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A Military Plan Going Wrong!

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"The British propaganda operation has been a litany of blunders, it's been lamentable," charged Crook. The war-time media campaign being waged by Britain alongside its ground offensive on Iraq has suffered severe setbacks and eroded the authority of Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, charged a British propaganda expert.

"The British propaganda operation has been a litany of blunders, it's been lamentable," Tim Crook, a media studies lecturer at the University of London, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Tuesday, April 1.

Twelve days into the war, the British authorities "reached what is known as credibility fatigue, in other words there is non-consistency, their distortions and exaggerations are too obvious," Crook stressed.

The manipulation starts from the vocabulary used, like the word "coalition", added the expert. "Close analysis reveals it's primarily a military alliance of the United Kingdom and the United States. The idea is that they want to pretend that the wider world is supporting" the war, Crook said.

He charged that the propaganda techniques employed by Britain include the use of strong statements based on information from a vague origin such as unnamed intelligence sources.

"When inconsistencies appear, the authorities can then say they had never made a direct claim themselves," noted the expert.

Distortion & Exaggeration
Crook said that the war briefings coming daily from Downing Street and the U.S. Central Command in Qatar are not to-the-point, adding that American and British officials were beating about the bush.

Citing an example, he recalled the Downing Street as saying: "We are not saying definitively that these explosions were caused by Iraqi missiles. But people should approach this (Iraqi claim) with due scepticism," which was made by Downing Street.

For Crook, this style of response lacks credibility and has a "boomerang" effect, reflecting a "decay in trust and authority" of the government.

In another case, he added, Blair said last week at a press conference in Camp David after a war summit with U.S. President George W. Bush, that two dead British soldiers had been "executed" in southern Iraq.

But the relatives of one of the servicemen dismissed that as a lie, saying officials had told them the man was killed in action.

Crook said Blair was guilty of a "dangerous high-risk distortion and exaggeration. He went too far. (It was) a significant mistake."

The expert said claims that there was some sort of popular uprising in the strategic southern Iraqi city of Basra, and that there were Al-Qaeda fighters present in Iraq, have also been met with scepticism.

In another high-profile case of manipulating information, even before the war started, Britain produced a report which insisted that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction. The report was praised at the U.N. Security Council by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

But it later emerged that a large section of the report was lifted word for word from an old doctoral thesis written by an American academic of an Iraqi origin a decade ago, Crook recalled.

Source: IslamOnline.net & News Agencies

"It is a breathtaking sight to see it,"
-Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon Briefing, March 25, 2003

"The current generation of our military is not letting us down. They are making great progress in the war on Iraq." -G.W. Bush, March 28, 2003

"In this short time, our troops have performed brilliantly,
with skill and with bravery. They make us proud."
-G.W. Bush's speech to the Coast Guart in Philadelphia, March 31, 2003

Last Wednesday, CIA officials gave a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill about the rising tide of anti-Americanism sweeping the Arab world. Particular emphasis was placed on Jordan and Egypt. As agency officials discussed the depth of hatred for U.S. actions, the senators fell silent. There were delicate discussions about the uncertainty, if the war was protracted, of “regime stability.” After the briefing, “there were senators who were ashen-faced,” said one staff member. “They were absolutely depressed.” Much of what the agency briefed would not have been news to any close watcher of the BBC or almost any foreign news broadcast. “But they [the senators] only watch American TV,” said the staffer. Most of the senators had been led to believe that the war would be quick and that the Iraqi populace would be dancing in the streets.
-Newsweek, April 7 Issue

"In the big scope of things, we're on track. We're on plan. We think we have just the right forces for what we need to do now." - -U.S. Gen. Myers, Pentagon briefing, March 25, 2003

"You got to go in there and bust their chops badly,
and let the speed and momentum and violence overwhelm them.”
-Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, March 25, 2003

"I can assure the American people that we're making good progress,"
-Bush on his return to the White House from the Camp David presidential retreat, March 23, 2003.

"This will be a campaign unlike any other in history,”
- U.S. General Franks at a Press Briefing on March 22, 2003

"There’s pockets of resistance, but we’re making good progress," - Bush, March 23, 2003