Neo-Conned! Again

by D Liam O'Huallachain

  French & German precision switches (US in NYT; U.K. leaked UN Report)

  Not Parallel Storyline

  Aluminium tubes

  Shock and Awe

  Terrorist threat

  Private Lynch

  Lt. Cmdr. Speicher

  Cyber war capability

  Dirty bombs

  Woman hanged for waving

  “Paramilitaries” and not “terrorist death squads”

  As I've said, the number of engineered or false stories from U.S. and U.K. sources is long. Those which follow are some of them. It's important, however, to point out that the U.K. did not always go along. And, of course, everything was not sinister, but when you begin with the small things, you again see a pattern that becomes important in understanding the larger distortions of the truth.

  Engineered or False Stories

  1. Characterizing the action

  It was agreed, first of all, by the U.S. and the U.K. that the activity would be called “armed conflict.” State Department documents used the term, as in an advisory that went to American citizens in Austria warning them that “armed conflict with Iraq began on March 20, 2003.” Across the Atlantic, Alastair Campbell had a list of guidance items for Blair's press people. The “armed conflict” guidance was part of that list.1 “Regime” was also on the list. Call the Iraqi government the “regime” rather than the “enemy.”

  As for the code, although a departure from the historical use of code names, it was not new that you would give the operation a code name that would be part of the marketing.

  2. An assessment of the operation code name

  The code name for the operation was transformed into a part of the strategic influence. In the past, these were used for security: OVERLORD, during World War II. This continued into the 1990s, with DESERT STORM and DESERT FOX. In these cases they were made of two words so the first word could designate the commander running the operation: DESERT = Central Command.

  In the present case, though a departure from the historical purpose of the code operation's name, it was not unusual that it would be part of the marketing. We used names like Operation PROVIDE COMFORT in the past.

  This time it was Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. The repetition and the visual quality added by the television networks became an effective memory producing technique in Gulf War II.

  3. U.S. objectives as strategic influence

  There were some dimensions of the marketing that were a little strange. Eisenhower's military objective was to “enter the continent of Europe and destroy the German Army.” The secretary of defense said that what follows were the objectives given to Central Command, but they were obviously meant for the press. As far as I am aware, this is the first time a military commander was given objectives that were about justifying a war.

  The objectives released were these:

  End the regime of Saddam Hussein ….

  Identify, isolate and eventually eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

  Search for, capture, drive out terrorists who have found safety in Iraq.

  Collect such intelligence as we can find related to terrorist networks in Iraq and beyond.

  Collect such intelligence as we can find related to the global network of illicit weapons of mass destruction activity ….

  End sanctions and deliver immediately humanitarian relief, food and medicine ….

  Secure Iraq's oil fields and resources, which belong to the Iraqi people ….

  Help the Iraqi people create the conditions for a rapid transition to a representative self-government ….

  4. Private Jessica Lynch

  From the outset it was called an “ambush.” That lingered even in articles that questioned the official version of the events: “What really happened in the ambush of the 507?” Assessment: it's not an ambush when you drive a convoy into enemy lines. Though “terrorists” would do something like an ambush.

  Military officers who are very careful about how they talk about operations would normally not be sloppy about describing this kind of event. This un-military kind of talk is one of the reasons we began doing this research. They just didn't cherish the truth.

  There is still a great deal we don't know about the Jessica Lynch story, but there are some insights we can get once we grasp the pattern of how engineered or manufactured stories were handled during the war. It has the characteristics of a strategic influence campaign.

  The first and unexplained part of the story is that just after she was returned to U.S. custody, the first call was to Jim Wilkinson, CENTCOM Director of Strategic Communications. Newsweek, April 14, 2003, reported: “In the Joint Operations Center, Air Force Capt. Joe Della Vedova followed the raid as it happened, and as soon as Lynch was in the air phoned Jim Wilkinson, the top civilian communications aide to CENTCOM Gen. Tommy Franks. 'She is safe and in our hands,' he reported. The whole operation, expected to take 45 minutes, was over in 25. Next Della Vedova called Gen. Vince Brooks.”

  This is very strange for a military operation. Military friends often respond, “Do you suppose they staged it?” I don't have any information about it being staged, but we do know from Wilkinson that the President and secretary of defense were briefed immediately.

  The story of Lynch's rescue broke on April 2, 2003. Truth got off track on the morning of April 3 with a story in the Washington Post that completely exaggerated what had happened. I have been told by a source that the Washington Post got the story from people in the Pentagon who were quoting communications intercepts from Iraq. In retrospect, the Iraqi reports were probably about the action of someone else in the convoy.

  The question of releasing classified information has to be mentioned at this point in the Lynch story. If my source is correct, the information given to the Washington Post would have been highly classified, limited only to those who had a need to know. From the beginning of the marketing campaign throughout the war, it seemed “okay” to release classified information if it supported the message.

  The April 3, 2003, Washington Post noted that Lynch “sustained multiple gunshot wounds” and also was stabbed while she “fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers … firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition.” The paper cited an unnamed U.S. military official as saying “she was fighting to the death.” The New York Times also reported that she had gunshot wounds.

  On the afternoon of the third when Rumsfeld and Myers gave their press briefing, the story on the street was that she was America's new Rambo. We know, however, that they had been briefed. We know they would have been aware of her injuries. When asked, Rumsfeld pulled back. “We are certainly grateful for the brilliant and courageous rescue of Sergeant – correction – Pfc. [Private First Class] Jessica Lynch, who was being held by Iraqi forces in what they called a 'hospital.'” He left the Washington Post story as possibly being right. (“Gen. Myers and I get briefed on these types of things,” the Secretary said, “and there's an orderly process for debriefing and discussing them. And I have no intention of discussing it piecemeal.”) Again, we see the pattern. When the story on the street supports the message, it will be left there by a non-answer. The message is more important than the truth.

  My friends who are graduates of the Air Force Academy agree that General Myers would have been taken before an honor board if he had been a cadet during this press briefing and did not speak up when he knew an untruth was being let stand.

  Even Central Command kept the story alive by not giving out details. The April 5, 2003, CENTCOM briefing said simply that special operations forces, “in coordination with conventional forces from the Marine Corps and the Air Force and the Army, were able to successfully rescue Private First Class Jennifer (sic) Lynch out of a hospital and irregular military headquarters facility that was being used by these death squads in

  Nasiriyah and successfully return her to U.S. hands ” Brig. Gen. Brooks also reported: “There was not a firefight inside of the building, I will tell you, but there
were fire fights outside of the building, getting in and getting out.” And his comments were picked up the same day by the Armed Forces Information Service: “There were no firefights inside the hospital, but plenty of action outside, Brooks said.”

  Meanwhile, there were no reports on her condition. The April 6, 2003, Washington Times reported that “the hospital where Pfc. Lynch was held was reported to be a stronghold of the Saddam Fedayeen, a guerrilla force sworn to martyrdom for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The rescuers arrived by helicopter, secured the building by gunfire and forced their way inside, CNN reported.”

  The exaggerated story was allowed to stay, and even appeared in the April 14, 2003, TIME Magazine article about her which read in part: “According to the Washington Post, Lynch, an Army supply clerk with only minimal combat training, shot several advancing Iraqi soldiers, emptying her weapon of ammunition and possibly incurring a series of gunshot wounds.”

  5. Saddam's Fedayeen

  The most serious transformation of language was the direction from Washington to call the Iraqi irregular troops “terrorist death squads.” One source told me this came in a letter from Rumsfeld. I've read in another place it was from the White House. On the 23rd of March, the troops were being called “Irregulars.” The 24th had them as “Fedayeen.” After March 25, the presenters changed the name. They were quickly “terrorist people dressed in civilian clothes,” and then they became (on the 26th) “terrorist death squads.”

  Naming the irregulars seems to have been part of the strategic influence campaign. Calling them terrorists connected them with one of the major themes of Gulf War II. The structure of the argument and repetition are an effective implementation of the theory of creating memory in a population. This was part of the “big lie” to tie Iraq to 9/11. And it was successful. A majority of citizens believe Iraq was connected to 9/11. As the polls have shown, it continues to be effective. But what would be wrong with the truth?

  6. Developing the terrorist theme

  March 22, 2003, Gen. Franks, CENTCOM Briefing: “I can't really provide you a lot of detail. I can tell you that from time to time, in Iraq, we will come across what we believe to be terrorist-associated activity or people, and when we do so, we will strike them, and then we will exploit the site subsequent to the strike. I can tell you that in fact we did strike last evening a terrorist complex …. ”

  March 24, 2003, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, BBC World Service: “We've just taken some very decisive action against that pocket of al-Qaeda terrorists in Kramal.”

  March 25, 2003, Brig. Gen. Brooks, CENTCOM briefing: “The practices that have been conducted by these paramilitaries and by these others who are out there, sometimes in uniform, sometimes not in uniform, are more akin to the behaviors of global terrorists than they are to a nation. And that certainly is in our mind at this time.”

  Assessment: It is obvious why in an Associated Press poll conducted shortly after Gulf War II was declared ended, 53% of the nation pinned the 9/11 attacks on Saddam.

  The “terrorist” connection took many other forms – many forms, but never the truth.

  7. Operation TELIC production event

  “The first image of the war will define the conflict,” said one USMC spokesman. Much of the effort was about image. It might be called the marketing event that never happened. It was to be a big show when Basra fell. Sources in the BBC tell me the reason the U.S. 15th M.E.U. was given the task of attacking Umm Qasr and Basra, over the objections of the U.K., was so that an American unit could lead the way into the city. Although the reason for the assignment might not be true, it is almost as important a point that they believed that of the Americans.

  Additionally, the following was supposed to have been done, according to what military officials said: marines were to carry packets of food to pass out to children; medics were to provide care as the occupation forces rolled in; journalists were to be bussed to the city; and television crews were to be flown into the city.

  But the Battle of Basra took over two weeks, and the media event did not take place.

  As an aside, the U.S. and the U.K. had a difference over the code name to give the conflict. The British chose to call it Operation TELIC, more consistent with the traditional methodology for naming combat operations. It was about image – so much effort and money on image.

  8. Ansar al-Islam

  When the pattern is recognized some of the stories have new clarity.

  Ansar al-Islam was supposed to be a group of al-Qaeda terrorists. They were allegedly a Kurdish splinter group which found bin Laden's efforts heroic, and were formed “shortly after 9/11.” Because a single source reported Republican Guard officers in their area, the group was tied to Saddam Hussein. And they were also supposed to be producing ricin in a “poison factory.” Secretary of State Powell showed a picture of it in his presentation to the UN Security Council. The title was “Terrorist Poison and Explosives Factory.”

  They did eventually find rat poison in one of the buildings. Was it bad intelligence, or did they blur the line between a single source of information and the story they wanted to tell?

  9. Salman Pak

  The White House told us there was a terrorist training facility for non-Iraqi Arabs. This facility became a major part of the strategic influence and marketing effort. According to the White House White Paper, “Decade of Deception,” September 12, 2002, “Former Iraqi military officers have 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.”

  Why didn't we find compelling evidence? Seymour M. Hersh wrote in the June 18, 2003, New Yorker: “Salman Pak was overrun by American troops on April 6. Apparently, neither the camp nor the former biological facility has yielded evidence to substantiate the claims made before the war.”

  10. Attacking the Iraqi power grid

  It was announced several times during the war that the United States had not struck the electrical power grid. This was simply not true. An April 3, 2003, release, Number: 03–04–38, headlined: “BAGHDAD ELECTRICAL SYSTEM NOT TARGETED BY COALITION,” read: “News reports indicate that electrical power is out in Baghdad. Coalition forces have not targeted Baghdad's electrical system.”

  “We did not have the power grid as a target,” Tori Clarke said at a DoD news briefing, April 4, 2003. “That was not us.”

  The facts are that the U.S. targeted portions of the power grid in the north during a special operations attack on the dam at Hadithah on April 1 or 2, 2003. According to Human Rights Watch, the attack included a Tomahawk strike using carbon fibers, which would have required approval in Washington.

  11. Dirty bombs

  The dirty bomb question surfaced a number of times during the marketing of the war. The Iraqi National Congress arranged for an interview of someone who said Iraq was working on a radiation weapon. In June 2002, Khidhir Hamza, an individual often quoted by the White House and the President himself, implied that Iraq was going to train terrorists to use a radiation weapon. “This environment is ideal for countries like Iraq to train and support a terrorist operation using radiation weapons,” Hamza said, according to the Wall Street Journal of June 12, 2002. In a very subtle technique, “officials” did background interviews in which they said that radiation weapons were one of the things that kept them awake at night. “A few officials speaking on background, have engaged in what-could-go-wrong conversations, saying they are kept awake at night by the prospect of a dirty bomb,” wrote David Sanger in the International Herald Tribune, February 28, 2003.

  If it were not part of the pattern, you would almost have to admire this background technique as a way to reinforce a story. Additionally, some of the most extreme support for the message often came from individuals and groups with close connections to the White House or the Pentagon. This is one example.

  12. Lieutenant
Commander Scott Speicher

  The case of Lt. Cmdr. Speicher is particularly painful. He was a naval aviator shot down early in the first Gulf War. There was some question about his status right after that war, but the evidence suggests his case was used to generate support and to market this war. A reporter told me that then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz had a list of 10 reasons for going to war. The Speicher case was on that list.

  The story came to the surface with a single defector's report. Then, in a pattern typical of created stories, the Washington Times (January 11, 2002) reported that U.S. “intelligence agencies” had information that he was being held captive. The story was allowed to develop because of answers to questions by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld's answer was particularly disturbing. When he was told in a question on March 25, 2002, that Iraq had denied they were holding Speicher as a prisoner, he responded by saying, “I don't believe very much that the regime … puts out.” That answer was too clever not to have been formulated to leave the impression that he was alive. Why didn't Rumsfeld consider what he was doing to Speicher's family?

  The President also raised the case in his presentation to the UN. Then, early in the marketing campaign, the Navy changed his status from “missing in action” to “captured.” ABC News has reported that Navy officials say they were pressured to make this change.

  In January 2003, “intelligence officials” continued to leak information that Speicher was alive and being held captive. In April, it was reported that his initials had been found on the wall of a cell. This was a very strange leak. Military POW recovery personnel are very careful about releasing information that would cause false hope in families.