COUNTYWIDE : Cable Station to Air Video of Trip to Iraq

The county’s public-access channel will be the first local television station to broadcast a video filmed in Iraq during the height of allied bombing missions. Peace activists say it is the first footage from the war that has not been censored by either the United States or Iraqi governments.

Ventura County Cablevision Channel 8 will show “Nowhere to Hide” at 9 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday in the east county and today and May 13 in the Ojai Valley.

The 30-minute video chronicles former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark’s trip to Iraq Feb. 2-9 and was filmed by independent cameraman Jon Alpert for NBC’s “Nightly News With Tom Brokaw.” NBC never aired the video.

Cablevision accepts programming from area subscribers based on technical quality, not political content, said John Giles, director of Cablevision’s governmental affairs department. The channel airs a variety of views from religious groups to the John Birch Society, he said. The views are not necessarily shared by the station.

Operation Brainstorm, an Ojai peace organization, showed the footage to about 170 residents at a town meeting last month.

The video depicts devastation to residential neighborhoods and water and electric plants in major Iraqi cities, said Operation Brainstorm’s Gerald Schwanke.

“I hope that the response will be that people will be sad, upset, angry . . . that they’ll realize that they gave their government permission to act with virtually no information,” Schwanke said. “Information was purposely manufactured and withheld from the American people in order to propagate foreign policy based on violence.”