sgt Shawn Gibson, the African-American soldier who asked permission from Wolford to fire the fatal tank shell, said he saw a man with binoculars on a balcony. In the abridged "report" released by the Pentagon in August, the man with binoculars became "a hunter-killer team".
The story of "direct firing" from the hotel was a lie from the beginning. The US military eventually admitted there was no firing from the hotel. The US army statement issued on August 12th, 2003, concluded that firing a 120 mm high explosive tank shell at the hotel because Sgt Gibson saw the glimmer of a camera lens was "a proportionate and justifiably measured response . . . fully in accordance with the rules of engagement". A US "investigation" into the death of cameraman Mazen Dana came to the same conclusion.
The family of José Couso has filed a lawsuit in Spain against three US soldiers for "war crimes" and "murder". Reuters news agency, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders maintain pressure on the Pentagon to release the full text of its inquiry into the killings.
I asked Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, why soldiers who kill Iraqi civilians and foreign journalists are invariably cleared of wrongdoing. Gen Sanchez replied: "Young soldiers on the ground have to make decisions. When they feel threatened, they always have the right to shoot."
Except that everyone in Iraq feels threatened, all the time. Firing a tank shell and calling in an air raid because a soldier thinks he sees a man with binoculars is one of thousands of examples of profligate use of lethal force. If the US military wants to be trusted, it urgently needs to reappraise its rules of engagement.