- The real war pauses occasionally. The information war
goes on 24 hours a day. Every opportunity, every scrap of information,
has been deployed to reassure British and American public opinion that
the war is being won ñ and won painlessly.
-
- Rumours and half-truths have been seized on and presented
as facts with enormous propaganda power. As the tide of war, and of information,
moves on, to recall what was true and what was not has often been difficult.
-
- THE DEFECTION OF TARIQ AZIZ 19 March
-
- In the House of Commons on 19 March, rumours began to
circulate that the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister had fled to Bulgaria. If
true, the suggestion, put about by American officials, would have been
a huge coup for the Allies.
-
- Intelligence sources were united in their disbelief.
And they were soon vindicated by the appearance the same day of Tariq Aziz
on television in Baghdad, quashing the latest rumour that he had been killed
while trying to flee the country.
-
- BATTLE FOR UMM QASR 20 March, 7.33pm
-
- Rarely can a military target have been captured as often
as Umm Qasr. Nine days ago, a Kuwaiti news agency set the ball rolling
when it claimed that the port had been overrun. From then it seemed to
be captured day after day.
-
- On Friday, US Marines raised the Stars and Stripes ñ
only for it to be removed hastily for public relations reasons ñ
and Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, decreed the area "secure".
An hour after the BBC had announced that Umm Qasr and Basra had fallen
in the early days, an Iraqi opposition leader said: "It is quite untrue.
There is still heavy fighting in both places."
-
- On Saturday, "pockets of resistance" remained,
the British said. The next day in the "taken" area US Marines
encountered snipers, then machine-gun fire and grenades. By Tuesday, and
the arrival of British Royal Marines, the port was declared "open
and secure". Baghdad continues to deny having lost control of the
strategic port.
-
- DISAPPEARING IRAQI TROOPS 21 March, 3am
-
- Intelligence reports had predicted the capitulation of
Iraq's 51st Division before war had even started. With thousands of propaganda
leaflets having been dropped on to the troops and dark hints of American
contacts with Iraqi generals, large-scale desertions were a given. "In
the southern area, where there are six Iraqi divisions, 50 per cent of
their officers are planning to surrender once the campaign opens,"
one intelligence officer claimed.
-
- As the war started, Pentagon sources said the Iraqi military
was "breaking from within". No surprise then, when Admiral Sir
Michael Boyce, chief of the UK defence staff, said last Saturday that the
51st Division, one of those defending Basra, had surrendered and "that
we have many thousands of prisoners of war". Geoff Hoon did not take
long to assert that the 51st had "stopped" fighting. The commander
and his deputy had given themselves up with 8,000 soldiers surrendering
or deserting, said reports. The New York Times reported that the division
had "melted away".
-
- Within days, elements of the 51st were back at war. It
soon became clear that the man who surrendered was a junior officer masquerading
as his commander. Maj-Gen Wall confirmed that elements of the 51st had
returned to the city, taking up arms again. Predict-ions of the scale of
the desertions have proved wildly over-optimistic: yesterday US officials
said they had only 4,000 prisoners of war.
-
- CHEMICAL WEAPONS 24 March, 1.33am
-
- On the day of the first significant Allied combat casualties,
the discovery of a "chemical weapons complex" was a welcome propaganda
coup for US-led forces.
-
- If the reports were true, it would have been the first
find by the invasion force validating allegations that Iraq still had weapons
of mass destruction.
-
- The discovery came after a weekend of minor setbacks
and tough fighting in the early days of the war. Doubts arose almost as
quickly as the reports that appeared overnight on Sunday in the Jerusalem
Post, which had a reporter with the troops as they entered the complex,
and the US news channel Fox, quoting unnamed Pentagon officials. By then
the other networks had already got in on the act. ABC News cited one unidentified
official who said an Iraqi general captured at the site "was a potential
gold mine of evidence about the weapons Saddam Hussein said he does not
have".
-
- Former weapons inspectors said the discovery of the site
near Najaf by the 1st Brigade of the US 3rd Infantry division was probably
insignificant.
-
- US defence officials soon began to row back, saying the
factory "may turn out to be a chemical weapons site, or it may be
a site that was producing something else". They remained non-committal.
Two Iraqi generals in custody were providing useful information, they said.
Tests were being carried out at the area, which remained a "site of
interest".
-
- Asked about the claims, General Tommy Franks, the coalition
commander, told reporters: "It would not surprise me if there were
chemicals in the plant and it would not surprise me if there weren't ...
It's a bit early for us to have any expectation ... we'll wait for the
days ahead." And we still are.
-
- BASRA UPRISING 25 March, first reports 5.15pm
-
- The desire of the Iraqi people to use the Allied invasion
as an opportunity to rise up against their hated dictator was seen as the
key to a rapid victory. Hence the excitement when reports began to come
in on Tuesday that Shias in Basra, Iraq's second city, were engaged in
another attempt to settle their scores with President Saddam. Tony Blair
told the Commons that there had been "some limited form of uprising".
Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, went further, saying the
regime had "lost control of southern Iraq".
-
- Military sources were more cautious at US Central Command
in Qatar. Major-General Peter Wall, a British officer, said the rebellion
was in its "infancy" and it was wrong to predict a "rapid
outcome". Tales of people on the streets came from "intelligence
sources", but they were leapt onby British newspapers. Al-Jazeera,
the Qatar-based broadcaster that actually had a correspondent in the city,
said the streets were calm.
-
- More definitive was the verdict of an Iraqi Shia group
based in Iran with every reason to encourage insurgency. "Some disturbances
took place ... but it was not widespread and it was not an intifada. The
people chanted slogans against Saddam Hussein."
-
- Yesterday, ColChris Vernon, a British military spokesman,
said: "Basra is clearly nowhere near yet in our hands and we have
no way at the moment of getting humanitarian aid into Basra." Funny
then that the GMTV reporter, Richard Gaisford, pictured top left, who broke
the story, was still insisting yesterday that the military had sanctioned
his report.
-
- THE EXECUTIONS 27 March, 4.20pm
-
- After al-Jazeera broadcast pictures of the bodies of
two British prisoners-of-war, Tony Blair was quick to express his outrage.
At a joint news conference with George Bush on Thursday, Mr Blair condemned
the "execution" of the men.
-
- Unfortunately, the family of Luke Allsopp, 24, said a
senior Army officer had told them that the soldier had died in action.
"It makes a big difference to us knowing that he died quickly,"
she said. "We can't understand why people are lying about what happened."
-
- By yesterday the Government's tone had changed. The Prime
Minister's spokesman was claiming that the two men "may well have
been" executed and said that further inquiries would be made. The
Ministry of Defence defended itself, saying the execution charge was based
on the fact that Sapper Luke Allsopp and Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth
were lying some distance from their vehicle and had been stripped of their
helmets and body armour after being caught in an ambush last weekend.
-
- Later, Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces minister, expressed
"regret" for any distress caused to the families, a statement
interpreted as an admission that the Prime Minister got it wrong.
-
- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=391830
|
