ROLE OF MEDIA PROPAGANDA IN IRAQ INVASION

Introduction
In this study I would try to explore to what extend the Bush administration has succeeded in creating misperception regarding the war on Iraq as part of its War propaganda through media. Here my attempt would be to see the entire war propaganda against Iraq in a historic perspective. The study would be based upon the objective evaluation of the major events that has led to the crystallization of the current perspective regarding the invasion of Iraq including the logic which justified it. In the process of this study the question of legitimacy and objectivity of our perception would be analyzed. The focus of the study would be the pro-war propaganda, by the Bush administration and war industrialists and importance of the media manipulation, that includes lies, misdirection, loaded rhetoric, staged events in order to justify a war citing an idealistic or patriotic cause deemed to be acceptable. The whole discussion is expected to give us more insight regarding the formation of the views that the public develops over a period of time and how the influential media could manipulate and maneuver information to suit its vested interests. It is a well known fact that managing the media is one of the major activities to win any war and gather support for it. In this study I would examine how the Bush administration has attempted to form the public perception of the war on Iraq and to what extend it has succeeded in this regard through its crafty handling of media and sources of information.
The whole idea of war propaganda revolves around manipulating people's perception and reaction towards war through media. Here the space for open dialog or engagement with the target audience is shut. Media manipulation and disinformation is not new in general and during the war time especially. It is a well know fact that influential groups and governments could control information, manage news in order to shape public opinion in favor of them in times of war. This is not because of the uncritical mindset of the viewers but the propaganda was so powerful that these misperceptions were formed as logical conclusions to what they learned as they were trapped in the propaganda efforts.
Role of Media In Pre Iraq Wars
The policy makers and politicians were very well aware of the importance of the media in the major military engagement of the past. They are very well aware of the critical role media can play to win or lose a war. Here my attempt would be to shed light on the way the media reacted to the major wars that has importance in the modern history. The case of the two world wars and the Vietnam War would suffice to point out to the weight of the media and its role in deciding the future course of the war. It is generally agreed that the governments and media would have conflicting interests during the time of wars as the media would be eager to bring out the gory picture of the war while the government would be insisting on filtering the news and broadcasting only those aspects that would help it to win the war. During the First World War the British government tried to slap censorship through the Press Bureau, that was introduced to provide information favorable to the winning of the war and the photographers were threatened to keep away themselves from the war zone and said that the defying would be on their own risk of being shot. This has led to the opposition of the journalists and they challenged it by taking pictures from the war front violating the order. These reporters were arrested and put into prison.1 But due to the massive opposition and the counterproductive result of the action the government allowed a few accredited army staff to report from the front. This has resulted in the censored airing of the war news.
During the World War II also both British and the US deployed a number of censoring mechanisms to form the public opinion in favor of them. The Ministry of information in London banned reporting any news items that were deemed as against the war effort, while in the US the office of Censorship asked not to report the subversive images of the bloody death of the soldiers or those happy soldiers who are ready to leave the battlefield. Here the interesting question is that the watchdog was converted to a lapdog who followed the orders of his master and hardly questioned constrains imposed on them by their respective governments.
Another important event in this regard was the reporting of the Vietnam War. Here the media got more access and less censorship was there and as a result the journalists started reporting on a variety of the war related topics and many gruesome pictures were shown. This development is said to have undermined the credibility of the war and the anti war movement in the US got momentum and finally the government was compelled to pull out its army halfway from the war. It is to be kept in mind that the journalists were not given a free go to report whatever they saw and still restrictions were there. But this limited access was again restricted and the whole issue of the media management and censorship has become a part of the long established part of the military conflict. These constrains imposed on media point to the importance the policy makers accord to the role the media could play and the effects the media reporting has made in other events of significance. In this backdrop we have to see the whole spin and distortion game of the Bush administration for the run up to the Iraq war.2
Involvement of the Bush Administration and State Machinery in Propaganda
The Bush administration was engaged in wholesale fabrication of lies and to a great extent it succeeded in passing them to the audience as indelible truths, when it is ushered into the day to day news chain. For this purpose the administration has deployed a number of mechanisms including setting up public relations firms in large numbers to finance and influence the media. The lies, converted into news very easily become part and parcel of the emerging political and media consensus in addition to shaping the public perception.
The important role played by civilian propaganda units set up by the State Department in close ties with CIA and Pentagon is one of the important factors to be mentioned in this regard. Charlotte Beers, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, has played an important role in this regard thanks to her important role in the advertising industry as well. The mission she was assigned to is "to counteract anti-Americanism abroad." the office under her leadership was asked to "ensure that public diplomacy (engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences) is practiced in harmony with public affairs (outreach to Americans) and traditional diplomacy to advance U.S. interests and security and to provide the moral basis for U.S. leadership in the world."3
This is in addition to the direct involvement of the CIA in the Fear and Disinformation Campaign (FDI) through massive enticement to authors, journalists and media critics, through private owned foundations and organizations. The involvement of the CIA in deciding the scope and direction of many Hollywood productions is also to be brought into discussion as studies show that one third of Hollywood movies were related to war after the September 11 attack.
A number of Public Relations groups including Rendon Group and Lincoln Group were hired by the State Department to make its propaganda possible through disinformation. The fact that huge amount of money was earmarked for this purpose is a known secret. The PRs exerting major influence in directing the news and coining catchy words in order to make the propaganda possible and more effective was also exposed. These efforts were made out of the realization that the media plays a central role in war propaganda and only through blatant distortion and manipulation of all news sources it would be possible to drum up the support for the war.
Disinformation and distortion was part of a state policy as the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was launched just after the September 11attck by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This was aimed to “plant stories that were false in foreign countries -- as an effort to influence public opinion across the world.” but the administration was compelled to close it following the massive opposition from the public as it was charged as an office to deliberately lie to promote the US interests, but the OSI was functioning through some proxies for the portrayal of Saddam in a bad shape. The involvement of various branches of the intelligence units in different components of the propaganda campaign is well documented.
Major False Information Disseminated Before the War
The major accusations the Bush administration wanted to fabricate and the media has disseminated uncritically include the claim that Saddam Hussein is developing the Weapons of Mass Destruction. This was proved false when the officials tasked to trace the WMD reported that there is no evidence for any WMD or even a WMD program.
The second claim presented was that Saddam was a brutal dictator. This is true but the brutality when it was in full fledge was supported and financed by this very US that has even disrupted one of the UN resolutions against Saddam for the alleged use of chemical weapons just because he was a staunch ally of the US then. Here also the media was not ready to give critical evaluation of the whole question and was reduced to a machine in the hands of the imperialists to highlight what they wanted and downplay any of the charges that may cast doubts on the US for being guilty of supporting him to carry out such huge human right violations.
The next rationale for invading Iraq was that it could help the democratization process in the West Asian countries through cracking down militant Islam, better America's standing in the Arab world, in addition to safeguarding its closest ally in the region, Israel. All these reasons were proved to be unessential since the very presence of the foreign military is seen as part of a neocolonial design and the region has become more prone to the appeals of terrorists and anti-western movements. The popular resentment against Israel is also increasing as it is seen to have worked from behind the scene in the invasion of Iraq.
Another rationale shown by the Bush administration was that Saddam maintained close ties with Osama and has played a role in the terrorist attack on the twin towers. These were also proved to be unsubstantiated and not able to prove and it is unlikely that Saddam would be able to develop any ties with Osama given the hatred that the latter has towards the infidel regime of Saddam. Osama belongs to the Wahhabi school of thought while Saddam was a staunch exponent of the Ba’ath movement with a secular bend that is a diametrically opposite ideology to that of Wahhabism. The links between Saddam and al Qaida and the alleged role of Saddam came into public domain from Czech officials in 2001. But the claim of the Czech Republic’s interior minister that the main culprit in the twin tower attack Mohammed Atta met the intelligence official of Iraq Ahmed Khalid Ibrahim at Prague was proved to be unfounded since the FBI investigation said there is no proof in this regard. The Czech officials also came open denying any proof in this regard and said it was based on a mistaken notion due to the facial similarity between Atta and the man who really met the Iraqi intelligence official. 4 The double stand that the Bush administration has advanced throughout its treatment of the countries designed as “axis of evil”.
Just as Britain and French circulated fabricated news that German soldiers have bayoneted a two year child and chopped off the arms of a baby that clung to its mothers skirts the US war planners have once again highlighted the baby killer image, but here the label is hung in the neck of Saddam. Saddam was accused to be a brutal dictator who has killed 5000people belonged to Iraqi Kurds during the Iran Iraq war in Halabja in 1988. But this was not mentioned by the administration when the first Gulf war occurred just because then the Iraqi government was receiving military and economic support from the US. As the LexisNexis database shows the incident was rarely mentioned during the Operation Desert Storm in 1991.5 But it was reported again with unprecedented importance in the month of March 2003, when the coalition forces invaded Iraq. The sharp increase in the reporting of the “babies from incubator story” who were killed in large number also resurfaced during the run up to the war despite the fact that it was proved to be fabricated with the help of one of the major public relations firms that has concluded a contract with the senior Bush administration to engage in anti Saddam propaganda. Here also the pattern of its disappearance and resurfacing is reveling. The “babies from incubator story” was mentioned 137 times between the invasion of Kuwait and the Operation Desert Storm. But the story of the killing of more than 200 babies after pulling them from the incubator and exposing them to severe cold was questioned by the journalists just after the war. It was also proved to be a fabricated one. But the same story was told and retold in 2002s.
Impact of the Media on Public Perception
As the decision of the Bush administration to go for war against Iraq was not prompted by any internal threat the unique challenge of convincing the inevitability of the mission was the onus of the Bush administration. The administration was in dare need of the legitimacy to go to war at least from its public as the UN Security Council did not approve the decision to go to war. Here the State Department resorted to using the media as a means to garner the support of the public and started airing a number of fabricated lies in order to make the Americans believe that Saddam regime of Iraq posed an imminent potential threat. A public that was not supporting a unilateral military intervention slowly shifted its stand and later came out in large number supporting the proposed invasion of Iraq. There are a number of misperceptions that the public has taken for granted when the Bush administration launched its propaganda war against Iraq. These include that Iraq posed a real threat to the peace and global security as Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. The charge that Saddam is developing WMD was leveled in addition to asserting the support he has extended to the al Qaeda terrorist group. Even before the war, majority of the people were of the view that Iraq had a WMD program and was supporting al Qaeda but the support was not overwhelming to the extent that they would justify any unilateral military action. But when Bush decided to attack Iraq finally the public expressed their support and even after the conformation that there is no WMD in Iraq much of the support remained. These facts are grim reminder to the extent the Bush administration was able to create misperception through spin and disinformation. The public developed their views based upon the information disseminated directly or implication by the media. There are a number of lies that were passed to the public as facts and were the bedrock of the support for the US war on Iraq. Experts in the field are of the view that there are at least 27 false claims by the US administration given to the public to justify its decision to go to war. This is in addition to a number of other past events digged out to present Saddam as a savage and brutal dictator. The reemerging of the past events including the Halabja massacre and the incubator episode in Kuwait during the first Gulf war is revealing.
A study conducted by Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks, made it clear that 70 % of the public held one misperception about Iraq, while 20 % held two and 8% held three, while only 30 % percent held none of the misperceptions. (PIPA/Knowledge Networks 2003).
But the interesting thing is that even after the reporting one of the authentic polls conducted by Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks revealed the disturbing fact that many were not informed about it.( see table No 1)
Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the US has or has not found Iraq weapons of mass destruction?
Table No. 1*
Period
9/03
7/03
6/03
3/03
6/03-9/03
US Has
24
21
23
34
22
US Has not
73
76
73
59
75
No answer
3
3
4
7
3
*Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks 2003
Another cooked intelligence report that was passed over to the people who believed it was that Iraq maintained close links with al Qaeda and the belief sustained even after the invasion and the clear evidence that there was no relation. The table given is revealing:
Is it your impression that the US has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization?
Table No. 2*
Period
8-9/03
7/03
6/03
6/03-9/03
US has
49
45
52
48
US has not
45
49
43
46
No answer
6
6
5
6
*Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks.
This phenomenon indicates to another stark reality that the support from those with no misperceptions for the policies of the Bush in Iraq was 23% while 53 % supported out of those who held one misperception. The massive support for Bush in his policy came from those who held two or three misperceptions (78 % and 86 % respectively). The reason why many of the Americans held misperception largely depends on news source. Here the case of the Fox TV news is revealing as 80% of those who relied upon it held at least one misperception. This is in sharp contrast to 55% of CNN viewers, 47% of those who depended on print media.6
Different rationale was shown for invading Iraq and continuing the military presence there. This shift in the stand itself points to the fact that other unbiased media outlets also tried their best to give a clear picture of the whole event. It is a disturbing fact that a number of polls conducted during the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 unveil the connection between propaganda of the Bush administration and public misperception. Here the media has played a crucial role in shaping the public opinion in favor of the war by presenting the information given by the Bush administration without checking its accuracy or observing any kind of critical evaluation of the whole issue. There are a number of studies that reveals how Bush Administration managed to create misperceptions among the public both in America and outside on a range of issues including Iraq, Saddam Hussein and the threats they posed. This in turn helped the Bush administration to garner support for going for war and dethroning Saddam.
Tactics to Maintain Pro War Reporting
One of the major techniques employed by the Bush administration to maintain the pro war reporting in the whole media is repetition. The neoconservatives in order to leave a lasting impact on the public have time and again repeated war with Iraq pretty in advance. The use of multiple sources to reinforce the concept of the war and the referring of the one source to another would have a psychological impact on the target audience to the extent they would accept the war as an inevitable one without giving any chance to scrutiny. Another important tool that was used through the media was polls because they would be accepted as news despite the fact that they are just the views of those people who were polled. We have seen to what extent the opinion of the public would vacillate according to the news they are catered.
There are a number of critics who holds the view that introducing a number of war related words and setting the stage for a US friendly media was one of the major successes achieved by the Bush administration. The entire literature on war on Iraq and the very use of war in Iraq is seen as part of disinformation tactics. It was a unilateral attack by one of the most powerful countries the world has ever seen and the opponent could not be called an adversary. To turn the realities upside down the very act of war that has no legitimacy of the UN, international community or the nation it is invading was christened as "humanitarian interventions" in order to liberate a people through “regime change” and “promoting democracy”. Despite the fact that UN Charters approves any kind of resistance to the illegitimate invasion of any given nation but the terms used to describe the revolting people of Iraq is always in bad shape while that of the military occupation and the brutal targeting of civilians are called "peace-keeping". The entire shift in the whole literature and the mentioning of the September 11 attack as a major global turning point could be seen as part of a bigger game plan. A contrast between the sheer number of the civilian casualties in the Twin tower attack and its retaliation is all the more raveling.
As one of the anti war activists reveals the war propaganda is carried out through issuing statements that in turn would be carried by the major media with the effect that all the local media would follow the suit just because it don't have any alternative. Using some of the real or perceived buzz words the media would sustain and would be helpful in fabricating the news in the official line. Some of the buzzwords widely used are "Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda" who is the de facto perpetrator of all the terrorist attack and hence caters news stories including the "war on terrorism" as part of the containment strategy for any "alleged", "future” actual or presumed terrorist attacks. It goes without saying that most often than not Al Qaeda is a CIA "intelligence asset" that could be used in all the operations that the US wanted to carry out against any of the threats to its interests.
There are a number of other words coined by the propagandists and duly followed by the media. R.N. Sharma and Y.K. Sharma, two Middle East experts from India have enumerated a number of terms coined by the Pentagon and uncritically used by media.
*Air campaign: Bombardment of essentially defenseless cities.
*Allegedly: Prefix used for all reports of civilian death caused by US, UK forces
*Allies: US and UK forces currently invading Iraq.
*Coalition forces: US and UK forces.
*Claimed: Everything the Iraqis say that the shows the US and the UK in bad light.
*Collateral damage: Civilian casualties caused by US-UK forces which cannot be blamed on Iraqis.
*Embed: Journalists who may not get the true picture because they are gusts of the military unit.
*Human shields: civilian casualties caused by US-UK forces but blamed on Iraqis.
*Liberation: Occupation.
*Military experts: Commentators who toe the Pentagon line.
*Regime death squads: Iraqi resistance fighters.
*Soldiers in civilian clothes: Iraqi civilians fighting foreign occupation.
* We are still investigating: We don’t want to admit responsibility right now.
*Target rich environment: Lots of places to bomb.7
The entire machinery built over a period of time to maintain the reporting on official line deserves mention. Since the September 11th attack these machinery grew in importance and huge amount of money was funneled to it. Here David Miller one of the eminent anti war activist-cum-media critic says that the US and the UK have succeeded in keeping one of the most sophisticated media controlling system. The UK foreign office public relations alone have an estimated annual expense of 340 million pounds for its works done in London alone. In the US the Pentagon has its own public relations office in addition to the Office of the Public Diplomacy of the State Department. The estimated amount of the latter to win the hearts and minds in the Arab world alone is calculated to be more than one billion USD. There is a system to coordinate the works of the US and the UK in this regard. The total amount spent on the propaganda to win the support of the global support is a secret. There is an Office of Global Communication (OGC) for the White House that is the top most office to decide in this regard. This OGC has cooked the whole issue of the Iraqi threat in 2001. The comment of the Deputy Assistant to President Bush for communication Suzy Defrancis sheds light to the agenda of the Bush regime, “When Americans wake up in the morning, they will first here from the Persian Gulf region, may be from General Tommy Franks. Then later in the day they will here from the Pentagon then the state department then later on the White House will brief.” The White House would be giving the news to the rest of the propaganda apparatus that has global reach.
Conclusion
From the above facts one can conclude that despite the public opposition to the invasion of Iraq, given the real picture, the Bush Administration managed to get the public support through their propaganda. The above facts also point to the fact that media has huge impact in forming the public perception and hence the support or opposing of a war that have risked hundreds of thousands of lives and added many global turmoil in addition to fueling the economic meltdown that the world is witnessing lately. The study presents the grim reality that if handled in a distorted way media could be a powerful weapon to win the hearts and minds of the people for any uncalled for war.
The fact is that out of those who have a clear picture and those who held misperception hardly supported the unilateral war. This leads us to the fact that if the media was not reduced to a propaganda machine in the hands of the neoconservatives the war could have been averted and it would have been a tough task to Bush to go to war in defiance of the public opinion and opposition from the UN. Here another important point emerges that the media could not be trusted the job of monitoring the whole policies and pronouncements of any government. The substantial increase in the sources of the media and their multinational nature made the task of giving the right and up-to-date version of the story all the more daunting. The fact remains that still a number of misperceptions remains unchallenged and the whole discourse is still in that framework that was developed by the media to facilitate a unilateral invasion of Iraq. The question of dependability and the very function of media as a means to give the popular sentiment is also being questioned when it is controlled and coerced through threat and incentives.
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References:
Miller, David (2004) Tell Me Lies Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq, London Pluto Press
Rampton, Shelton & Stauber, John (2003) Weapons Of Mass Deception-the Uses Of Propaganda in Bush’s War On Iraq, New York, Jeremy P. Tarcher
Elizabeth Poole, John E. Richardson (2006), Muslims and News Media, London, I.B. Tauris.
Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War political science quarterly Volume 118 · Number 4 · Winter 2003-2004 Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay and Evan Lewis
Brian A. Patrick and A. Trevor Thrall (2004) Winning the Peace: Paradox and Propaganda after the Invasion of Iraq Down loaded from internet.
David Robie, (2003) The Invasion of Iraq — and how the media war was won and lost half truths and media spin: whom do you believe? Downloaded from internet.
Daniel McCarthy (2002) The Propaganda War Downloaded from internet
R.N. Sharma, Y.K. Sharma (2003), Gulf War-II 2003- Before the Beginning and After the End, Shubi Publications, New Delhi