Democracy Now! April 28, 2003

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Program Title:
Democracy Now! April 28, 2003
Series Title:
PRA Archive #: 
PZ0517.150b
Description: 

US soldiers strip naked four suspected looters and parade them through the streets: The Norwegian reporter who broke the story joins us from Baghdad; Who really saved Private Jessica Lynch? The capture of the American POW might be one of the most heralded stories of the Iraqi invasion but a British reporter claims the U.S. media got the story all wrong; Argentina is set to have a runoff between two Peronists: ex President Carlos Menem and Governor Nestor Kirchner. We go to Argentina to speak with Naomi Klein.

9:00-9:01 Billboard 9:01-9:10 Headlines 9:10-9:11 One Minute Music Break 9:11-9:20: It has emerged that US soldiers guarding another arms dump in Baghdad stripped four suspected looters, burnt their clothes and forced them at gunpoint onto the streets naked. The degraded prisoners had the words "Ali Baba, Haram'' scrawled on their chests Arabic for thief and sinful. Reports of the incident provoked outrage from human rights organizations. They say the US troops broke the Geneva Convention, which protects prisoners against "insults or public curiosity". Amnesty International called on the US to launch an investigation and promised to raise the matter urgently with the United Nations this week. The incident provoked dozens of anti-American protests in the capital. * Line Fransson, journalist with the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet Link: View photos published in Dagbladet: http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2003/04/25/367175.html 9:20-9:21 One Minute Music Break 9:21-9:40: A recent story in the London Times titled So Who Really Did Save Private Jessica? begins: The rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, which inspired America during one of the most difficult periods of the war, was not the heroic Hollywood story told by the US military, but a staged operation that terrified patients and victimised the doctors who had struggled to save her life, according to Iraqi witnesses. Doctors at al-Nasiriyah general hospital said that the airborne assault had met no resistance and was carried out a day after all the Iraqi forces and Baath leadership had fled the city. Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralysed and on an intravenous drip, were bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the wards, searching for departed members of the Saddam regime. An ambulance driver who tried to carry Private Lynch to the American forces close to the city was shot at by US troops the day before their mission. Far from winning hearts and minds, the US operation has angered and hurt doctors who risked their lives treating both Private Lynch and Iraqi victims of the war. What the Americans say is like the story of Sinbad the Sailor it s a myth, said Harith al-Houssona, who saved Private Lynch s life after she was brought to the hospital by Iraqi military intelligence. We are joined by the article s author Richard Lloyd Parry. * Richard Lloyd Parry, foreign correspondent for the London Times who left Iraq last night. Link: So Who Really Did Save Private Jessica? : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-648517,00.html 9:40-9:41 One Minute Music Break 9:41-9:58: Nearly all the votes have been counted in Argentina s first presidential election since the economic crash in 2001. Argentina is set to have a runoff between two Peronists: ex President Carlos Menem and Governor Nestor Kirchner. Four years of economic depression have plunged more than half the population below the poverty line. Menem ruled Argentina between 1989 and 1999. Many Argentines see him as the culprit behind Argentina's economic collapse, because of his strict adherence to IMF rules. Menem was held under house arrest last year on charges in a gunrunning scandal; his administration was plagued by corruption scandals. * Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist and author of Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate and No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. She is speaking to us from Neuquen, Argentina which is the home of the worker-run ceramics factory Zanon. Contact: http://www.nologo.org 9:58-9:59 Outro and Credits Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie Karran, Ana Nogueira and Elizabeth Press. Mike DiFilippo is our music maestro and engineer.

Date Recorded on: 
April 28, 2003
Date Broadcast on: 
April 28, 2003
Item duration: 
59 min.
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Distributor: 
WBAI; Amy Goodman, host., April 28, 2003
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