| Weapons of Mass Distraction By Antonio C. Abaya March 26, 2003 The Second Gulf War has been as much a public relations-propaganda war as it has been a shooting war, at least in its first six days. One of the first moves in the US campaign against Iraq was to take over the frequencies of the Iraqi state radio, thus crippling the ability of the government to communicate with its own people. This was no doubt done by broadcasting on the very same frequencies but with signals so strong as to drown out the Iraqi station. The most recent strike in the propaganda war was the bombing of Iraqi state television facilities, obviously to neutralize it after its recent successes in showing images of American prisoners-of-war cowering in fear as they were being interrogated, as well as images of President Saddam Hussein, apparently very much alive and defiant as ever. These images helped shore up Iraqi morale in the face of overwhelming punishment from the American and British war machines. But deprived of their radio and TV staples and subjected instead to the counter-propaganda from US-UK public relations spin doctors, the Iraqi people would now be putty in the hands of media manipulators who will now soften them for the next stage of the campaign, which is to encourage the urban populations to rise up in �popular� revolt against their government. This is now being tried out in the southern city of Basra, where the population is predominantly Shia Muslims who, theoretically, have not much love for the predominantly Sunni Muslim government in Baghdad, and who, additionally, have recent memories of actually being persecuted by that government. If the people of Basra rise up in revolt against the Saddam government and succeed in dismantling the Baathist party apparatus there, this would be a major blow from which the government may not recover. It would also serve as a model for the siege of Baghdad, more attractive than engaging the Republican Guards in urban street fighting that would inevitably result in thousands of both friendly and civilian casualties, a potential public relations disaster for Bush and Blair. ***** Actually, the propaganda war in Iraq began even before the first cruise missiles were launched. Much media hype was generated with the pre-strike announcement that the first two days of the war would be marked with the firing of 3,000 cruise missiles at Baghdad in a lethal display of firepower called Shock and Awe, a son et lumiere production meant to intimidate the Iraqis from Day One. Mercifully, that was apparently scaled down, not out of any humanitarian concern for civilian casualties, but out of public relations concern about the effect on the global TV audience of the spectacle of a pair of sadistic bullies beating up a beggar in rags with baseball and cricket bats. There have also been some amateurish attempts to puff up the news from the battlefield. The entire 51st Division of the Iraqi army was supposed to have surrendered, all 8,000 of them, with their commander and his deputy. It turned out to be no more than a junior officer and his deputy plus several dozens of their men. The port city of Umm Qasir was reported several times to have fallen before it finally did. But that may be par for the course in a war situation. ***** The biggest public relations problem for Bush and Blair may be if, after the siege of and battle for Baghdad are finally over, they cannot show any evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. The entire rationale for the invasion of Iraq would thus be rendered meaningless. The Coalition of the Willing Accomplices in the Rape of Iraq may, as of now, be preparing for this possibility. Unknown to most viewers of the evening TV news, whose attention has been focused almost exclusively on Basra, An Nasiriyah, Mosul and Baghdad, one of the earliest objectives in the campaign was the seizure on Day Two of two airfields in the western desert known as H2 and H3. These two airfields are in the part of Iraq closest to Jordan, hence to Israel. They were obviously attacked and seized, not from Kuwait � the sole springboard for the invasion after Turkey turned down a $26 billion bribe from the Americans for the use of its territory � but from bases in Jordan. The operation for the seizure of H2 and H3 was and is shrouded in secrecy. Media were and are not allowed in the area and no reporters were embedded in the units that took part in the commando strike. My guess is that these airfields were seized on the suspicion that Iraqi missiles targeted at Israel are poised to be launched from there, that the attacking commando units included Israeli special forces, that they found nothing in the way of weapons of mass destruction. But H2 and H3 are being deliberately kept away from the public eye and are being reserved for a future date, if and when, even after the Battle of Baghdad is over, no evidence is found of Saddam�s weapons of mass destruction. Then suddenly H2 and H3 may become prominent. In police work, this is known as planting the evidence. ***** This article appears in the April 5, 2003 issue of the Philippines Free Press magazine. ***** WEBSITE UPDATE: We are in the process of reformatting the Reference Material section in our website (www.tapatt.org) by grouping articles together according to subject matter. We have begun with articles dealing with Iraq. We trust this makes the website more user-friendly. ***** |
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| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Weapons of Mass Distraction� ALL THAT YOU have written and will continue to write about the ongoing military campaign pales beside the credible information available about Depleted Uranium (DU) that most US and UK metal piercing ordinance that has been in use for the past approximately 15 years. The "Gulf War Syndrome" and the "whatever nomenclature" they've attached to illness' that proceeded from the recent Balkan Conflicts proves the existence and extensive use of this deadly material........and the powers that be have never admitted, nor warned, nor cleansed combatants and civilians----- of it's cancerous ramifications. I have some info on this if you wish to have a long read! Perhaps you should write about it. Richard Powell. (Email address on file) Makati City April 03, 2003 ��������������������������� THERE WILL BE weapons of mass destruction found, as you rightly say ...that is the way of the world.. Brett Taylor. [email protected]. April 03, 2003 ��������������������������� NO AMOUNT OF reasoning or analytical consideration will prevent those with power -- big or small -- to use their power in what they think is their best interest. That's how the cookie crumbles. Gras Reyes. [email protected] April 03, 2003 MY REPLY. That is at least an honest response, devoid of trite propaganda lines such as �bringing democracy to Iraq� or �defending our freedoms.� But if the powerful have the right to beat up the powerless, the powerless have an equal right to retaliate against the powerful, with the only weapons at their command, terrorism. �������������������������� I HAVE LONG wanted to write you after reading your most recent articles. Those came as quite a surprise to me since it seemed that in writing them, you abandoned your usual scholarly analysis of historical events and great journalistic style in depicting your views of the political scene. Instead of staying pat with those, you seemed to take off to ride the Iraqi propaganda bandwagon and play up the Oil and pro-Zionism issues. (What �Iraqi propaganda� are you talking about? I do not get any Iraqi books, magazines, newspapers and TV programs. The only Iraqi inputs I get are the video clips excerpted by the BBC and CNN, and they have not converted me into a fan of Saddam Hussein. ACA.) Your previous writings till recently spoke up for my own views on most political matters, but this subject of the War on Iraq, is where we are poles apart. I will send you later some other eloquent writer's own views that more accurately reflect my own. For now let me just point out to you the following: (Don�t bother sending me �some other eloquent writer�s own views that more accurately reflect my own.� I get more than enough of those from mainstream American and British media such as Time and The Economist. ACA.) ** You have totally missed the point on Bush' war on Iraq. It is not about Oil or the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). It is about bringing to Justice a Man and a Regime that ruled thru Mass Murder (over 1.5 million victims by latest estimates), Brutal Torture and Unspeakable Cruelty ... and events of recent weeks have only reinforced that. How narrow- minded can you get!! (You are the one who has totally missed the point of Bush� war on Iraq. If you watch the anchors on CNN and the BBC, and read the columnists of The New York Times and The Washington Post, and recall the policy statements of Bush, Blair, Powell, etc, they all refer to WMD as the principal reason for the war on Iraq. Mass Murder, Brutal Torture and Unspeakable Cruelty, which you have not surprisingly put under capital letters, are the propaganda drivel for the consumption of the ignorant American masa, 51% of whom, according to a recent poll, believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. ACA) ** Also do not forget the great possibility that Gee Dubya might want to redeem his Dad's lost stature in World History. For many historians feel that George H.W. committed the greatest political blunder of the 20th century in letting Saddam off the hook to suppress and kill hundreds of thousands of Shiites and Kurds ... not to forget maneuvering the U.N. into the inept international Policy-making body that it is. The blunder even made Chamberlain's "deal" with Hitler look like a brilliant gambit in comparison. (Also do not forget that Gee Dubya is a basically uneducated person despite a masters from Yale who would not be able to locate Iraq on a globe if the captions were in Chinese. While a candidate in 2000, he could not name the prime minister of India or the president of Pakistan. He should not worry about his place in world history. It is already secure as George W. [for Warmonger] Bush. ACA.) ** You and other so-called journalists like Teddy Benigno Jr. claim the U.S. and Britain are isolated in their crusade against Saddam. You are trying to deceive your readers knowing full well that there are at least 45 nations openly in support (Germany just flipped incidentally) and several more in favor but choose to stay in the closet. At least 80% of European nations support the U.S. move without U.N. Support. And in the Arab World, many countries claim to be neutral and remain silent but of those that have spoken openly, MORE favor the U.S. hard line than oppose it. Shame on all you mind benders that deliberately try to distort statistics to prove your point. (I am not interested in the views of �so-called journalists like Teddy Benigno.� Your remark suggests that you consider journalists only those who agree with your prejudices. Shame on you for your parochial views. As for the 45 nations in the Coalition of the Willing Accomplices in the Rape of Iraq, this list includes such non-countries as Tonga, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Eritrea; the US was really scraping the barrel just to get enough flags to wave before the ignorant. It does not include the really important countries like France, Germany, Russia, China and India. It may include the UK, Spain, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Denmark etc, but public opinion in those countries were/are 70 to 94% against the war, according to several polls. So who is distorting statistics to prove his point? ACA.) ** It is quite naive to expect positive results from trying to pressure Iraq through U.N. sanctions (like your souffle-suckin' French friends do) and call it a rush to violence and conquest. After all, aren't 12 years and 17 U.N. Security Council Resolutions enough to prove that this self-proclaimed Emperor of Greater Mesopotamia will not listen to reason?? (So why don�t your hotdog-suckin� American friends just leave the UN? So Iraq has violated 16 (not 17) UN Security Council resolutions. Big deal. Do you know how many UN Security Council resolutions Israel has violated? 64. By far the top score in the UN�s history. The self-proclaimed Macho Man of the Middle East will not listen to reason either, because he knows Uncle Sam is there to back him all the way, anyway.. ACA.) ** To take the pacifist view and maintain the status quo on Iraq is to vote for the continued suffering and cruel deaths of the Iraqi people. These people are in much worse shape than the poor Filipinos you are trying to help for at least the Filipinos are free to move about, object and do something about their poverty. If Iraq had not been allowed to defy U.N. Resolutions since 1991, think of all the hundreds of thousands of lives that would have been spared from cruel death at the hands of the Saddam Regime. (Who told you I was/am a pacifist? I supported the 1991 Gulf War and the war against the Taliban and the al-Qaeda in Afghanistan because they were, in my view, totally justified. But this war wasn�t. Iraq posed no threat to anyone or any country except Israel. That Saddam was a cruel dictator is not disputed, but so were/are a number of other leaders which the US never bothered to overthrow or invade: Pol Pot in Cambodia, Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il in North Korea, Mao zedung in China, Joseph Stalin in the USSR, Nicolae Ceaucescu in Romania, Idi Amin in Uganda, Emperor Bokassa in the Central African Republic, Hoxha in Albania, etc. (The US chose to invade Saddam�s Iraq not because of the �cruel deaths of the Iraqi people� [that�s for the ignorant American masa] but to grab its oil resources and to save the Israelis from being driven to the sea. Additionally, puny Iraq does not have the capability to hit back at the macho Americans the way Mao�s Chinese and Stalin�s Soviets would have. America�s new doctrine of pre-emptive strike, by the way, which posits a dominant and domineering Israel that must be defended at all cost, was drafted in the mid-1990s as a �Project of the New American Century� by Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, both Jews, who are prominent in the Bush administration. Read it and educate yourself. ACA.) ** Final point in my "Summary": Gee Dubya Bush is not trying to protect Israel from the Iraqi WMD ... it is the other way around. (You mean Israel is trying to protect the US from Iraq�s WMD? That�s weird. ACA.) For if Saddam were idiotic enough to again try to inflict mass destruction on Israel with WMD, just as surely as you were once a superb historical journalist, Israel would have replied with Tactical Nuclear Weapons and caused thousands of Iraqi deaths. (According to the Christian fundamentalists of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who are one of Bush�s main pillars of political support, we are entering the End Times as foretold by the Bible. They believe that the state of Israel was created by God and must be defended at all cost. In their End Times scenario, a cataclysmic war will soon (or has started to) break out in the Middle East. �Thousands of Iraqi deaths� are nothing. They foresee millions. Two thirds of the population of Israel, they foretell, will be wiped out. The remaining one third will convert to Christianity, and that will be the signal for the Second Coming of Christ. And that is why they want Israel to be saved by Bush: so that the one third of Israelis lucky enough to be fated to convert to Christianity will be given that golden chance to be present at the Second Coming of Christ. Maybe you should join them. You seem to share certain beliefs. ACA.) Anyway, there is still a chance for you to recover your "lost lustre" as a writer in many people's eyes. And that is to write up an analysis on the real reasons why France, Russia, Germany and even China were really against the War on Iraq. And it's not all about the so-called peace, you know. (Who said they were. ACA.)That should be an easy article to write ... after all the "historical" facts are not that hard to uncover. (I do not feel any need to �recover my lost lustre as a writer in many people�s eyes� because I do not feel I have lost whatever it is you claim that I have lost. You just do not agree with my opinions just as I do not agree with yours. Nothing has been lost and nothing has been gained. I still receive both agreeing and disagreeing reactions, both agreeable and disagreeable opinions, with most of them agreeing and agreeable. That�s par for the course. I value the opinions of eminent American and British writers, academics and intellectuals, many of whose anti-Iraq-War pieces are archived in the Reference Material section of this website. Try reading it some time. This could be the �Iraqi Propaganda bandwagon� you are accusing me of riding on�ACA) Tom Perlas [email protected] April 05, 2003 �������������������������� YOU WROTE: > Unknown to most viewers of the evening TV news, whose attention has been > focused almost exclusively on Basra, An Nasiriyah, Mosul and Baghdad, > one of the earliest objectives in the campaign was the seizure on Day > Two of two airfields in the western desert known as H2 and H3. > > > > These two airfields are in the part of Iraq closest to Jordan, hence to > Israel. They were obviously attacked and seized, not from Kuwait � the > sole springboard for the invasion after Turkey turned down a $26 billion > bribe from the Americans for the use of its territory � but from bases > in Jordan. > > > > The operation for the seizure of H2 and H3 was and is shrouded in > secrecy. Media were and are not allowed in the area and no reporters > were embedded in the units that took part in the commando strike. > > > > My guess is that these airfields were seized on the suspicion that Iraqi > missiles targeted at Israel are poised to be launched from there, that > the attacking commando units included Israeli special forces, that they > found nothing in the way of weapons of mass destruction. I believe CNN about a week or two ago did report that these airfields (H2 and H3) were used in the first Gulf War as launch sites for Scuds. And if my memory serves me right Jordan was one of those countries targeted by Saddam. Not surprising then that Jordan has allowed (hush-hush of course) the US to use it as a gateway western Iraq. (Yes, these airfields were known as the Scud Box as it was from there that Iraq launched Scuds against Israel. No, I do not think Jordan was targeted by Iraq during the First Gulf War. There would have been no tactical or strategic reason for doing so. ACA) > But H2 and H3 are being deliberately kept away from the public eye and > are being reserved for a future date, if and when, even after the Battle > of Baghdad is over, no evidence is found of Saddam�s weapons of mass > destruction. Then suddenly H2 and H3 may become prominent. In police > work, this is known as planting the evidence. A conspiracy theory? (Yes, of course, it is a conspiracy theory, just as the claims that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in cahoots, that Iraq was selling bio/chem warfare agents to terrorist groups, that Iraq was planning to attack the US, etc were all conspiracy theories. But you should not knock conspiracy theories as sometimes they come out prophetically accurate. ACA) Edwardson Tan [email protected] April 07, 2000 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |