- Though Bush's tanks are just a day's drive from Baghdad,
America's Commander-In-Chief is losing the war that matters most - the
information war.
It wasn't supposed to go like this, reporter Linda Diebel writes in today's
Toronto Star. "On the weekend, these weren't supposed to be the television
images of Operation Iraqi Freedom: frightened U.S. prisoners-of-war being
held in Iraq; a grainy still of slain American soldiers lying on a floor;
reporters explaining friendly fire incidents like the downing of a British
warplane; and the stark image of a 101st Airborne soldier on the ground,
taken prisoner by his own troops after grenades were tossed into officers'
tents in Kuwait with deadly results.
"These grim, morale-destroying images weren't supposed to be there
because the Bush administration thought it could control media war coverage."
In his decision to overrule Pentagon generals and "embed" 529
media personnel with advancing U.S. and British troops and put tough restrictions
on their reporting, Bush urged White House spin-doctors to get out the
news "in a coordinated way that reflects our efforts."
Despite their best efforts, they are.
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- HOW TO LOSE AN IMAGE WAR
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- On a Sunday that mauled Washingtons hopes for a quick,
clean war, CNN finally decided to show a still photograph of dead Americans
with their faces blocked out. But other networks spent crucial ratings
hours yesterday debating how to handle images hotter than hand grenades
tossed into a crusaders' tent.
Acting more like a Reichmarshall then Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld furiously
warned it would be "unfortunate" for U.S. networks to air footage
of American prisoners of war - even as the same images were being relentlessly
beamed to the 95% of the world living outside U.S. borders.
Almost desperately, Rumsfeld repeatedly urged Americans not to believe
what they were seeing with their own eyes. "The images on television
tend to leave the impression that we're bombing Baghdad," he said.
"The coalition forces are not bombing Baghdad."
At scripted press briefings at the White House, where America's top "journalists"
read pre-approved questions, stern-faced government minders are shown on
FOX News checking off each recited sentence on clipboards. But in Qatar,
the U.S. Central Command has sought a wide mix of reporters, from Al-Jazeera
and European networks to the Rolling Stone.
Big mistake.
In a detonation that stunned American viewers with its preview of questions
to come, a reporter who neglected to identify himself for potential reprisals
asked why the U.S. military was bombing the people it claimed to be liberating.
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- TENSE TIMES IN GEORGIA
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- Having learned from another war the power of televised
images of American corpses to turn American public opinion against administration
policies, during the last Bush bombing of Iraq in 1991, truth became the
first and last casualties of a war that was really a one-sided slaughter.
It was not difficult. With reporters confined to a Saudi briefing room,
cross-haired video images of bombs taking out occupied office buildings
lent themselves to "sanitized" daily Pentagon box scores totaling
the number of enemy machines knocked out.
Even those official numbers of "destroyed" Scuds and ancient
Russian tanks turned out to be wildly overstated - while attacks that killed
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, women and elderly went unmentioned.
At least in America.
This time around, the addictive, edgy excitement of televised massive mechanized
mayhem is causing revulsion among viewers as burned out as Iraqi tanks.
Attempts by warring U.S. networks to turn the front-lines carnage of this
latest Bush conflict into a spectator sport are not playing well in the
American heartland.
"I feel very uncomfortable watching this, and I have a nephew fighting
over there," Washington hotel worker, Madeleine Dorth said yesterday.
"It's like a ratings game or something, and I find it's very wrong."
Instead of cheering crushing American firepower, or plucky Iraqi defenders
opposing gigantic tanks with the equivalent of slingshots, many viewers
just want the killing to stop. The quest for information quickly turns
to disgust and outrage when excited U.S. announcers breathlessly announce
another barrage to drop on an "enemy" defending their homes with
suicidal rushes and hand-to-hand fighting.
"Ohhhh," gushed a breathless CNN announcer as fellow Americans
prepared to blow up other human beings near Umm Qasr. "I'm feeling
tense. And I'm here in Atlanta, Georgia."
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- NOT LIKE LAST TIME
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- Despite images censored by military minders and nervous
networks, a rattled Rumsfeld has acknowledged, "We're having a conflict
at a time in our history when we have 24-hours-a-day television, radio,
media and Internet, and more people in the world have access to what is
taking place."
But this unrestricted access to myriad straight-from-the-source footage
and commentary is skewering White House "spin" controllers, who
are whirling like dizzied dervishes in a desperate bid to make sure Americans
do not see the images jolting the central nervous system of an increasingly
appalled and angry world.
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- GLOBAL PROPAGANDA TEAM MEETS INFO GODZILLA
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- Keeping journalists away from the action seemed like
a workable plan. Launched by aide Karen Hughes during the 2001 bombing
of Afghanistan, Bush Jr.'s "war communications plan" kept U.S.
atrocities reported widely in Britain and Europe from piercing the American
news bubble.
Hughes still works around-the-clock with the Pentagon, State Department
and National Security Council. Diebel describes how a White House "Global
Communications Team" fills each 24-hour news cycle with a "message
of the day" intended to dominate American attention.
"The idea is to present their view of what is happening, and make
it the only view," says William Lutz, a Rutgers University English
professor and expert on 'doublespeak' told . The Star. "They cloak
it with authority... "People think, `Hey, the government has more
information than I do, their view must be more informed than mine.'"
Not to worry. Global Communications Team head Tucker Eskew solemnly promised
the Dallas Morning News that his highly paid government news managers are
not selling propaganda or disinformation.
But the Internet knows better. With its instant access to hundreds of alternative
and foreign news sources - as well as eyewitnesses reporting directly from
within embattled Iraqi cities - White House errors, lies and distortions
parroted by complicit reporters are being exposed and corrected within
minutes.
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HYPER WAR
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- Even as allied forces close in on an ancient city that
could become an Arab Stalingrad, satellite television and a worldwide web
threaten to enmesh Earths most powerful army in the immobilizing embrace
of an even bigger Superpower: public opinion.
While Americans remain squeamish over viewing the results of their unprovoked
attack on Iraq, in this information hyper-war Al Jazeera's candid cameras
are already inflicting heavy casualties on U.S. credibility.
Just yesterday, Arab television footage of purported dead American GIs
was followed by interviews with five U.S. prisoners after Pentagon officials
confirmed at least 10 soldiers had been killed and up to 12 were missing
following ambushes near the key southern city of Nasiriyah.
Despite repeatedly displaying dispirited Iraqi prisoners of war on American
channels, Arab broadcasts showing American POWs are being denounced by
Bush and coalition commanders as "violations of the Geneva Convention".
But while Arab, British and European news stations continue to highlight
debate over the wars illegality, U.S. anchors more mindful of their paychecks
and perks than journalistic integrity are careful not to point out that
American cluster bomb attacks on heavily populated cities absolutely violate
internationally agreed rules for the conduct of war.
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- VIDEO MATCHES IN DRY TINDER
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- While American networks continue to censor un-American
imagery, millions of Middle Eastern viewers are watching transfixed as
clips show each American prisoner speaking into an Iraqi Television microphone.
The four men and a woman were asked where they were from and why they had
come to Iraq.
"I follow orders," explained a soldier from El Paso, Texas.
"I was told to come here. I just follow orders," said another.
"Why do you fight Iraqis?" he was asked.
"They shot at me first, so I shoot back," he said. "I don't
want to shoot anybody."
The African-American prisoner identified herself as coming also from Texas.
Her voice shook as the camera panned back, showing a white bandage wrapped
around her ankle.
Apparently from a maintenance unit, the five American soldiers were captured
during fighting around Nasiriyah, a key Euphrates River crossing northwest
of Basra. Another nervous captive, who found himself a long way from Kansas,
was also asked what he was doing in Iraq. Eyes darting back and forth between
the interviewer and an unseen person off-camera, he replied, "I come
to fix broke stuff."
He could be well employed in Basra and Baghdad, where heavy air attacks
have left plenty of wreckage in Iraq's former and current capitols.
HOLY TV WAR
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- While Americans wonder what is really happening in a
distant desert, the Qatar-based satellite news network continues to beam
images of mutilated Iraqi corpses and injured children into homes and government
offices throughout the Middle East.
Unlike the "other CNN", Al Jazeera yesterday aired footage of
a decapitated child and a dead Iraqi soldier lying in a trenchSnext to
a white flag. In contrast to the Arab coverage, a photo of the same incident
appeared on the BBC website - with the "explanation" that the
slain child and soldier had apparently tried too late to surrender.
Images like this, and Arab commentary cheering the spirited defense of
a sanctions-shattered country that was not supposed to greet its "liberators"
with gunfire and human wave attacks, is inspiring calls for Holy War throughout
the Middle East..
In Yemen's capital, riot police in armored cars failed to prevent 30,000
anti-Bush demonstrators from marching on the U.S. embassy last Friday.
When water cannons and tear gas gave way to live ammunition, an 11-year-old
boy and at least one other protester were killed.
In Amman, Jordan, where police removed two imams from a mosque for delivering
fire-breathing sermons against America, the Muslim Brotherhood urged Palestinians
to drive car bombs across the border and martyr themselves among the American
aggressors.
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- CHANNEL SURFING THE APOCALYPSE
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- Unless the Bush-Cheney-Perle-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz Gang
of Five can find a way to neutralize Al Jazeera and the Internet, their
Christian crusade could ignite the apocalypse they are said to seek.
Like fire through biblical chaff, the nightmare many warned against is
already beginning. In Cairo over the weekend, Muslim clerics called on
Arabia's biggest city and nation to join in the fight "to support
and defend the people of Iraq." Police used truncheons and water cannons
to beat back more than 10,000 demonstrators chanting, "With all our
heart and soul, we sacrifice ourselves to Islam."
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, where stepped-up Israeli forces are taking
advantage of the Iraq distraction to launch tank attacks on suspected terrorists
embedded among Palestinian families, a shop owner told Agence France Presse
he was selling hundreds of Iraqi flags every day. Flags of countries that
have taken a stance against the war - Germany, France, Russia, China, Canada
and others - are also flying off the shelves.
Travelers take note.
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- INCOMINGS
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- In this new "hyper war" of simultaneous assaults,
firefights and news coverage, front-lines television and streaming digital
downloads may prove even faster and more devastating than Depleted Uranium
rounds.
Every few minutes, another burst of satellite imagery and Internet information
impacts among an interactive global audience. Ambushed by info, U.S. military
commanders confident in their overwhelming firepower are increasingly expressing
concern that the "velocity of information" is spinning out of
their control.
But the "virtual reality" presented by U.S. networks could prove
even more disastrous if it succeeds in shaping American opinion and decision-making.
Far from frightened POWs and a TV-inflamed Arabia, Bush appeared to be
speaking from another reality when he told reporters after attending church
at Camp David yesterday that he prays for "our efforts to make the
world more peaceful and more free."
This is real news in Basra, where bombarded Iraqi people have reportedly
approached American troops asking, "Have you come here to steal our
oil?"
William Thomas is the author of All Fall Down: The Politics of Terror and
Mass Persuasion and Bringing The War Home. See also his award-winning documentary,
'Eco War'.
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