Countdown to war

By Eric Rouleau, Le Monde diplomatique, February 2003

ALL governments practise disinformation to a greater or lesser extent, under the guise of communication. Manipulating the media becomes almost the norm in wartime, when all is fair in mobilising the population: spreading half-truths, lies (outright or by omission), unverifiable rumours. The war is presented as just, inevitable and defensive.When a state takes the initiative in launching military action in violation of international conventions aimed at banning the law of the jungle in inter-state relations, it’s a preventative war.

Disinformation has its rules. The crisis leading to the conflict is pushed to the limit, the enemy state is demonised, its leader presented as fundamentally evil, a dangerous adventurer, a psychopath, a communist, a Nazi. Iran’s Mossadegh (1), Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Egypt’s Nasser, Libya’s Gadafy, the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, have all been described in these terms. Saddam Hussein was not long ago a valued ally of the United States and France, among other countries, and then abruptly went from being a mere despot to being a new Hitler. Sceptics, doubters and even those favouring a diplomatic solution are accused of Munich-style appeasement or, at best, naivety. Real debate soon evaporates in these conditions.

Never since the end of the cold war has there been such intensive effort to prepare public opinion as that now marshalled in favour of war in Iraq. The US, uncontested master of information technology, has directed all its expertise into the project. A multitude of communications departments within the administration—the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department—and the public relations consultants hired at great cost have set about winning the hearts and minds of the American people to President George Bush’s strategy of normalising Iraq by force.

Not without setbacks, however. A scandal broke in February 2002 when it was leaked that the Pentagon had secretly set up a bureau of strategic influence the previous autumn to disseminate false information to the public through (a nice touch) foreign press agencies, especially Agence France Press and Reuters. Faced with an outcry in Congress and the press, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was forced to back down and announce the closure of this unit, soon replaced by another with the innocuous name of the office of special planning. Some neo-conservatives were not happy with what appeared to be a retreat. Frank Gaffney, a leading hawk in Washington and a friend of Rumsfeld, published a virulent article directed against a left determined to deprive the US of a necessary instrument of war. Gaffney, president of the Centre for Security Policy (whose motto is peace through strength), justified his stance by quoting Winston Churchill: In a time of war, the truth is so precious that it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies (2).

But the high dose of misinformation seems not to have produced the desired effect. Against all expectations, the war plan has spawned many questions and much opposition—more than any before. Never have the European countries (public opinion, as well as most governments) expressed such reservations about their American ally. Never have the Arab states been as united (at least publicly) in condemning an initiative which is, after all, aimed at getting rid of a man most of them fear or despise.

Could this unusual consensus be due to a wave of anti-Americanism sweeping the globe? Perhaps, but this is not the essential reason, as is clear from the evolution in public opinion in the US. Traumatised by the attacks on New York and Washington, the public in the US massively supported President Bush when he launched his anti-Iraqi crusade two months later. But polls showed a continuing decline in the proportion of Americans in favour of the war. By December 2002, 68% were opposed to the war unless it had the support of the international community. More significantly, 72% of Americans (including 60% of Republicans) believed that their government had failed to present enough hard evidence against the Iraqi government to justify war (3). They no longer believed Bush’s repeated assertions that the Iraqi threat was serious and immin ent. The implicit or explicit opposition to the war expressed by major business leaders, prominent personalities in film and entertainment, high officials of the Pentagon and State Department, and some of the most senior figures in former US administrations, gave some measure of the extent of American scepticism. Clearly, the product could not be marketed.

The administration’s attempts to implicate Iraq in the attacks of 11 September 2001 and in international terrorism in general failed (at least until early February), while Bush’s declarations that Iraq would be capable of producing nuclear warheads within six months, and that it already possessed drones, were sharply denied by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the CIA. Allegations that Baghdad was involved in the anthrax-contaminated letters sent to members of Congress and other officials proved equally unfounded; embarrassingly, an inquiry revealed that the strains of anthrax used had been produced in large quantities by the US.

It was the accusation that Iraq was on the verge of producing weapons of mass destruction that generated the greatest distrust, to say the least. Especially since Washington refused to provide credible evidence, not only to members of the Security Council but also to the UN weapons inspectors, while at the same time rejecting Baghdad’s invitation to dispatch CIA experts to carry out their own investigations on site. Rumsfeld even declared with a straight face that the absence of evidence does not prove that there are no weapons of mass destruction.

His credibility did not increase when press investigations based on interviews and declassified government documents (4) revealed, despite his denials, that he had been instrumental in forging Iraqi-US cooperation during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and that he had facilitated Saddam Hussein’s procurement of chemical weapons, later used to gas Iranian troops and civilians as well as Iraq’s Kurds (see US-Iraq weapons sales, opposite).

Bush’s proclaimed altruism did not meet with great success either. Few were so amnesiac as to take him at his word when he swore that among his main objectives were liberating the Iraqi people from tyranny and bringing democracy to Mesopotamia; those who recalled the dictatorships past and present supported by Washington saw only hypocrisy in such claims. Even US opinion, which generally subscribes to the nation’s messianic role (shaped over the years by presidents from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson) (5), could not help but ask questions that were reflected in the mainstream press. Why should our boys be sacrificed to do what should be the job of the Iraqi people? Why eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein and not the even more dangerous regime of Korea’s Kim Jong-il, known to possess nuclear warheads and long-range missiles? Disinformation can also be discerned in what is not said. The silence of the US leaders about their economic and geopolitical considerations is eloquent. There is nothing in the official declarations about the benefits of making Iraq a satellite, about the size of the Ba’athist republic oil reserves (second in the world, after those of Saudi Arabia), about the weight and influence of Iraq in the Gulf, or about the fabulous contracts for rebuilding the country that would be awarded to US companies by a democratic Iraqi government. There has been no word about the expansion and consolidation of US hegemony in the Middle East and beyond, or about the growth of Israel’s strategic importance in the face of a weakened Arab world even more vulnerable to the diktat of a Pax Americana. Given the absence of any mention of these in most mainstream US media, US opinion could only focus on the secondary or technical aspects of the war.

But it is not difficult to get information about the hidden face of US strategy: one only has to refer to the documents put out by the Project for a New American Century (6) of which the Bush Doctrine is the faithful reflection. Two of these studies, which are almost manifestos, dated June 1997 and September 2000 (three months before Bush took office), clearly lay out the ideological, political, military, and economic bases of US foreign policy.

Drawn up by neo-conservatives and representatives of the US military-industrial complex, these documents were signed by, among others, the main pillars of the present administration, among them the vice president, Richard Cheney; Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, secretary and assistant secretary of defence; Jeb Bush, the president’s brother; Elliot Abrams, recently appointed Middle East director of the National Security Council; and Richard Perle, chairman of the influential council of defence policy in the defence ministry.

The proclaimed objective of the signatories is to assure the global pre-eminence of the US, especially by preventing any other industrial power from playing a role on the international or regional scene (the European states are not mentioned specifically). A unilateralist policy is called for, as well as possible resort to pre-emptive wars, to defend the values and interests of the US. The United Nations is presented as a forum of leftists, anti-Zionists and anti-imperialists to which there should be recourse only if the UN supports Washington’s policy.

The Iraqi problem is considered solely from the standpoint of US strategic interests. There is no question of Baghdad’s dictatorship, human rights violations, or even terrorist activity, but only of the need to maintain indefinitely US bases in the Gulf, whether or not Saddam Hussein is in power. The authors of the document also warn that the sole global superpower could miss its historic destiny if it does not succeed in seizing the opportunities that present themselves.

This plan began to be implemented after the attacks of September 2001: they were, if we may say so, opportunities that fell from heaven.

Notes

(1) The Iranian prime minister who nationalised the oil industry and as a result, was ousted by a CIA-led coup in 1953, two and a half years after coming to power.

(2) National Review Online, 21 February 2002.

(3) Los Angeles Times, 17 December 2002.

(4) Washington Post, 30 December 2002.

(5) See Norman Birnbaum, United States: so proudly we hail Le Monde diplomatique , English language edition, October 2002.

(6) www.newamericancentury.org