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by Kathryn Wallace
Have U.S. authorities captured Osama Bin Laden? If certain international papers are to be believed, he is currently surrounded by U.S. forces and will be taken into custody at the soonest politically expedient moment. No, you haven't seen this reported in the U.S. press -- not even the story that other press organizations are reporting an Osama capture. But does that mean the story is pure fiction?
Since I took a few swipes last week at the press, everyone's favorite whipping boy, why stop now? The Osama rumors may be equal parts conspiracy theory and overseas anti-U.S. propaganda -- but the weak one-source only coverage of the war in Iraq leaves a few questions about the independence of America's "Fifth Estate."
I'll get to the Osama story in a second, but first let's take a look at the ineffectiveness of an "embedded" press during the war. It sounded like a good idea at the beginning of the war last year, but consider the trouble of suiting journalists up for war alongside soldiers, arming them and even asking them to set down notebooks and pick up stretchers or stand guard over an enemy.
The Pentagon's plan of folding thousands of would-be war correspondents into military units during the Iraqi war allowed journalists to report from the frontlines with some degree of safety and gave them a more realistic idea of the life of a soldier.
But embedded journalists confuse the role of the press. The idea is that there must be some kind of free press to oversee the government's use of tax dollars and power. If a reporter is buried too deep, where's the oversight?
In my mind, this was a Pentagon trick to leverage and control journalistic access to the news. Reporters that didn't toe the official line in war coverage lost access, and journalistic free agents in Iraq were lost and lonely -- ignored by the military and on their own for protection. Just ask Geraldo Rivera -- a war zone is a pretty scary place to have no friends. Not surprisingly, most news outlets went the embedded-journalist route.
Poor coverage, however, had started even before the war commenced. Remember the rock star treatment Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld received from the media? Press conferences felt like love-ins rather than what they should have been -- a confrontation of the people with the powers-that-be.
All the questions that should have been asked then are coming up now, of course, but wouldn't they have been more appropriate before the country sacrificed so many sons and daughters and destroyed the potency of the United Nations? The press didn't check power; they were a little drunk on the idea of playing soldier in the desert.
So what does this have to do with the possible capture of the most wanted man on the planet? I haven't a clue of what is true or not, but I do think the American press on the whole doesn't push much harder than the Defense Department's press releases and, in most cases, the truth lies somewhere between the official military report and the story carried in the foreign press.
Think of the conflicting rescue stories of Private Jessica Lynch and recall the somewhat unbelievable circumstances surrounding the capture of Saddam Hussein. These high-profile stories send the message that the mainstream press prints without questioning the Pentagon's releases, and the press will not hold the Bush administration responsible for false reports or for conflicting statements. The public, it appears, doesn't really care.
So here is the Osama juice. Be warned that the information comes to us through one unnamed source. But considering that most of our military information comes to us from one source -- the government -- time will be the judge of what is true or not: Two British papers, The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Express, reported Osama Bin Laden is surrounded by U.S. Special Forces in an area of land bordering northwest Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The claim is attributed to "a well-placed intelligence source" in Washington, who is quoted as saying: "He [Bin Laden] is boxed in."
The papers say the hostile terrain makes an all-out conventional military assault impossible. The plan to capture him would depend on a "grab-him-and-go" style operation.
"U.S. helicopters already sited on the Afghanistan border will swoop in to extricate him," The Telegraph wrote. It claims Bin Laden and his men "sleep in caves or out in the open. The area is swept by fierce snowstorms howling down from the 10,000 foot-high mountain peaks. Donkeys are the only transport."
The U.S. Special Forces are "absolutely confident" there is no escape for Bin Laden, and are awaiting the order to go in and get him. The timing of that order will ultimately depend on President Bush, the source said. "Capturing Bin Laden will certainly be a huge help for him as he gets ready for the election."
On Thursday last week, General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said the United States had been engaged in "intense" efforts to capture Bin Laden, who was believed to be hiding in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But he insisted that the focus of the search had not narrowed for months.
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