Selling the War

One minute, we are still debating election returns in Ohio and Florida. And then, in a flash, the story largely disappears and the subject changes. Quickly, we have moved on as the news media converges on Fallujah to report on, and in the view of many, support what may be the bloodiest chapter to date of the Iraq war.

Media coverage lurches from event to event, and from spectacle to spectacle as a substance deficit disorder hyperactively drives the news agenda. No sooner are we focused on one major story, than another intrudes to change the subject and insure that there is no time for follow-up, much less thoughtful processing.

In some cases, this is the natural disorder of news, but in many others, there are hidden hands shifting the agenda in a conscious effort not simply to influence what we think, but control what we think about.

The Administration wants to refocus us on the elections to come in Iraq, not likely flaws in the elections that just occurred in America.

The coverage of the fight for Fallujah is a case in point, as the U.S. military makes clear that "information control" is its first priority. When U.S. troops seized a hospital there the goal was said to insure that news about civilian casualties in Iraq not infiltrate the news agenda.

As I document in my film WMD, U.S. war strategy in Iraq has been run like a political campaign with key message points and "message of the day" perception management techniques underlying a strategy of "information dominance."

This invariably relies on deception as a key component of war fighting. There are five elements of this strategy currently in play:

Shape a Narrative

In Fallujah the U.S. narrative and key talking point is making Iraq safe for democracy and elections. To achieve this – or so the storyline goes – the U.S. must restore "local control," end the insurgency and kill or otherwise neutralize "foreign fighters" from whose ranks the U.S. forces exempt themselves and their "coalition" partners.

Little attention is paid to warnings by the UN's Kofi Anan of the head of the EU that this ferocious attack on Fallujah makes fair elections unlikely.

And what of the "foreign fighters?" Most journalists and Iraq specialists argue that what the townspeople of Fallujah want is local control, but in their own hands. They insist that much of the "insurgency" that the locals call the resistance or mujahadeen is home grown, not foreign or origin or direction. But why let the facts get in the way of a misleading if marketable narrative?

Control Media Access

The U.S. military plays the press as a "fourth front," not a traditionally autonomous fourth estate. Suddenly, the embedding program is back in place, with journalists are dependent on U.S. forces for their information and protection. As Madeleine Bunting explains in the Guardian: "It's long since been too dangerous for journalists to move around unless they are embedded with the U.S. forces. There is almost no contact left with civilians still in Fallujah, the only information is from those who have left."

The result: largely one sided coverage.

Spin the Theme of Iraqi Control

To undercut any suggestion of an foreign occupation running things the official story line has it that it is the Iraqis under the Allawi government – actually (but rarely mentioned) a temporary, un-elected and unstable entity – that is in charge with the U.S. troops merely supporting them.

Julian Manion of Britain's ITV put the lie to this assertion on the first day of fighting, reporting: "We've had now, this morning, the formality – some would call it, I'm afraid, the fiction – that Iyad Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq, has given the official order to commence the operation against Fallujah. Of course in reality it is an American operation." On that same day, November 8, CNN was reporting that the Allawi government was calling the shots.