U.S. Dunkirk In Iraq; The Tipping Point

By K Gajendra Singh

06/20/06 "Information Clearing House" In an excellent recent piece 'Nightmare Scenario' in the respected US magazine 'The Nation ', Nicholas von Hoffman ,speculates that the badly outnumbered American expeditionary force in Iraq , now in danger of being trapped in spite of all its firepower, could possibly face some kind of a military defeat.

Already the number of US soldiers dead has crossed 2500 and counting ; two per day , with tens of thousands maimed and injured. Following the power vacuum and consequent chaos in the wake of illegal US invasion in March 2003, a fierce Iraqi resistance against the occupation and now a US ignited civil war has almost immobilized the US troops to their bases .The diplomats and the ruling Iraqi elite composed of exiles , Iran supported and trained Shias and others , remain under siege in the Green Zone fortress in Baghdad. Some liberation, freedom and democracy!

Sooner or later , the US must evolve an exit strategy "to extract our (US) people with a minimum of loss." wrote Hoffman. "We could be moving toward an American Dunkirk ", he added ,like the defeated British Army in 1940 stationed in Belgium , sent fleeing by the Germans to the French coastal city of Dunkirk, where abandoning its equipment it escaped across the English Channel on what ever floating vessels it could get hold off .

The Nazi war machine was grounded , blunted and destroyed by the stubborn Soviet resistance and great sacrifice, with the Americans , through 'war history writing and films' try to corner almost all the credit for the allied victory , with Britain 'pillion riding to glory' .  But just watch the caricature of Britain's greatest commander Field Marshal Montgomery in the US film on Gen Patton.

If US had dared adopt the plan requiring sacrifice in men and material to attack the Nazis via Greece ,  East Europe could have been saved from Communism . But then even against a depleted Nazi onslaught in west Europe at the end , US troops reported a very high desertion rate.

The 'Nightmare Scenario' of the 1991 Gulf War for the coalition assembled by George Bush Senior after UN approval was ; if a few germ-loaded Iraqi Scuds killed a few hundred Israelis, even the presence of senior US officials stationed in Israel to restrain Tel Avia would not have stopped the Israelis from marching to Iraq . In the event of that happening, the coalition, almost a mini-UN force, with Pakistani, Egyptian and even Syrian and other Muslim troops in it for the money and other considerations, would have unraveled. That 'Nightmare Scenario' did not come about.

The current 'coalition of the willing' in Iraq bribed or coerced into joining the invasion, is slowly melting away , leaving the 'opened Iraqi grenade ' in US - UK hands. Who will come to US help? UN ;diminished and declared irrelevant by US and regularly abused by US Ambassador John Bolton;  Europeans , insulted and humiliated ,to now become the cannon fodder and suffer backlash as Australia , Spain and UK have. A new book 'Londonistan' by Melanie Phillips paints a frightening picture of what UK might face. It is a sobering warning to all.

The US Neo-cons , responsible for the current US ills having exposed their ignorance of history , incompetence in post war planning , and arrogance based on an evil and racist Straussian ideology have come a cropper .The Republicans are trying to whistle through the dark days to next November elections , in trepiditation. But does it matter , in an almost bi-partisan consensus on gobblisation of others' wealth by US led West.

The cold blooded massacre in Haditha of Iraqi civilians including women and children by US marines , earlier 'Guernica' like destruction of  Fallujah and a possible repeat in Ramadi and elsewhere , have only exposed the tip of US crimes .Why blame the troops when the whole western discourse , specially from USA has racist overtones.

There is little fight left on the ground except to drop more lethal bombs and kill more civilians . Ignoring and defying International conventions and human rights ( and civil rights at home ) Washington has experimented with prohibited lethal arms like depleted Uranium , phosphorous and other devices . As it has always done , earlier in Serbia and Afghanistan.

"The wife of a staff sergeant in the 3/1 battalion--members of which are currently accused of murdering Iraqi citizens in Haditha--says that there was 'a total breakdown' in discipline and morale after Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani took over as battalion commander when the unit returned from Fallujah at the start of 2005.... 'There were problems in Kilo Company with drugs, alcohol, hazing, you name it,' she tells Newsweek...'I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha." [With few children of the US ruling elite fighting in Iraq there is no personal pain to feel either.]

After an insulting code named 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' to gobble Iraqi oil by force, Washington is directly responsible for all deaths, murders and atrocities under its watch , which the US corporate controlled media hides from American TV viewers and ordinary newspaper readers. Still thanks to many intrepid US journalists and websites , some turning even among the corporate worms masquerading as journalists , Americans are leaning some of the truth .Dead body caskets reaching home and presence of tens of thousands US maimed and injured in the war , brings home the truth of escalating brutal ground reality inIraq.

Hoffman added that in the British occupied Basra region, they have all but given up aggressive patrol and are holed up in their encampments." It is now too dangerous for them to fly helicopters by day. At the point when they must choose between being overrun or withdrawing, the small contingent of British troops facing unknown numbers of militia hidden in and among a hostile population should be able to evacuate the port of Basra even under fire.'

But the situation for US troops is really precarious. Any attempt to carry out aggressive patrolling only increases local hostility, making it easier for the resistance to operate. " It appears that in many places our people may have simply hunkered down to stay out of trouble. The vast construction projects of a few years ago are all but closed down, too, as the American forces appear to be doing less and less of anything but holding on and holding out. "

What can US do ? "Blow what's left of the country to smithereens ' with unspeakable political effects around the world and backlash .But the ground troops have to be still extracted from their plight."

The discourse from so called western politicians , experts and strategicians who claim that a force of half million could have done the job in Iraq , presumes that the colonization and exploitation of resources of others is a western divine right .[ The British failed to subdue Iraq in 1920s and 30s using similar means ; bombings and killings, using poison gas. ]

And in any case the chances of reactivating the draft for half-million pair of boots on the ground for Iraq are nil." If our political leaders have to choose between a new conscription and risking a defeat, there is no question about what they will do." Hoffman concluded "Should discipline continue to break down at the platoon and company level, pulling the scattered American forces together and getting them out may be a harrowing experience. --Air evacuation would mean abandoning billions of dollars of equipment. There is no seaport troops could get to, so the only way out of Iraq would be that same desert highway to Kuwait where fifteen years ago the American Air Force destroyed Saddam Hussein's army."

"Dunkirk in the desert"!

The British were able to escape and return pillion riding with US in the 2^nd World War, because the Nazis were more focused for lebensraum in the east to destroy their ideological enemy, the Bolsheviks .But what would US do, fly out  helicopters from the Green Zone .A much bigger humiliation than of the US ambassador with the flag, and others scrambling on to the last helicopter from the Embassy Residence helipad.

Influential Congressman John Murtha , a decorated Vietnam War veteran , after being reportedly briefed by senior commanders has repeatedly said that the US Army was " broken , worn out" and "living hand to mouth." In a statement last November he said ,"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised.  It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion.  The American public is way ahead of us.   The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction.  Our military is suffering.  The future of our country is at risk.  We can not continue on the present course.   It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region." 

"Our military has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years.  Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty.  I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won "militarily."  I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize.  I believe the same today.  But I have concluded that the presence of US troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.  --Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. "

If not inevitable, the US denouement was not totally unexpected .Many independent strategic thinkers and analysts had so forecast. In dozens of articles written since August 2002 , the author with decades spent in the region including a ringside view from Amman ( 1989-92) of the 1991 Iraq war had so concluded too. Written for Atimes, com, Saag.com, Al Jazeerah.Info, MWCnet.com ,   Informationclearinghouse.info , the articles were widely copied all over the world .

A preview assessment based on articles written before the March, 2003 invasion was covered in "Before the March 2003 US-Led Invasion of Iraq" dated 31 March, 2006  in Al Jazeerah.Info, MWCnet.com , Informationsclearinghouse .info and other websites.

This is a sequel based on post 2003 invasion articles up to the June 2004 handing over to Iraqi quislings of the ' sovereignty' in a furtive and secretive manner inside the Green Zone fortress. The articles selected cover how Iraq fought and got rid of British colonial rule after the first world war, similar to the current Iraqi resistance against US led occupation ,which compares with the struggle by Turks under Ataturk in Anatolia under Allied occupation after the first world war and of the Algerians after the second world war against the French settlers and Paris .The nefarious and irresponsible role of US corporate propaganda machine and pro-Government BBC in support of the illegal war , underlining the decline and fall of this noble profession in the West has also been highlighted. Extracts are given below.

Iraq's history already written            Atimes.com                              15 July, 2003

US chief administrator L Paul Bremer unveiled Iraq's 25-member governing council in Baghdad on Sunday. It now looks like the beginnings of the rule by the British Governor Sir Percy Cox in the 1920s, after the British had carved out three provinces of the Ottoman empire after its collapse in World War I. After a long national resistance, King Feisel II - of a British-appointed dynasty - and his prime minister, Nuri-as Said, were overthrown and killed in a 1958 military takeover.

Before the war (2003), the US and Britain made tall promises of almost instant democracy, but Bremer, who arrived in May, rejected an earlier proposal to hold a national conference to name an interim government, saying that the country was not yet ready. He instead proposed an advisory body, -- The deteriorating security situation and an increasingly restive and sullen Iraqi population, --
---- the situation getting out of hand - with a reported 10 attacks a day taking place against occupying troops.

After taking over Iraq (1918 ),the British debated whether to rule it directly--. But from Syria nationalist activities and agitation spread first to northern Iraq and then to the tribal areas of the middle Euphrates. By the summer of 1920, the revolt had extended everywhere except the big cities ofMosul, Baghdad and Basra, where British forces were stationed. The revolt was suppressed by force.

A provisional Arab government declared Feisel king of Iraq on July 11, 1921, provided that his "government shall be constitutional, representative and democratic". --The next step was the signing of a treaty of alliance with Great Britain and the drafting of a constitution. The treaty signed on October 10, 1922 and valid for 20 years, reproduced most of the provisions of the mandate. -- it was soon apparent that complete independence had not been granted. There was strong opposition to the treaty in the press and among the people.

The control exercised by the British treaties was seen by the Iraqi people and their leaders as an impediment to their aspirations and inimical to the economic development of Iraq. The impossibility of government by the dual authority of the mandate was called a "perplexing predicament" (al-wad' ash-shadh).

Shi'ite resistance
After the breakup of the Ottoman empire, in which power had rested with Sunni Arabs, Shi'ites in south Iraq welcomed the British for having liberated them from the yoke of Sunni Ottoman oppression. But it was clear that the British had not come to leave in a hurry. So, led by two sheikhs, Mohammed Taqi Shirazi and Abul Hasan Isfahani, the Shi'ites began their opposition. Fatwas were issued against the appointment of the non-Muslim Sir Percy Cox as the governor of Iraq. The whole Shi'ite south erupted in a revolt when in 1920 it appeared that the British mandate granted by the League of Nations would mean their continued rule. It was subdued with great difficulty and Shi'ites remained implacably opposed to the British, even after they put King Feisel on the throne with a timetable for independence.

Iraq's political system remained unstable, with more than 50 cabinets and 10 general elections before the abolition of the monarchy in 1958. It was a tumultuous time, with politicians using even armed forces as pressure against each other until finally the latter took over in 1958 and abolished the monarchy.

Turkey marches boldly into Iraq      Atimes                           9 October, 2003

As expected, the Turkish parliament voted 358 votes to 183 Tuesday to authorize the dispatch of troops into Iraq. The ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), with Islamic antecedents, passed the motion at the request of its NATO ally the United States. [Opposed by the Iraqis , specially Kurds of north Iraq ,Turkish troops never went into Iraq)

South Asia Analysis Group                Paper 840                   17 November , 2003

IRAQI RESISTANCE WARNS TURKS TO KEEP OFF IRAQ 

Suicide car bombers who struck twice almost simultaneously on 15 November, destroying parts of two synagogues, Beth Israel and Neve Shalom in Turkey's commercial capital Istanbul, introduced Al Qaida style of violence to the European part of Turkey.  It is a strong message to the Turks to keep off Iraq.  It was also to punish Jews, who were celebrating bar mitzvahs with 6 dead and the injured being more than 300 . 

Occupation case studies: Algeria and Turkey 7 January, 2004

"We studied history at school that taught us to say freedom or death. I think you know well that we as a people have our experience with the colonialists." - US ambassador April Glaspie to Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on July 25, 1990.

While formulating foreign policy options, political leaders also look to history for guidance. Unfortunately, the United State's history is only two centuries old, and to meet the challenge of terrorism, Frankenstein monsters partly of its own creation, the mujahideen, jihadis, the Taliban and al-Qaeda , the US can only recall a long genocidal war against its native Americans.

Those who resisted were called "terrorists" for defending their native land and way of life against foreign invaders. There are Hollywood films galore that depict the "American Indians" as savages to be hunted down by the US cavalry.

The same cavalry units now force Iraqis daily to lie face down in the land of their ancestors and describe those fighting to free their country from the occupying forces as "terrorists". The Iraqis, other Arabs and Iranians are the new "American Indians", and those who collaborate with the Bush administration are like the good Indians who helped the Americans fight and defeat bad Indians.

So the display of a seemingly drugged and unwashed Saddam Hussein was to assert white Christian supremacy over the natives. US policy in Iraq and the region is pure and simple, blatant neo-colonization.

After Vietnam and Afghanistan, the Middle East is the new American West. The US administration, scared of Islamic fundamentalism and religious fanatics, has yet to evolve a coherent policy to counter it. But it is turning occupied Iraq into an oligarchy of crony capitalism—

The idea of nationalism - developed by the West - socialism, rule of law, fraternity and equality, have been abolished in the discourse since September 11. But the sturdy plant of nationalism in Iraq cannot be eliminated by US going into denial mode. According to Iraqi opposition and other sources, there are perhaps more than 50 different resistance organizations, including Ba'athists, communists, nationalists, cashiered soldiers discarded by the occupation, and Sunni and Shi'ite religious groups, as well as foreign elements. In reality, almost everyone is opposed to foreign occupation.

In an era of nation states based on patriotism and shared history, people just hate occupying powers. While Vietnam's example and its people's fight for freedom and making it a quagmire for US forces has been talked about, Iraq's comparison with post second World War Germany and Japan shows little historic understanding. The ground situation and the evolution of the war for independence in Muslim, Arab, and till now secularIraq, is closer to the wars of independence in Algeria and Turkey.

In a November 2003 report by MEDACT, the London-based affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility, it was estimated that the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion in March was between 20,000 and 55,000, including at least 8,000 civilians, with upwards of 20,000 civilian casualties.

The Algerian war of independence lasted from 1954 to 1962, in which almost every family lost a member, a son, a cousin, a nephew, willingly or unwillingly sacrificed at the alter of freedom, self respect and dignity. After its defeat in World War 1, when the Ottoman empire lay supine under the heels of Allied power in its capital Istanbul with the Sultan Caliph a captive, the national leadership, led by Mustapha Kemal and his comrades, mostly former Ottoman soldiers, aroused the masses of Anatolia to make yet another supreme effort to expel the Greeks and other occupying powers.

Algerian case study
When I arrived in Algeria in 1964 from Egypt as a young diplomat, one saw very few young men between the ages of 14 and 40 years in the streets of Algiers, its capital . One million Algerians out of a population of 11 million had been killed in the war for independence against France.

Like Operation Iraqi Freedom and other US claims to usher democracy into Iraq and the Middle East now, during World War 2, Allied and Axis powers in their Arabic radio broadcasts promised freedom and a new world for the natives.

After a long and bloody war for independence against the French settlers   -- The second Evian conference took place in March 1962. On March 18, a ceasefire agreement was signed. --
This announcement produced a violent outburst of OAS terrorism, but in May it subsided as it became obvious that such actions were futile. A referendum held in Algeria in July 1962 recorded some 6 million votes in favor of independence and only 16,000 against it. After three days of continuous Algerian rejoicing, the GPRA entered Algiers in triumph, as settler Europeans began to depart.

On July 3, 1962 Algeria became an independent sovereign state.

Civil wars and Turkey's war of Independence
After the Allied powers' victory in World War 1, the Ottoman government in Istanbul under the 36th and last Ottoman Sultan Caliph Mehmed VI Vahideddin (1918-22) decided that resistance to Allied demands was futile, but there remained many pockets of resistance in Anatolia. These consisted of bands of irregulars and deserters, a number of intact Ottoman units and various societies for the "defense of rights".

At this time, Mustafa Kemal (he became Ataturk "Father of Turks" later ), a hero of the Gallipoli front in the war was sent as Inspector of the army to eastern Turkey. Landing at Samsun on May 19, 1919, he immediately began to organize resistance and was soon joined by other military leaders like Ali Fuat Cebesoy, Kasim Karabekir, Ruaf Orbay, Refet Bele and others with their troops. The Association for the Defense of the Rights of Eastern Anatolia was founded and a Congress at Erzurum (July-August) summoned. It was followed by a second Congress at Sivas with delegates representing the whole country.  

But the fire of resistance really flared up when the hated Greeks, with British encouragement, occupied Izmir (May 15, 1919). The Allied plans imposed in the Treaty of Sevres, which the Ottoman representative signed, would have created an independent Armenia, an autonomous Kurdish region, demilitarization and international control over the Straits and Istanbul, with the rest of the country parceled to the Greeks, the French and the Italians. Only a barren northeast rump of Anatolia would have remained with the Turks.

During 1920-1921, the Greeks had made major advances, almost to Ankara, but were defeated at the Battle of the Sakarya River (August 24, 1921) and began a long and hasty retreat that ended in the Turks regaining Izmir (September 9, 1922) and the expulsion of Greek forces from Anatolia. The total dead in the war was; for Turks, 10,000 dead in fighting and 22,000 from disease. Greek dead and wounded were estimated at 100,000. --. In the first World War 580,000 Ottoman soldiers died, half from disease.

The Kemalists had already begun to gain European recognition. On March 16, 1921, the Soviet-Turkish Treaty gave Turkey a favorable settlement of its eastern frontier by restoring Kars and Ardahan. Problems at home induced Italy to withdraw from the territory it occupied; and by the Treaty of Ankara (Franklin-Bouillon Agreement, October 20, 1921), France agreed to evacuate Cilicia (Adana region). Finally, by the Armistice of Mudanya, the Allies agreed to Turkish reoccupation of Istanbul and eastern Thrace.

A comprehensive settlement was eventually achieved at the Lausanne Conference (November 1922 - July 1923) which negated the Treaty of Sevres. -- A compulsory exchange of populations was arranged, as a result of which an estimated 1,300,000 Greeks left Turkey in return for 400,000 Turks. The question of oil rich Mosul (& Kirkuk) was left to the League of Nations, which in 1925 recommended its retention by Iraq ( under the British control). But Turks have never been reconciled to the loss. The Lausanne Treaty also provided for -- the gradual abolition of the Capitulations (Turkey regained tariff autonomy in 1929), and for an international regime for the Straits.Turkey recovered complete control of the Straits by the 1936 Montreux Convention.

On October 29, 1923, Turkey was declared to be a republic and elected Mustafa Kemal as its first president. The Caliphate was finally abolished on March 3, 1924, and all members of the Ottoman dynasty were expelled from Turkey. A full republican constitution was adopted on April 20, 1924; it retained Islam as the state religion, but in April 1928 this clause was removed and Turkey became a laic (secular) republic.

South Asia Analysis Group                 Paper 848                      12 March, 2004

IRAQ WARS-WESTERN MEDIA, PROPAGANDA ARMS OF GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATE INTERESTS

                                 "Demand a broader view"- BBC      

BBC's Director General Greg Dyke, who resigned after Lord Hutton's "white wash" of the British government's role in the spat over correspondent Andrew Gilligan (in a Channel 4 News poll last week 90% thought Hutton was unfair) , said that Prime Minister Tony Blair's top spin doctor Alastair Campbell had written letter after letter throughout the conflict. "What Alastair Campbell was clearly trying to do was intimidate the BBC so that we reported what he wanted us to report as opposed to what we wanted to report," he said. Dyke had attacked American television reporting of Iraq war  "For any news organisation to act as a cheerleader for government is to undermine your credibility," he said. "They should be... balancing their coverage, not banging the drum for one side or the other." He added that research showed that of 840 experts interviewed on American news programmes during the invasion ofIraq, only four opposed the war. "If that were true in Britain, the BBC would have failed in its duty."

How ever, BBC itself gave in its over all coverage a mere 2% time to opposition's anti-war voices, which was really the majority view of the British people. It was the worst of the leading broadcasters, including US networks, according to Media Tenor; a Bonn-based non-partisan media research organization. So much for the most hyped pristine western media outlet. ABC of USA with 7% was the second-worst case of denying access to anti-war voices.  

In a 4 July, 2003 comment in " the Guardian" titled "Biased Broadcasting Corporation", Justin Lewis, Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University confirmed the above result while refuting the anecdotal view that BBC was anti-war in its coverage.  " Just the opposite was the truth". A careful analysis by the university of all the main evening news bulletins during the war, concluded that of the four main UK broadcasters - the BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Sky, BBC's coverage was the worst in granting anti-war viewpoint.

Changes in Media and Communication Systems.

Starting his diplomatic career as Press Attache way back in early 1960s in Cairo, the writer saw the transformation of print media offices from comfortable lived in pigsties with coffee cups, overflowing ashtrays and scissors and paste cuttings strewn all around to the present day surgical operation theatre cleanliness of media offices, but generally as a part of a business conglomerate. Regretfully the media is increasingly manipulated and used by corporate interests in the West for propaganda against "those who are not with us ". From its responsibilities as the fourth estate, media has become a handmaiden of governments and promotion of corporate interests.

The commercialization of the global system is a very recent development. Until the 1980s, media systems were generally national, although much maligned by the West. While books, films, music and TV shows were imported, the basic broadcasting systems and newspaper industries were domestically owned and regulated. From 1980s, pressure from west dominated institutions ;IMF, World Bank and U.S. government itself to deregulate and privatize media and communication systems coincided with new satellite and digital technologies, resulting in the rise of transnational media giants in the West.  

The global media system and its control is expanding very fast with two largest media firms in the world, Time Warner and Disney, which generated around 15 percent of their income outside United States in 1990 reaching 30% by 1997 and hoping to do a majority of their business abroad in the next decade. The two have almost tripled in size in a decade. The major global players are Time Warner (1997 sales: $ 24billion), Disney ($ 22billion), Bertelsmann ($ 15billion), Viacom ($ 13 billion), and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation ($ 11 billion). Many global media firms are also part of much larger industrial corporate powerhouses: General Electric (1997 sales: $ 80 billion), owner of NBC; Sony (1997 sales: $ 48 billion), and Seagram (1997 sales: $14billion), Of the firms that control world's film production, TV show production, cable channel ownership, cable and satellite system ownership, book publishing, magazine publishing and music production, half come from USA, others from Europe and handful from east Asia and Latin America.

In 1983, the principal media outlets in America was owned by fifty corporations. In 2002, this had fallen to just nine companies. Today, Murdoch's Fox Television and four other conglomerates are on the verge of controlling 90 per cent of the terrestrial and cable audience.[ has happened] Even on the Internet, the leading twenty websites are now owned by Fox, Disney, AOL, Time Warner, Viacom and other giants. Just fourteen companies attract 60 per cent of all the time Americans spend online. And these companies control, or influence most of the world's visual media, the principal source of information for most people. The profits for a media giant income from media industries, film production, book publishing, music, TV channels and networks, retail stores, amusement parks is much more than magazines, newspapers and the like. Firms that do not have conglomerated media holdings simply cannot compete in this market.

United States constitutionally has the freest press in the world. But by any standard of democracy, such a concentration of media power is troubling, if not unacceptable. [And has undermined democracy in USA]

In totalitarian societies, people take for granted that their governments lie to them, so people adjust accordingly. They learn to read between the lines. They rely on a flourishing underground "telegraph". In a poll held a few months ago. 70% Americans believed that Iraqis were connected with 11 September attacks in USA when no one was involved. Such a perception was possible only with distorted and half truths by top US leadership being dutifully disseminated by US media. "Of course it is self discipline ", journalists and others protest: "No one has ever told me what to say."

George Orwell wrote: "Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks the whip. But the really well-trained dog is the one that turns somersaults when there is no whip."   

At the peak of the cold war some Soviet journalists were taken around USA to watch TV programs, look at newspapers and listen to debates in the Congress. They were surprised that all were saying the same thing. "How do you do it?" the startled Russians asked their US hosts. "In our country, to achieve this, we throw people in prison; we tear out their fingernails. Here, there's none of that? What's your secret?" 

Public relations is the twin of advertising. In the last twenty years, the whole concept of PR has changed dramatically which has now become an enormous propaganda industry. In the United Kingdom, it is estimated that pre-packaged PR now accounts for half of the content of some major newspapers. The idea of "embedding" journalists with the US military during the invasion of Iraq came from public relations experts in the Pentagon, whose current strategic-planning literature describes journalism as part of psychological operations, or "psyops".  

Journalism as psyops.  

The aim, says the Pentagon, is to achieve "information dominance" - which, in turn, is part of "full spectrum dominance" - the stated policy of the United States to control land, sea, space and information. They make no secret of it.

 Mind Control –a Tool of Imperialism

Throughout 20th century imperialism, the colonialists from Britain, Belgium and France gassed, bombed and massacred indigenous populations from Sudan to Iraq, Nigeria to Palestine, India to Malaysia, Algeria to the Congo. And yet imperialism only got its bad name when Hitler decided to be an imperialist. Of course behind the ideology of imperialism were euphemisms like white man's burden, civilizing mission, saving of souls. Now liberty , democracy , reforms and globalization.

In their book, "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq ", Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, from the Centre for Media and Democracy, a watchdog organization that monitors the public relations industry, expose the process of deliberately and aggressively using propaganda, distortion, misinformation and outright lies, as a substitute for honest policy formulation and presentation, in relation to the American case for war on Iraq, It exposes the interconnections between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and a number of America's largest public relations and advertising firms. One such firm was Benador Associates, "a high-powered media relations company that acted as a sort of booking agent" forMiddle East "experts" affiliated with neoconservative think tanks. 

Benador's success in filling the media with the views of their clients "was all the more striking in comparison with the slight attention that media and policymakers paid to the 1,400 full-time faculty members who specialise in Middle East studies at American universities". Thus "weapons of mass deception" consisted of the continuous manufacture of post-September 11 fear by terror alerts, raids and deportations, the flooding of an uncritical media with endlessly repeated government statements and supporting commentary, the use of emotive language (such as "regime change", "liberation" and "coalition of the willing") that concealed reality, and the displacement of independent assessment by self-chosen 'experts' from lavishly funded support groups and think tanks.

Dropping the sovereignty baton     Atims.com             2 June, 2004

 

"It was by force that the sons of Osman seized the sovereignty and Sultanate of the Turkish nation; they have maintained this usurpation for six centuries. Now, the Turkish nation has rebelled and has put a stop to these usurpers and has effectively taken sovereignty and Sultanate in its own hands."

Thus admonished Kemal Ataturk in the Grand National Assembly in Ankara in 1923, when some members, including Islamic clerics and scholars, opposed his proposal to abolish the Sultanate. Many, including some of his comrades, had wanted the Sultanate to continue. A vote by applause after his intervention abolished the six-century-old institution, leaving Ataturk to embark on his program of Westernizing and modernizing the new nation forged out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

The nucleus of those who will take back Iraq's sovereignty by force and with blood has come into being at Fallujah and Najaf. These are the first recognizable but critical developments in the Iraqi resistance for freedom and the war for independence.

At the same time, many Shi'ites in Najaf, Karbala and southern Iraq, led by the rising young firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr, made the point that Iraqi people, whether Sunni or Shi'ite Arabs, were all determined to see US-led forces out of Iraq. Questions remain only about the Kurds in the north, under US and United Kingdom protection since 1991.

The sovereignty timetable remains driven by the US electoral calendar and growing Iraqi impatience with a deeply unpopular occupation. Thus the June 30 date was fixed last November, so that the US electorate could be told that the mission in Iraq - whatever it was - had been accomplished.

Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, "The war itself has led to, rightly or wrongly, the feeling among many in the military that they're not receiving competent direction, that it is too ideological, and that a lot of their military efforts have been wasted by what they regard as poor, inept planning for the stability phase."

Military historian Richard Kohn said a natural tension always exists between political appointees to head the Defense Department and professional military officers, but Rumsfeld's relationship with the military brass has been as tense as that of any defense secretary , except Robert McNamara, the Vietnam War-era Pentagon chief.

Runaway Pentagon
It is now accepted that strategically the invasion was poorly planned and executed. The former commander of the central command and later special envoy to the Middle East, marine General Anthony Zinni, described in 2002 some plans to invade Iraq hare-brained and likely to end as a "Bay of Goats" disaster, like John Kennedy's 1961 "Bay of Pigs" misadventure in Cuba.

In his new book Battle Ready he writes that in the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, he saw "at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption". "Even before the conflict, not just generals, but others - diplomats, those in the international community that understood the situation, friends of ours in the region - felt strongly we were underestimating the problems and the scope of the problems we would have in there." Recently, both Rumsfeld and his deputy acknowledged that they hadn't anticipated the level of violence that would continue in Iraq a year after the war began.

When Zinni criticized the group of policymakers within the administration known as the neo-conservatives who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize US interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel, he was called anti-Semite. They include Wolfowitz; Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith; former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle; National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijackedUS policy in Iraq.

Zinni added that the Pentagon relied on inflated intelligence information about weapons of mass destruction from Iraqi exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, and others, whose credibility was in doubt. There was no viable plan or strategy for governing post-Saddam Iraq. --As for US proconsul in Iraq, L Paul Bremer, Zinni said: "He has made mistake after mistake after mistake, like disbanding the army, de-Ba'athifying, even people that were competent and didn't have blood on their hands and were needed in the aftermath of reconstruction - alienating certain elements of that society."

Zinni's plan called for troops numbering about 300,000 (instead of 180,000). Zinni explained: "I think it's critical in the aftermath, if you're going to go to resolve a conflict through the use of force, and then to rebuild the country. The first requirement is to freeze the situation, is to gain control of the security. To patrol the streets. To prevent the looting. To prevent the 'revenge' killings that might occur. To prevent bands or gangs or militias that might not have your best interests at heart from growing or developing," he added.

Zinni believes this was a war the generals didn't want - but it was a war the civilians wanted. Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time - with the wrong strategy. Others who had opposed the war were former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, former central commander Norman Schwarzkopf, former North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander Wesley Clark, and former army chief of staff Eric Shinseki.

"If we are going to 'stay the course', as Bush always insists, the course is headed over the Niagara Falls," warned Zinni.

Sow war and reap terror

A report from a leading think-tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, suggested last week that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have only accelerated recruitment for al-Qaeda. It is estimated that the extremist network now has 18,000 radical militants in its ranks and cells in more than 60 countries. "Al-Qaeda must be expected to keep trying to develop more promising plans for terrorist operations in North America and Europe - potentially involving weapons of mass destruction," institute director John Chipman told a news conference to launch the think-tank's annual survey.

A colonial war
As for the purported reason for invasion, weapons of mass destruction, they were only a pretext, as Wolfowitz admitted soon after the invasion. Saudi Ambassador in London Prince Turki al-Faisal recently said in an interview that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a colonial war. "No matter how exalted the aims of the US in that war, in the final analysis it was a colonial war very similar to the wars conducted by the ex-colonial powers --to conquer the rest of the world ... What we have heard from American sources they were there to remove the weapons of mass destruction which Saddam Hussein was supposed to have acquired.

"What we read and hear from our commentators in America and sometimes congressional sources, if you remember going back a year ago, there was the issue of the oil reserves in Iraq and that in a year or two they would be producing so much oil in Iraq that, as it were, the war would pay for itself - indicated that there were those in America who were thinking in those terms of acquiring the natural resources of Iraq for America," Prince Turki concluded.

Despite Saddam's brutal regime, numerous wars and 13 years of sanctions, the indomitable Iraqi spirit that survived British colonization after World War I refuses to bend. Any student of history of political violence will tell you how against repression, exploitation and denial of freedom, individual and group violence coalesces into insurgency and then into a war for freedom and independence. Something Bush and Blair refused to understand. Instead, they chose to listen to the echo of their own voices bouncing back at them from some of the tame Iraqi opposition groups, nurtured, financed and trained by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Now out goes former Pentagon favorite Chalabi, and in comes Ayad Allawi as the premier-designate from July 1. A Pentagon favorite has been replaced by a State Department favorite.

Iraq : A perplexing predicament                               10 June, 2004

 

Finally, after ignoring the United Nations and diminishing it -- the United States, faced with the prospect of the unraveling of its ill-planned project in Iraq and the Greater Middle East, has turned to the world body to give its occupation some sense of legality. In the end, the UN Security Council's members obviously acknowledged that the strategic implications of a substantial US failure in Iraq were too serious even to contemplate.

On Tuesday, the Council approved 15-0 a resolution that endorses the handover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government on June 30. The resolution also authorizes a US-led multinational force to maintain security in the country. The vote followed intense negotiations in which the US and British sponsors of the resolution agreed to add language that stresses a US-Iraq "security partnership".

Four of the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council, representing a 1940s international political and military balance, are Christian powers but have large Muslim minority populations (France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States). Even the fifth permanent member with veto powers, China, has problems in its Xinjiang autonomous region with its Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighur majority.

"Stabilization of Iraq" and "pacification" of its aroused population are in everyone's interest. US President George W Bush, who is tailoring Iraqi developments to fit in with his schedule for re-election in November, is moving closer to being able to tell the electorate that Iraqis are now their own masters and that the "mission" has been accomplished.

Speaking to reporters, the deputy chief of Turkish general staff, General Ilker Basbug, said the US wanted to station warplanes at the Incirlik base once again. He added that the US had made demands that went beyond the Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement between the two countries and as such might require parliamentary approval.

It appears that the US also wants to open a base in the Black Sea region and to use harbors and some airports in Trabzon and Samsun on the Black Sea. Such a request was made before the US-led war on Iraq, but was rejected. After the rejection of the March 1, 2003, motion on US troop deployment in Turkey to open a second front against Iraq, the US withdrew its warplanes from Incirlik. It believed at the time that after occupying Iraq it would need neither Turkey nor Incirlik.

The US is transferring its troops from bases in Germany to Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, but it cannot establish a chain that would extend to the Caucasus and the Middle East. To that end, Turkey is the most important bridge to extend US influence to the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East.

POST SCRIPT ; Summing up the situation in Iraq ,a New York Times Editorial on 18 June, 2006 , criticised President Bush and the Republican Congress of posturing instead of serious debate on America's future course in Iraq , which cannot blot out the larger picture of dubious trends and dismal prospects.

"It is meaningless to talk about Iraq's taking charge of its own security when the police forces that patrol its cities and run its prisons are rife with sectarian militias and death squads that would sooner wage a civil war than prevent one. " [ and carry out slow ethnic cleansing].Iraq's deputy justice minister told The Washington Post last week that "we cannot control the prisons; it's as simple as that." He added that "our jails are infiltrated by the militias from top to bottom, fromBasra to Baghdad."

The editorial highlighted "the abysmal record of America's multibillion-dollar reconstruction effort in Iraq, ground to a near halt by the lethal combination of military insecurity, incompetent Pentagon management and rampant American and Iraqi corruption. Electric power output has virtually flat-lined for two years. Baghdad residents still have power for only five to eight hours a day. Oil output, the key to Iraq's paying its bills, remains below depressed prewar levels --Health clinics that were supposed to build good will toward America are so badly over budget and behind schedule that most may never be built."

"--the real tragedy of Iraq lies not just in the thousands of Iraqi and American lives lost or the shame of Abu Ghraib or Haditha. It lies even more in the continued lack of leadership and candor from the White House. No upbeat presidential trip to Baghdad or flag-waving Congressional resolution can long divert attention from the sorry reality. More than 130,000 American troops are now spending their fourth year mired in a dangerous and ill-defined mission with no realistic plan for success and no end in sight. "

"Pretending things are better than they are will not make them so. America has some very hard strategic choices pressing down on it in Iraq - much more complicated than whether to set an arbitrary target date for troop withdrawal."

K Gajendra Singh, served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in 1992-96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the 1990- 91Gulf war), Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. The views expressed here are his own.- Email-Gajendrak@hotmail.com