The War of Misinformation has Begun
by
Robert Fisk
Dissident Voice
March 15, 2003
All
across the Middle East, they are deploying by the thousand. In the deserts of
Kuwait, in Amman, in northern Iraq, in Turkey, in Israel and in Baghdad itself.
There must be 7,000 journalists and crews "in theatre", as the more
jingoistic of them like to say. In Qatar, a massive press centre has been
erected for journalists who will not see the war. How many times General Tommy
Franks will spin his story to the press at the nine o'clock follies, no one
knows. He doesn't even like talking to journalists.
But the journalistic
resources being laid down in the region are enormous. The BBC alone has 35
reporters in the Middle East, 17 of them "embedded" – along with
hundreds of reporters from the American networks and other channels – in
military units. Once the invasion starts, they will lose their freedom to write
what they want. There will be censorship. And, I'll hazard a guess right now,
we shall see many of the British and American journalists back to their old
trick of playing toy soldiers, dressing themselves up in military costumes for
their nightly theatrical performances on television. Incredibly, several of the
American networks have set up shop in the Kurdish north of Iraq with orders not
to file a single story until war begins – in case this provokes the Iraqis to
expel their network reporters from Baghdad.
The orchestration will be
everything, the pictures often posed, the angles chosen by "minders",
much as the Iraqis will try to do the same thing in Baghdad. Take yesterday's
front-page pictures of massed British troops in Kuwait, complete with arranged
tanks and perfectly formatted helicopters. This was the perfectly planned
photo-op. Of course, it won't last.
Here's a few guesses about
our coverage of the war to come. American and British forces use thousands of
depleted uranium (DU) shells – widely regarded by 1991 veterans as the cause of
Gulf War syndrome as well as thousands of child cancers in present day Iraq –
to batter their way across the Kuwaiti-Iraqi frontier. Within hours, they will
enter the city of Basra, to be greeted by its Shia Muslim inhabitants as
liberators. US and British troops will be given roses and pelted with rice – a
traditional Arab greeting – as they drive "victoriously" through the
streets. The first news pictures of the war will warm the hearts of Messrs Bush
and Blair. There will be virtually no mention by reporters of the use of DU munitions.
But in Baghdad, reporters
will be covering the bombing raids that are killing civilians by the score and
then by the hundred. These journalists, as usual, will be accused of giving
"comfort to the enemy while British troops are fighting for their
lives". By now, in Basra and other "liberated" cities south of
the capital, Iraqis are taking their fearful revenge on Saddam Hussein's Baath
party officials. Men are hanged from lamp-posts. Much television footage of
these scenes will have to be cut to sanitise the extent of the violence.
Far better for the US and
British governments will be the macabre discovery of torture chambers and
"rape-rooms" and prisoners with personal accounts of the most
terrible suffering at the hands of Saddam's secret police. This will
"prove" how right "we" are to liberate these poor people.
Then the US will have to find the "weapons of mass destruction" that
supposedly provoked this bloody war. In the journalistic hunt for these
weapons, any old rocket will do for the moment.
Bunkers allegedly containing
chemical weapons will be cordoned off – too dangerous for any journalist to
approach, of course. Perhaps they actually do contain VX or anthrax. But for
the moment, the all-important thing for Washington and London is to convince
the world that the casus belli was true – and reporters, in or out of military
costume, will be on hand to say just that.
Baghdad is surrounded and
its defenders ordered to surrender. There will be fighting between Shias and
Sunnis around the slums of the city, the beginning of a ferocious civil
conflict for which the invading armies are totally unprepared. US forces will
sweep past Baghdad to his home city of Tikrit in their hunt for Saddam Hussein.
Bush and Blair will appear on television to speak of their great
"victories". But as they are boasting, the real story will begin to
be told: the break-up of Iraqi society, the return of thousands of Basra
refugees from Iran, many of them with guns, all refusing to live under western
occupation.
In the north, Kurdish
guerrillas will try to enter Kirkuk, where they will kill or "ethnically
cleanse" many of the city's Arab inhabitants. Across Iraq, the invading
armies will witness terrible scenes of revenge which can no longer be kept off
television screens. The collapse of the Iraqi nation is now under way ...
Of course, the Americans and
British just might get into Baghdad in three days for their roses and rice
water. That's what the British did in 1917. And from there, it was all
downhill.
Weasel words to watch for
'Inevitable revenge' – for
the executions of Saddam's Baath party officials which no one actually said
were inevitable.
'Stubborn' or 'suicidal' –
to be used when Iraqi forces fight rather than retreat.
'Allegedly' – for all
carnage caused by Western forces.
'At last, the damning
evidence' – used when reporters enter old torture chambers.
'Officials here are not
giving us much access' – a clear sign that reporters in Baghdad are confined to
their hotels.
'Life goes on' – for any
pictures of Iraq's poor making tea.
'Remnants' – allegedly
'diehard' Iraqi troops still shooting at the Americans but actually the first
signs of a resistance movement dedicated to the 'liberation' of Iraq from its
new western occupiers.
'Newly liberated' – for
territory and cities newly occupied by the Americans or British.
'What went wrong?' – to
accompany pictures illustrating the growing anarchy in Iraq as if it were not
predicted.
Robert Fisk is an award winning foreign
correspondent for The Independent
(UK), where this article first appeared. He is the author of Pity Thy
Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (The Nation Books, 2002 edition)