In the Belly of the Beast

A group of foreign reporters in Tripoli is sitting around in their hotel dining room having breakfast one morning under the supervision of their Libyan government minders. Suddenly, an extremely agitated young Libyan woman dashes into the room, moving about wildly, displaying injuries, sobbing, shouting, and screaming that that she’s been brutally beaten, abused and gang raped for two days by government goons. "Look at what Gadhafi's brigades did to me!" she cries.

The stunned reporters quickly gather round and begin to ask questions about what happened to her. This prompts the government minders to forcefully seize and begin dragging the desperate screaming woman away. When reporters try to help her, all hell breaks loose as minders; hotel employees, locals, and everyone else in the hotel join the fray, chasing, pushing, punching, kicking reporters, and smashing cameras for awhile.

How incredible is this?, I thought to myself as I read the news. Americans have just invaded and imposed a no-fly zone on Libya; we’re destroying their military and bombing the crap out of them. French and British missiles have just days before blasted Gadhafi's headquarters. It’s all out war. Casualties are mounting. Yet here we have a bunch of foreign enemy correspondents being squired around the capitol city by government minders when they’re not lounging around their Tripoli hotel. 

Seems mighty nice of those Gadhafi fellas to let our guys cover the story of their downfall in sitiu, real time, and right in the thick of the action. They even gave our boys a guided tour of Gadhafi's battered compound, I hear. Come to think of it, I remember that we got the same journalistic privileges in Iraq and several enemy countries during other wars.

I don’t believe we Americans would be nearly that accomodating of foreign press from the enemy camp if the war zone were located on our own territory. Somehow I can’t imagine a group of Al Quaeda corespondents reporting the horrific events back home to Bin Laden Land from their hotel in New York City hours after the twin trade towers were obliterated on 9/11. I’m having a hard time envisioning them enjoying a guided tour of ground zero by U.S. government “minders.”

They’d have been shipped off to Gitmo without charges in a New York minuite, if not lynched publicly in Times Square first. That’s the American way.