Reuters 'covered-up' rape by US troops in Iraq - World Bulletin
The former head of the Reuters bureau in Iraq, Andrew MacGregor Marshall, has said that the top news agency failed to give the proper context of what was going on in the country during the the US and British-led intervention, calling it a 'disaster'.
Speaking in an interview with Russia Today, Marshall said six Reuters staff had been killed during his time there, adding that five were killed 'by mistake' by the US military.
'We'd sacrificed so much to be there and my Iraqi staff especially, had sacrificed so much... and in the end, when I looked back, had we really helped any understanding of what happened? I don’t think we did,' Marshall said.
'I came to believe that what we’d done in Iraq had been fairly useless, because we covered the day-to-day bloodshed and killing, but we failed to give the proper context that would allow readers to understand what was going on,' he said, comparing the coverage to bloodthirsty entertainment'.
Marshall also went on to say that much vital information about the behavious of US soldiers in Iraq was omitted because it was seen as a taboo, including some of his own male members of staff being sexually abused by US troops, saying that rape was a 'systematic policy.'
'I used to get stories all the time, of US troops involved in rapes and theft... I also had three of my own staff who were tortured and sexually abused by US troops, prior to Abu Ghraib,' he said.