[Reader-list] more on the media war from fisk

[Ravi Sundaram]

Fisk is reporting from Baghdad...


The shocking truth about 'shock and awe'
25 March 2003
So far, the Anglo-American armies are handing their propaganda to the 
Iraqis on a plate. First, on Saturday, we were told – courtesy of the BBC – 
that Umm Qasr, the tiny Iraqi seaport on the Gulf, had "fallen". Why cities 
have to "fall" on the BBC is a mystery to me; the phrase comes from the 
Middle Ages when city walls literally collapsed under siege. Then we were 
told – again on the BBC – that Nasiriyah had been captured. Then its 
"embedded" correspondent informed us – and here my old journalistic 
suspicions were alerted – that it had been "secured".

Why the BBC should use the meretricious military expression "secured" is 
also a mystery to me. "Secured" is meant to sound like "captured" but 
almost invariably means that a city has been bypassed or half-surrounded 
or, at the most, that an invading army has merely entered its suburbs. And 
sure enough, within 24 hours, the Shia Muslim city west of the junction of 
the Euphrates and Tigress rivers proved to be very much unsecured, indeed 
had not been entered in any form – because at least 500 Iraqi troops, 
supported by tanks, were still fighting there.

With what joy did Taha Yassin Ramadan, the Iraqi Vice President, inform us 
all yesterday that "they claimed they had captured Umm Qasr but now you 
know this is a lie". With what happiness did Mohamed Said al-Sahaff, the 
Iraqi Information Minister, boast yesterday that Basra was still "in Iraqi 
hands", that "our forces" in Nasiriyah were still fighting.

And well could they boast because, despite all the claptrap put out by the 
Americans and British in Qatar, what the Iraqis said on this score was 
true. The usual Iraqi claims of downed US and British aircraft – four 
supposedly "shot down" around Baghdad and another near Mosul – were given 
credibility by the Iraqi ability to prove that the collapse of their forces 
in the south was untrue – quite apart from the film of prisoners obtained 
last night.
We know that the Americans are again using depleted uranium munitions in 
Iraq, just as they did in 1991. But yesterday, the BBC told us that US 
Marines had called up an A-10 strike aircraft to deal with "pockets of 
resistance" – a bit more military-speak from the BBC – but failed to 
mention that the A-10 uses depleted uranium rounds. So for the first time 
since 1991, we – the West – are spraying these uranium aerosols in 
battlefield explosions in southern Iraq; and we're not being told. Why not?

And where, for God's sake, does that wretched, utterly dishonest phrase 
"coalition forces" come from? There is no "coalition" in this Iraq war. 
There are the Americans and the British and a few Australians. That's it.
The "coalition" of the 1991 Gulf War does not exist. The "coalition" of 
nations willing to "help" with this illegitimate conflict includes, by a 
vast stretch of the imagination, even Costa Rica and Micronesia and, I 
suppose, poor old neutral Ireland, with its transit rights for US military 
aircraft at Shannon. But they are not "coalition forces". Why does the BBC 
use this phrase? Even in the Second World War, which so many journalists 
think they are now reporting, we didn't use this lie. When we landed on the 
coast of North Africa in Operation Torch, we called it an "Anglo-American 
landing".

And this is an Anglo-American war, whether we – and I include the "embedded 
ones" – like it or not. The Iraqis are sharp enough to remember all this. 
At first, they announced that captured US or British troops would be 
treated as mercenaries, a decision that Saddam himself wisely corrected 
yesterday when he stated that all prisoners would be treated "according to 
the Geneva Convention".

All in all, then, this has not been a great weekend for Messrs Bush and 
Blair. Nor, of course, for Saddam although he's been playing at wars for 
almost half the lifetime of Tony Blair. And even those journalists who have 
most bravely tried to see for themselves what is going on without the 
protection of their armies – an ITV crew near Nasiriyah, for example – are 
in mortal peril of their lives.

So here's a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad 
might just collapse and that we might wake up one morning to find the 
Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down 
Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can 
still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, 
if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nasiriyah – the latter a city that 
briefly rose in revolt against Saddam's regime in 1991 – why should 
Saddam's forces not keep fighting in Baghdad?

Certainly, Iraqi history will not be complete without a new story of 
"martyrdom" in the country's eternal battle against foreign occupiers. The 
last fighters of Um Qasr will become, in the years to come – whatever the 
fate of Saddam – men of song and legend. The Egyptians long ago did the 
same for their men killed at Suez in 1956.
Of course, this might all be a miscalculation. The pack of cards may be 
more flimsy that we think. But suddenly, this weekend, the quick and easy 
war, the conflict of "shock and awe" – the Pentagon's phrase is itself a 
classic slogan from the pages of the old Nazi magazine Signal – doesn't 
seem so realistic. Things are going wrong. We are not telling the truth. 
And the Iraqis are riding high on it all.

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