Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You
By Norman Soloman and Reese Erlich
Context Books, 2003
188 pages, $31 (pb)
BY PHIL SHANNON
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/27711
"Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip", wrote George Orwell of journalists under dictatorships, "but", he went on to say about journalists in "democratic" societies, "the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip".
The Western "free press" would all sombrely agree with Orwell on the propagandist role that journalists are forced to play in lands of the torture chamber, but they would be bewildered and outraged at the suggestion that their media machines operate as propaganda organs minus the whips.
But Orwell was right, as Soloman and Erlich demonstrate in Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You, a book which examines the performance of the West's corporate — and much of its state-run — media during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq by the US-British-Australian "coalition".
The establishment media promoted a pro-war agenda before and during the war. Self-important politicians made solemn statements, which were endlessly recycled into soundbites about "disarming" Iraq of its "weapons of mass destruction", creating a constant din of repetition, the essence of propaganda. Hours of air-time and hectares of print space were given to the extremist pro-war minority of US President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian PM John Howard, as well as their lieutenants, who were arrogantly defying the anti-war views of the vast majority of the world's population.
Representatives of the massive anti-war movement, which jam-packed cities around the world, received little corporate media space. Had the US, Britain and Australia been the democracies they claim to be, anti-war views should have been given 90% of the media coverage.
Retired generals and military pundits were dusted off by the dozens to populate radio and television "expert" panels, with excitement rising in their voices as they wallowed in their war-porn heaven of shiny planes and big ships. Any link between this "video war-gaming, complete with full-colour simulation graphics, majestic footage of aircraft carriers, jet fighters, sleek bombers and airborne missiles" and "the actual killing power of this arsenal", was muted or severed, Solomon and Erlich point out.
Corporate and state-employed journalists "embedded" with the invading troops saw what the military allowed them to see and censored what wasn't in the script — death, mutilation and the human cost of the war to "liberate" Iraq. This fusion of military and media further tightened the military controls on reporters instituted in the 1991 Gulf War when "journalists were not allowed to move without military escorts, all interviews had to be monitored by military public affairs escorts, every line of copy, every still photograph, every strip of film had to be approved — censored — before being filed". Corporate media journalists may well be neutered but precautions are advised lest any stray from the path.
Propaganda is made through "selective facts, distortions and images". The suffering of Iraqis is abstract and distant, while the casualties amongst "our boys" are only worthy of sympathetic coverage. The "enemy" victims, unlike Private Jessica Lynch, had no names or loved ones, no hopes or humanity. Iraq's information minister is made a figure of fun, while skilled liars like Bush, Blair and Howard are taken seriously.
In the build-up to war, the Western corporate and state media told lies to justify Iraq as a target for war. The endlessly repeated throw-away line that Iraq "kicked out" United Nations weapons inspectors in 1998 to cover up their chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs was a blatant untruth.
As was briefly reported at the time, the UN inspection agencies withdrew the inspectors when it became clear that US President Bill Clinton (as a diversion from a domestic sex scandal) was going to bomb Iraq in December 1998 and the safety of the inspectors could not be guaranteed.
The proven fact that before 1998 the US had been spying on Iraq under the cover of the UN inspections, also reported at the time, suddenly became "allegations" four years later.
Other lies were hatched as the drive to war accelerated. In a calculated exploitation of US people's fear and anxiety, the Bush administration and US corporate media succeeded in convincing two-thirds of Americans that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was linked to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, despite the fact that even the CIA had dismissed any connection.
Above all, it was the assertion that the looming war was about "disarming" Iraq of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons — weapons of mass destruction — that was never challenged by the corporate media, despite a gaping lack of evidence and credible testimony from previous inspectors that Iraq was verifiably 95% WMD-free.
Propaganda in "democratic" societies is an organic process not needing the services of an Orwellian Minister for Truth. Journalists working for capitalist media outfits learn to internalise the demands of owners and editors if they want to see their material published and their wage packets continue to come in. Being a foreign correspondent is a particularly plum job with very high wages, only obtained after a long apprenticeship. The successful aspirant learns early on that dissent is a bad career move and that "acceptable" sources (corporate, political and military) are infinitely preferable to "unacceptable" sources (radical academics, anti-war and other activists, especially Marxists who have utterly the wrong frame of analytical reference — imperialism). "Freedom of speech" is one thing but the "freedom to be heard" is quite another.
Most foreign correspondents either learn to, or already accept, the assumptions of empire and US benevolence. Whether a particular war is right or wrong is crowded out from corporate media's reporting, and totally sidelined once the shooting starts. What is up for discussion is merely tactics and strategy, ludicrous comparisons between "doves" and the "neo-conservative" clique of "hawks" surrounding Bush, whether war is best fought under US unilateralism or wearing a UN fig leaf and the practicality, not principle, of a long-term occupation of Iraq.
Off-limits by consensus are the real reasons for the invasion of Iraq. There were no expert panels convened by the corporate media to analyse the march of the US oil companies and other capitalist camp followers that will follow the military into conquered Iraq. That the war was about oil (the contracts waiting for US companies from an Iraqi oil industry privatised by a pro-US regime vetted and installed by the US) was a subject for mainstream media mockery — or, more often, was simply ignored.
The links between oil profits, oil politics and oil wars are the great unmentionable. George Bush junior ran an oil company, vice-president Dick Cheney was the CEO of the oil-equipment corporation Halliburton and Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was on the board of the giant US Chevron oil company. US oil company executives wouldn't have held talks with Iraqi National Congress leaders about carving up Iraq's newly "liberated" oil fields unless the US military was holding the carving knife.
"Naturally the common people don't want war, but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship... All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger", stated Nazi leader Hermann Goering.
Bush, Blair and Howard may not have studied the political philosophy of Goering, but, with the indispensable help of propaganda in a "free" society, courtesy of the corporate-owned and government-run media of capitalism, they have arrived at the same conclusion.