www.the-edge.org
By Gar Smith /
The-Edge
Transforming
Language to Market the 'Big Lie'
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Secretary of State Colin Powell
warned the UN General Assembly that |
To Gardiner, the
"most serious transformation of language" involved
Renaming the Iraqi defenders "terrorists" appears to have been part
of the strategic influence campaign since it served to connect the Iraqi
fighters with "one of the major themes of Gulf II -- Iraq = terrorist =
9/11."
Gardiner stressed the role repetition plays in the "effective implementation
of… creating memory in a population" and observed that "this theme
was successful by US opinion polls" that show a majority of US citizens
now believe, in the absence of evidence, that Iraq "was connected" to
9/11.
Ansar al-Salam
The propaganda artists selected a small Kurdish splinter group called Ansar al-Salam and elevated it
into an organized group of Al Qaeda
"terrorists" who were "said to be" controlled by Saddam
Hussein and "believed to be" producing ricin, a deadly biotoxin.
Since Ansar al-Salam was
formed shortly after 9/11, "it was tied to bin Laden." Because a
single source claimed to have seen Republican Guard officers in the region,
"it was tied to Saddam Hussein."
"This was part of the 'big lie' to tie
Operation TELIC
In the first days of the invasion, a US Marine Corps spokesman made a prophetic
statement: "The first image of the war will define the conflict."
The attempts to control those "first images" were of overriding
interest to the coalition's ministries of propaganda. Because it was believed
that the city of
Marines were given food packets to hand out to Basrah
children. Journalists were to be bused to the newly
captured city and TV crews were to be flown in to film the "liberated"
citizens welcoming coalition soldiers with smiles and flowers. The
When the residents of Basrah refused to be
"liberated," the carefully planned media event evaporated in a hail
of gunfire.
"It was about image," Gardiner marvels. "So much effort and
money on image."
Salman Pak
In a widely publicized September 12, 2002 briefing paper entitled, "Decade
of Deception," the White House described "a highly secret terrorist
training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where
both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and
trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations."
"This facility became a major part of the strategic influence marketing
effort," Gardiner writes. Yet, in the invasions aftermath, the Pentgon offered no "compelling evidence" that
such a site existed.
In his February 3 presentation to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin
Powell flashed a photo of an Ansar al-Salam "poison factory" in northern Iraq. In
September 3, seven months after Powell's presentation, an Los Angeles Times
reporter managed to reach the "poison factory," which he described as
"a small cinderblock building bearing brown granules and ammonia-like
scents." When the Times had the material tested, the granules turned out
to be a commercial rat poison.
US Lied about Attacks on Iraq's Power Grid
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Secretary Powell claimed that Iraq possessed mobile
trucks designed to produce biological weapons. When invading forces located
the trucks it turned out they were actually designed to produce hydrogen for
surveillance balloons and Iraq had bought the trucks from the Britain. |
When the capital city of
The facts would subsequently show that the
The use of a sophisticated carbon-fiber weapons is
significant since the deployment of these specialized devices required prior
approval from
In June 2002, an Iraqi expatriate named Khidhir Manza told the Wall Street Journal that the
situation was "ideal for countries like
Helping to make Manza's charges more credible,
unnamed intelligence officials earlier had told the International Herald
Tribune that "they are kept awake at night by the prospect of a dirty
bomb." Astute readers will note that these anonymous sources never
actually said
American's Heroic Hostage
In an episode that recalled the creation of the "Old Shoe, the fictitious
hero concocted by Robert deNiro's ace
"perception manager" in the film "Wag the Dog,"
Lt. Commander Scott Speicher had been shot down
during the first Gulf War in 1991. In an attempt to generate sympathy and
support for Bush's pre-emptive war, "intelligence sources" began
circulating a bizarre new story to the
Iraqi officials vehemently denied that they were holding Speicher
or, for that matter, any Americans. When asked about the Iraqi denial at a
press conference, Rumsfeld's response was
calculatingly oblique. "I don't believe much the regime puts out," Rumsfeld stated.
In Gardiner's estimation, Rumsfeld's answer "was
too clever not to have been formulated to leave the impression that [Speicher] was alive."
Gardiner was troubled by Rumsfeld's apparent
disinterest in the truth but, as a former military officer, there was another
question that bothered Gardiner even more. "Why didn't [Rumsfeld] consider what he was doing to Speicher's
family?"
On January 11, 2001, Speicher's status was changed
from KIA (Killed in Action) to MIA (Missing in Action). As the invasion forces
gathered in the Middle East, Speicher's status was
changed once more, to "captured." Navy officials who contacted ABC
News reported that they had been pressured to make this change.
In January, "intelligence officials" continued to leak information to
the media that suggested Speicher was still alive. In
April, the secretive ministry of propaganda leaked a report that his initials
had been found on the wall of a cell in Iraq. Gardiner found this leak
particularly strange since "Military POW recovery personnel are very
careful about releasing information that would cause false hope in
families." The release of such information would also, obviously, endanger
the captives.
Long after Baghdad fell and the media's attention had been drawn to the
fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction, a reporter thought to ask Rumsfeld about America's lost hero. The secretary replied
vaguely that there was "nothing turned up thus far that I could elaborate
on that would be appropriate." On July 16, a Washington Times
investigation belatedly concluded that there was "no evidence" Speicher had survived or had been held captive in Iraq.
Chemical Cluster Bombs
On March 10, administration officials attempted to discredit Hans Blix and UNMOVIC, the UN weapons inspection program.
Administration officials told the Boston Globe that "Blix did not give details... of the possible existence of a
cluster bomb that could deliver deadly poisons."
Presidential spokesperson Ari Fleischer claimed that
the US was "aware of UNMOVIC's discovery of
Iraqi production of munitions capable of dispensing both chemical and
biological weapons." Videotape was released allegedly showing the Iraqis
testing a cluster bomb for dispersing chemical weapons.
"The chemical cluster bomb story certainly didn't linger," Gardiner
wrote. "It was around only a couple of days, but it still served its
purpose at the time."
Few newspaper readers or TV watchers realized that there was never any evidence
that Iraq had such technologically complex weapons. Indeed, the Pentagon had
dismissed the possibility of Iraq ever developing these weapons during the
first Gulf War.
Iraq's Planned Computer Attack on America
An alarming White House paper presented by Paul Wolfowitz
before a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations warned that Iraqi
engineers were preparing a vast attack on the country's computer networks.
The warning came from a single source who claimed that Iraq's Intelligence
Service was working with the Babylon Software Company to break into US
computers, steal documents and spread viruses. There were no such attacks.
There was no such program.
Iraqi Troops in US Uniforms
On March 7, White House Deputy Director of Communications Jim Wilkinson,
described as "a senior US official," released a story about Iraq's
alleged acquisition of US and UK military uniforms "identical down to the
last detail." Wilkinson claimed Iraqis in US camouflage were planning to
commit battlefield atrocities to cast discredit on coalition troops.
On March 26, Pentagon spokesperson Victoria "Tori" Clarke embellished
the story. Clarke told reporters that "we knew they were acquiring
uniforms that looked like US and UK uniforms. And the reporting was ... [that
Saddam Hussein would] give them to the thugs, as I call them, to go out, carry
out reprisals against the Iraqi people, and try to blame it on coalition
forces."
Two days later, Rumsfeld added a new twist, claiming
that Saddam Hussein's troops planned to don UK an US uniforms "to try to
fool regular Iraqi soldiers into surrendering to them and then execute them as
an example for others."
There were never any reports of Iraq attempting such stunts. In his report,
Gardiner concludes: "The way it was put by Jim Wilkinson (a name that
keeps appearing in these questionable stories), it seems to fit a pattern of
pre-blaming Iraq. It has the feel of being a created story."
Iraq's Scud Missiles
In the lead-up to the war, the British and American people were told repeatedly
that Iraq had Scud missiles capable of striking Israel. When the invasion
began, Iraq began to fire what the Pentagon called "Scud-type
missiles." As Gardiner discovered, these rockets "were not Scuds and
we have found no Scuds, but for three days they kept the story alive."
In October 2002, a CIA report determined that evidence for the existence of
Iraqi Scuds was inconclusive. Nonetheless, by the time Colin Powell stepped up
to the plate at the UN, the missiles had become an accepted fact as far as
Washington, London and Tel Aviv were concerned.
During the invasion, "American officials" told the New York Times
that "the sheer tenacity of the Iraqi fight" near a compound at Al Qa'im had led them to believe that "the Iraqis might
be defending Scud missiles" hidden at the site. Gardiner notes
laconically: "No Scuds or WMDs were found at Al Qa'im."
Saddam's Remote-Controlled Drones
The CIA's October report also claimed that Iraq had converted some J-29 jet
fighters to deliver chemical and biological weapons. George W. Bush quickly
seized on this specter for a speech in Cincinnati,
where he told the astonished crowd that Saddam's poison-laden aircraft were
capable of hitting US soil.
By the time Powell testified before the UN, the threat had been measurably
pared down -- the fighter jets had become smaller, remotely piloted drones. Mr.
Bush went public with the extraordinary claimed that these tiny drones could
strike the US.
On June 15, an Air Force team in Iraq finally seized the drones. The Los
Angeles Times described them as "five burned and blackened
9-foot-wings." The Air Force captain in charge of the inspection concluded
that the drones could have been "a student project or maybe a model."
A subsequent investigation by the USAF determined that the drones' only
possible mission was to take pictures.
Gar Smith is Editor Emeritus of Earth Island Journal, Roving Editor at
The-Edge (www.the-edge.org)
and co-founder of Environmentalists Against War (www.envirosagainstwar.org).
For more
information contact:
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