4 - Wednesday. January 23, 1991 - North Shore News

Public’s thrill
over Gulf war
new blemish
for humanity

FOLLOWING THE televi-
sion coverage of the war
against Iraq — indeed, be-
ing part of it — has been a
deeply unsettling experience,
not so much because of the
nature of the war itself,
which is a well-understood
horror, but because of the
nature of modern com-
munications, which is a
much less well-understood
horror.

The conflict in the Mideast has
been described as the first true
television war, with hve coverage
from various bunkers and hotel
basements, instant interviews with
pilots fresh out of their cockpits,
videotape from the fighter planes’
computerized targetting screens,
footage of incoming and outgoing
missiles and jets alike.

Like hundreds of millions of
others, I find myself *‘trolling”’
from channel to channel, pun-
ching the buttons on the cablevi-
sion converter to keep on top of
the situation,

If the analysis on ore channel
lags behind events for more than a
couple of minutes, I impatiently
hop over to another channel,
usually chasing CNN across the
spectrum in pursuit of the latest
twist.

Like everyone else, I was there,
glued to the set, listening to the
voices of the reporters in Baghdad
describing the waves of bombers,
jets and missiles as they swept
through the darkness during the
first strike.

A night later, I got to watch the
awesome display of Iraqi anti-
aircraft fire playing across the sky
like a science-fiction special effects
extravatan.%.

As part of my duties at the
television station where I work
most of the time, | am on stand-
by to come on air and comment in
the event of a chemical or gas at-
tack, the effects of which J have
boned up on in order to be avail-
able as an instant expert.

Fortunately, { haven't had to do
it yet.

It is a depressing line of
research. As part of my inquiry, 1
viewed videotapes of the bodies of
men, women ana children who
died in Kurdish villages where
Saddam Hussein unleashed chem-
ical weapons during the eight-year
fran-[raq war.

{t turns out that fraq has been
stockpiling mustard gas at its
Samarra chemical weapons plant,
55 kilometres northwest of
Baghdad, at the rate of an
estimated 200 tons per month for
years now,

Mustard gas, in case you were
wondering, has an oil base that
allows it to persist for extended
periods of time in the environ-
ment, often in masonry. In
France, for instance, 70 vears
after the First World War, people
are still getting blistered by com-
ing in contact with contaminated
materials,

Iraq, | have learned, also
possesses the chemical agent
Phosgene in vast quantities. This
is the stuff that was responsible
for 80 per cent of the gas casue
alties during the First World War.
Then there are the stockpiles of
the nerve gas Tabun, mass-
produced at the Samarra Com-
plex, which is, incidentally, quite
close to Traq’s 25-square-hilometre
nucleur reactor site.

Other suspected chemica!

Bob
Hunter |

STRICTLY PERSONAL
weapons production sites include
such exotic-sounding places as Al
Fallujah, Badush, Baiji, Karbala,
Basra, Akashat, Rutbah and
Salman Pak, where state-of-the-
art nerve gases like VX and BZ,
first developed by the Americans
in the 1960s, are known to be
stockpiled.

This is the familiar horror of
20th century-style war, with all the
high-tech elements of Top Gun
and Star Wars thrown in, render-
ing such portrayals of war as we
saw in Apocalypse Now as ob-
solete, nearly, as footage from the
Second World War.

Look at how our vocabularies
have expanded in the last week. {
hear kids casually talking about
Scuds, Patriots, Stealths,
Tomahawks, Intruders, Apaches,
Falcons, Strike Eagles, Thunder-
bolts, Wild Weasels, Hornets,
Harriers. -

Yet, new as these death
machines may be, they are mere
variations on the old familiar
theme, little more, really, than
Transformer-toy versions of
spears and clubs.

The unfamiliar horror — for
me, al any rate — is the excite-
ment all this generates.

There are theories galore te ac-
count for the recurrence of war,
ranging from a territorial im-
perative to an instinctive hunger
for dominance. But what if it
turns out that people are just
plain sick — in the sense of being
tiillated, fascinated, stimulated,
mesmerized by the ultimate blood
sport?

Certainly the media are cap-
tivated to their core. Newsrooms
everywhere are galvanized. Bored
reporters come alive. The eyes of
jaded editors blaze. Producers
who have all but lost their will to
live become electrified. Such is the
extent of the excitement in a tele-
vision studio, for instar 2, that
you would almost think we were
part of the war.

And, indeed, we are, aren't we?
Especially in this, the first real
television war.

It is not just that every station's
ratings skyrocket, it is that an-
chorpersons and reporters pick up
on some potent, twisted vibration
emanating from the theatre of
war,

Itisa dark pulsation having to
do with the esercise of raw power.
The light in evervone's eyes is
lurid. We are reporting on death,
mutilation, dismembermen

burns, broken bones, asphyxia
tion, disembowelment, concussion
and disfigurement on a mass

scale, And vet. watching the body
language of the anchors and
reporters, | aliost eet the sense
they are telling us about same
fantasue Nintendo game.
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