Remember the toppling of that Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad (4/9/03) that signified the “end” of the Iraq War? At the time, there were critics who pointed out that the extensively televised images of a jubilant crowd of Iraqis were misleading.The sense of media excitement was unmistakable; as FAIR pointed out, the Los Angeles Times ran a headline the next day, “Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?”
The incident is rehashed and examined in the New Yorker this week by Peter Maass, who was reporting from the scene that day. He states early on that both sides of the war debate got the event wrong:
The toppling of Saddam’s statue turned out to be emblematic of primarily one thing: the fact that American troops had taken the center of Baghdad. That was significant, but everything else the toppling was said to represent during repeated replays on television—victory for America, the end of the war, joy throughout Iraq—was a disservice to the truth. Yet the skeptics were wrong in some ways, too, because the event was not planned in advance by the military.
This struck me as an example of a sort of media “false balance,” where blame must be assigned to both sides, even when one side isclearly more blameworthy. That’s unfortunate, because Maass’ report pretty clearly demonstrates that war propaganda need not be orchestrated by clever military censorship or clever public relations—corporate media are eager to misconstrue and distort events on their own.
So what did the “skeptics” get wrong? They believed an Army report that credited the statue operation—from the placement of an Iraqi flag on the statue’s head to the pulling down of the statue itself—to an Army psychological operations unit. Maass notes that this report
was picked up by the news media (“Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue,” the headline in the Los Angeles Times [7/3/04] read) and circulated widely on the Web, fueling the conspiracy notion that a psyops team masterminded not only the Iraqi flag but the entire toppling.
The report got very little attention when it was released. (I actually remember a prominent journalist asking me to help him find it.) It’s strange to call it a “conspiracy notion,” unless you believe that a government report taking credit for a particular action qualifies as a conspiracy.
What Maass reports is that a handful of military personnel, some of whom had a keen understanding of the sort of imagery that would appeal to the press corps working from Baghdad, decided largely on their own to deliver a spectacle that would attract substantial media coverage. And they were right. If anything, they were slightly quicker than the psyops unit that was on the scene that day, broadcasting messages in Arabic. Maass wrote:
But problems with the coverage at Firdos soon emerged, including the duration, which was non-stop, the tone, which was celebratory, and the uncritical obsession with the toppling.
One of the first TV reporters to broadcast from Firdos was David Chater, a correspondent for Sky News, the British satellite channel whose feed from Baghdad was carried by Fox News. (Both channels are owned by News Corp.) Before the Marines arrived, Chater had believed, as many journalists did, that his life was at risk from American shells, Iraqi thugs and looting mobs.
“That’s an amazing sight, isn’t it?” Chater said as the tanks rolled in. “A great relief, a great sight for all the journalists here…. The Americans waving to us now—fantastic, fantastic to see they’re here at last.” Moments later, outside the Palestine, Chater smiled broadly and told one Marine, “Bloody good to see you.” Noticing an American flag in another Marine’s hands, Chater cheerily said, “Get that flag going!”
Another correspondent, John Burns of the Times, had similar feelings. Representing the most prominent American publication, Burns had a particularly hard time with the security thugs who had menaced many journalists at the Palestine. His gratitude toward the Marines was explicit. “They were my liberators, too,” he later wrote. “They seemed like ministering angels to me.”
Maass writes that reporters and executives watching back at home “were ready to latch onto a symbol of what they believed would be a joyous finale to the war”:
Wilson Surratt was the senior executive producer in charge of CNN‘s control room in Atlanta that morning. The room, dominated by almost 50 screens that showed incoming feeds from CNN crews and affiliated networks, was filled with not just the usual complement of producers but also with executives who wanted to be at the nerve center of the network during one of the biggest stories of their lives. Surratt had been told by the newsroom that Marines were expected to arrive at Firdos any moment, so he kept his eyes on two monitors that showed the still empty square.
“The climax, at the time, was going to be the troops coming into Firdos Square,” Surratt told me. “We didn’t really anticipate that Hussein was going to be captured. There wasn’t going to be a surrender. So what we were looking for was some sort of culminating event.”
On that day, Baghdad was violent and chaotic. The city was already being looted by swarms of people using trucks, taxis, horses and wheelbarrows to cart away whatever they could from government buildings and banks, museums and even hospitals. There continued to be armed opposition to the American advance. One of CNN‘s embedded correspondents, Martin Savidge, was reporting from a Marine unit that was taking fire in the city. Savidge was ready to go on the air, under fire, at the exact moment that Surratt noticed the tanks entering Firdos Square. Surratt vividly recalls that moment, because he shouted out in the control room, “There they are!”
He immediately switched the network’s coverage to Firdos, and it stayed there almost non-stop until the statue came down, more than two hours later. I asked Surratt whether, by focusing on Firdos rather than on Savidge and the chaos of Baghdad, he had made the right call.
“What were we supposed to do?” Surratt replied. “Not show what was going on in the square? We did the responsible thing. We were careful to say it was not the end. At some point, you’ve got to trust the viewer to understand what they’re seeing.”
That problem of reporters being told to go find the news that was on TV, as opposed to the things they were actually seeing firsthand, was apparently common:
A visual echo chamber developed: Rather than encouraging reporters to find the news, editors urged them to report what was on TV. CNN, which did not have a reporter at the Palestine, because its team had been expelled when the invasion began, was desperate to get one of its embedded correspondents there. Walter Rodgers, whose Army unit was on the other side of the Tigris, was ordered by his editors to disembed and drive across town to the Palestine. Rodgers reminded his editors that combat continued and that his vehicle, moving on its own, would likely be hit by American or Iraqi forces. This said much about the coverage that day: Rodgers could not provide reports of the war’s end because the war had not ended.
And:
Anne Garrels, NPR‘s reporter in Baghdad at the time, has said that her editors requested, after her first dispatch about Marines rolling into Firdos, that she emphasize the celebratory angle, because the television coverage was more upbeat. In an oral history that was published by the Columbia Journalism Review, Garrels recalled telling her editors that they were getting the story wrong: “There are so few people trying to pull down the statue that they can’t do it themselves…. Many people were just sort of standing, hoping for the best, but they weren’t joyous.”
[Newsweek photographer] Gary Knight…had a similar problem as he talked with one of his editors on his satellite phone. The editor, watching the event on TV, asked why Knight wasn’t taking pictures. Knight replied that few Iraqis were involved and the ones who were seemed to be doing so for the benefit of the legions of photographers; it was a show. The editor told him to get off the phone and start taking pictures.
And Maass reports the same happened to at least one newspaper reporter:
Robert Collier, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, filed a dispatch that noted a small number of Iraqis at Firdos, many of whom were not enthusiastic. When he woke up the next day, he found that his editors had recast the story. The published version said that “a jubilant crowd roared its approval” as onlookers shouted, ‘We are free! Thank you, President Bush!” According to Collier, the original version was considerably more tempered. “That was the one case in my time in Iraq when I can clearly say there was editorial interference in my work,” he said recently. “They threw in a lot of triumphalism. I was told by my editor that I had screwed up and had not seen the importance of the historical event. They took out quite a few of my qualifiers.”
Given all the evidence he collects, it’s odd for Maass to spend any time at all on how “skeptics” believed in a conspiracy that the statue toppling was a manufactured event. It most clearly was; as he documents, it was manufactured primarily by major U.S. media outlets. In a way, that’s far worse than blaming it on official military propaganda efforts.
Peter, they’re just adhering to the time-honored corpress axiom:
If you don’t like the real news, make up some of your own.
At the end of WW2 many” victory” expressions took place indicating “victory”on the battlefield meant an end to hostilities..Remember the cheering crowds throughout Europe?Actually death- destruction, and fighting carried on for up to 11 years with astounding death tolls almost never reported on.It is always so
From the official Army history of the occupation of Germany: “The army-type occupation was comprehensive and showed the Germans that they were defeated and their country occupied. This type of occupation was presumably capable of squelching incipient resistance since none was evident.”
http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/Occ-GY/ch18.htm
Jim read about the werewolves.A para military guerilla faction made up of ex ss members.They specialized in killing mayors and the such.People of influence who went along with the occupying powers. Their rein of terror went on for many years.11 thousand dead in japan….15 in Germany,following occupation.Those are pretty high numbers never spoken about.The “official”army history is being rewritten as we speak,and the truth will soon be a part of the understanding of just how hard the occupation was.
Also …Almost nothing is known of the massive fights between US airborn troops and red army divisions in Berlin that went on for a long time after the end of hostilities.
Read how many losses our military forces suffered under 8 years of peacetime Clinton.Then measure it against 8 years of war under Bush.Startling. Another thing you wont read about often in the military records
I am aware of the werewolf mythology touted by Rumsfeld and Rice in the wake of the Iraq invasion fiasco. Here’s a solid debunking:
http://www.slate.com/id/2087768/
Here’s the key paragraph:
According to America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, a new study by former Ambassador James Dobbins, who had a lead role in the Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo reconstruction efforts, and a team of RAND Corporation researchers, the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germanyâ┚¬”Âand Japan, Haiti, and the two Balkan casesâ┚¬”Âwas zero.
Zero?My own father(divebomber pilot)lost three of his best friends AFTER the wars end in Japan.My Uncle (101st)talks of the nightly fights with Russian troops in Berlin in underground tunnels with high losses(his best friend who made it through the war)That aside from disgruntled sniping Germans,and small engagements.Guess the Rand forgot to interview them.We had 3 million men in Europe -half in Germany at wars end.That many people could not stand in line without somebody dropping dead.Zero huh???Even Patton died in a jeep accident post war.If you mean was insurgency as involved as in Iraq- of course not.Iraq was a war of weeks.Germany years.Germany was pounded into rubble.It’speople demolished.We did better at avoiding that level of force though it cost us dearly.
The werwolf mythology you point to is the Himmler conspiracy worry the allies had of a continuing Nazi redoubt government.It was a dream.What i pointed to was the insurgency that carried on after the war by Nazis.De hards.And those who still were nationalistic.Pro nazi groups are STILL inflicting casualties in Germany to this very day.AIt is a violent bunch.hate dies hard.And Remember the term combat casualties at that time meant organized conflict.Gurilla warfare did not gain its full respect until Vietnam.
“Read how many losses our military forces suffered under 8 years of peacetime Clinton.Then measure it against 8 years of war under Bush.Startling. Another thing you wont read about often in the military records”
UH….The numbers of military deaths over the Clinton and Bush years isn’t some sort of secret, it took five seconds at the Google to find them.
This random example from 2006, citing official Pentagon numbers.
A closer examination of the official Pentagon statistics tell quite a different story. The problem is that they are only comparing total military deaths, which means anyone in the military, active or reserve, who died that year from any cause. Even by that comparison, of course, there have been more under Bush.
Total military deaths 1993-2000: 7500 or 938/year
Total military deaths 2001-2006: 8792 or 1465/year
But if you look at deaths from combat, you get a much different picture:
Total combat deaths 1993-2000: 1
Total combat deaths 2001-2006: 2596.
link to Pentagon PDF at this link
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/07/false_comparison_of_military_d.php
Say, Jim and Helen, how’s talkin’ to that wall goin’? Seriously, thanks for the information you took the trouble to look up, or simply recall. Thanks also for that nice work-up in FAIR about the whole Hussien statue propaganda story; I didn’t know about Burns’ sheer, monstrous toady-ism, and now I do. That’s good and bad, all at once.
Just confirms the axiom that when war happens “truth is the first casualty and God the first draftee”
Helen thanks for looking that up.Can you imagine that many men die in a peacetime army?A thousand and change less than a wartime configuration?When you figure cost of a peacetime army in bivouac it also is startling.Compare that cost to war time cost and that huge figure usually sighted is cut way way down.You say it is no secret but I saw every face of every casualty during the war.Every night Nancy Grace and others put up the 8700 names and faces.Never saw any of the 7500 during Clintons tenure.Was it because they died in other ways?Training?What about the 15,000 that died in Germany post war and i suppose still do?Military is dangerous.Dead is dead.How you are killed is irrelevant.Clinton is to blame for those 7500 deaths?But facts don’t mean a thing in the blame Bush game.I don’t hold it against the left.It is all they have “left”.
The way things are reported is often as interesting as the things that are not reported but that with an ounce of thought could be brought to mind. Like heads being blown off innocent children, women being gutted with shrapnel, old men left as bloody corpses. Meanwhile all the western worlds idiots with cameras and a mouthpiece are in the F**king square toppleling another idiots statue of himself. Sociopaths abound everywhere.
mikey e, you family almost definitely hid in a cave somewhere in the US during the second world war (did they ever leave in the first place?) Never mind all that claptrap you posted about werewolves and vampires.
I must say, even by your low low standards, your posts on this topic are complete drivel.
If I were a member of an alien race that had eons ago given up violence;and i was looking down on this planet….It would not take me more than a nano second to hit the warp drive and get the hell out out of here.
Here’s the link to the pentagon pdf
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/Death_Rates.pdf
You’ll see that almost all military deaths during the Clinton years were accident, homicide, suicide, or illness.
There was 1 combat death and 58 listed as result of terrorist attack.
I suspect Nancy Grace and others listed those who died in Iraq after the invasion, not all 8700.
R bobert
Grandpop was a col inWW1 in france.Recieved the medal of the argon.Dad was a divebomber pilot from midway on.Uncles served in 101st.B24 pilot.Marine 4th in pacific and lastly one spent years in prison after Batan march.Hey but thanks for asking.Vampires?????????
Helen .My point was exactly that.We loose an amazing amount of men under arms irregardless of WHERE our president sends them.
Yes, but we lost thousands and had 10,000+ wounded because Bush ordered an invasion to wage a war of choice against a country that had not attacked us. $1 trillion spent, at least another $1 trillion in treating the wounded….and that’s not even counting the ongoing PTSD, rapes, divorces, homicides and suicides related to the war.
Trying to wave that off by saying troops die under all presidents is utter dishonesty.
@ TimN
Actually when I post comments here I’m not talking to “the wall,” I’m talking to the rest of my fellow FAIR readers.
Helen i was against the invasion of iraq if that means anything to you.That said i am not willing to be ridiculous and brand Bush or Obama for that matter a war criminal.And yes i do notice that none of the FAIR bloggers in speaking about the war ever mentions Saddam Hussein.It is as if one day Bush woke up ,spun the bottle and picked iraq.And Obama much to his chagrin keeps landing on the same spaces bush did.
And sorry if i appear “a wall”But when these blogs consistently spew nonsense…at some point it has to hit a wall and be stopped right?
“It is as if one day Bush woke up ,spun the bottle and picked iraq.”
That’s exactly what happened….. except for the spinning the bottle part.
Ok we simply disagree.
Thanks, Helen B. It’s nice seeing you refute things by certain people–entertaining, informative, and with some comedy thrown via the desperate, hapless, witless responses of Guess Who. Oh, and Guess Who? No need to apologize for appearing to be a wall. No need at all. We understand.
I gotta laugh ..you remind me of that dumb ass bully in the schoolyard who tells everybody how great they are to get them on your side against some perceived threat.Helen might even agree with you.But anybody who feels, and reads your hatred wont trust you on their side.If you were on my side..every time you agreed with me i would loose faith in the courage of my convictions.Your not listening to Obama Tim.He wants an end to this personal vitriol.Well ever since the last shellacking he received at election time anyway.You must of missed the memo.Wait a minute…you didnt get the memo……..You said you were a socialist right?And we know Obama does not know, or even speak to socialists!
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